Convicted French serial killer Michel Fourniret has confessed to the May 1990 murder of 20-year-old British student Joanna Parrish, whose body was found in a river close to the Burgundy town of Auxerre, her family’s lawyers have confirmed.
During questioning by an investigating magistrate this week and last, he also confessed to the murder in the same region of 19-year-old Marie-Angèle Domece, a mentally handicapped woman who disappeared in July 1988. The exact circumstances of her disappearance have remained a mystery until now, and her body has never been found.
Corinne Herrmann and Didier Seban, lawyers for the parents of the British student, said Fourniret’s confession to her murder, which he had previously denied involvement in, was “spontaneous and reiterated”.
Joanna Parrish was assigned to a secondary school in Auxerre as an English-language teacher, as part of her modern languages degree course with Leeds University.
She disappeared on the evening of May 16th 1990 when she had an appointment with an unidentified man to give English lessons to his son. Her naked body was found the next morning floating in the River Yonne in a village close to Auxerre. An autopsy established she had been raped and severely beaten.
Fourniret, 75, who is serving a life sentence for seven murders committed between 1987 and 2001, was questioned over several days this month by the Paris-based investigating magistrate in charge of the investigation which had been briefly closed in 2011.
In 2016, a specialised gendarmerie cold case review team reopened active investigations into the murder for which Fourniret became the prime suspect.
His former wife Monique Olivier, 69, who is also serving a life sentence for actively helping Fourniret commit several of his crimes, gave a confession in 2005 in which she described assisting her then husband in the rape and murder of a young woman near Auxerre in 1990, but later retracted her statement which she said was obtained under duress. She is due to be requestioned following Fourniret's confession.
Fourniret, whose life sentence is without any possibility of parole, had until now denied involvement in both murders. Arrested in Belgium in 2003 for kidnapping a 13-year-old girl, Fourniret stood trial for the seven murders committed between 1997-2001, together with Olivier, in 2008.
Joanna Parrish’s father Roger Parrish said on Friday that he and his former wife Pauline, Joanna’s mother, remained guarded over Fourniret’s confession. “We are of course hopeful that Michel Fourniret’s statement will lead to a solution of the investigations, but we held out hopes of an explanation of Jo’s murder in 2005, following Monique Olivier’s confession, only to see them dashed later,” he said. “We await further details about what he has said and will take things on from there.”
The parents have been very critical of the history of the investigation, which was marked by lost and destroyed evidence and insufficient forensic studies at the crime scene, prompting them to lead a high-profile media campaign calling for a thorough review of the case which was finally launched in 2016.