“She would not have got into the car had you not invented this story of English lessons … you should have stopped him. Olivier outlined how she and Fourniret had persuaded the young woman to get into their van.ĭidier Seban, a lawyer representing the Parrish family, asked repeatedly why Olivier – who remained in the vehicle when Fourniret attacked Joanna, but insisted she had not looked round – had not acted when she heard the young woman scream and the sound of her husband beating her. She told a flatmate she was meeting a man who wanted her to teach English to his son. She was hoping to raise money to visit her boyfriend, Patrick Proctor, who was studying Russian in what was then Czechoslovakia. Parrish, a Leeds university language student who was spending eight months working as a teaching assistant at a secondary school in Auxerre, had placed a small ad in the local newspaper offering teaching and babysitting services. Often the couple would use their son, Selim – then a baby, now aged 35, who was called as a witness – as further reassurance to potential targets. Fourniret would be waiting in the back or standing further along the road with an empty petrol can, pretending he had broken down and needed to be picked up. The couple’s modus operandi was that Olivier should lure the victims into the vehicle, as a woman was less likely to make them fearful or suspicious. “Finally, we now hope, after this last obstacle in our struggle to gain an element of justice for Joanna has been overcome, we can remember our daughter and sister with a smile on our faces which is how of course all her many friends remember her.” And her participation in these acts has now been proved beyond any doubt. “Her presence alone would have gained the confidence of all the victims, who would never have believed a woman could be a part of such an appalling and depraved act. And not only did she do nothing to help them, but she actively encouraged and participated in both their capture and subsequent murder. “From the very first moment that a victim was identified, she knew exactly, exactly, what would happen to them. Parrish asked for a moment to remember all the victims, and said: “There’s never been any doubt in our minds at all that she was equally responsible for the murder of Joanna and the other completely innocent victims. It’s monstrous what we did, me and him, it’s unforgivable and if it was my daughter … she was beautiful, she did not deserve that and I am sorry.”Īt a press conference after the sentencing on Tuesday, Parrish’s father said he was “satisfied” that Olivier’s role in aiding her serial killer former husband had been recognised. Shown a photograph of Parrish’s battered face, she said: “It’s not possible. Olivier admitted that her role in helping him lure Parrish to her death was “monstrous … unforgivable”. Her naked body was found the next morning. Olivier told the court that Fourniret beat Parrish, 20, unconscious on before raping and strangling her and throwing her body in the River Yonne near the Burgundy town of Auxerre. Fourniret died in 2021, aged 79, before he could be brought to trial for the murders.ĭefendants in French trials do not make a plea but Olivier had told the court, referring to the three killings: “I acknowledge all the facts, the three facts of which I am reproached.” It was another decade before he admitted killing Parrish and two more victims whose bodies have never been found – 19-year-old Marie-Angèle Domèce, who disappeared in 1988, and nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin, who vanished in 2003. Olivier is serving life in prison for her role in the almost two-decade campaign of kidnaps and killings that traumatised France.įor Roger Parrish, a retired civil servant from Newnham on Severn in Gloucestershire, his ex-wife, Pauline Murrell, the couple’s son Barnaby and Joanna’s then boyfriend, Patrick Proctor – who had travelled to Paris for part of the trial – it was a last hope of justice after 33 years.įourniret, known as the “Ogre of the Ardennes”, was jailed for life in 2008 for the murder of seven other girls and young women. She was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum term of 20 years.
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