A notorious serial killer known as the ‘Ogre of the Ardennes’ has reportedly confessed to killing a British student and a French teenager some three decades ago.
Michel Fourniret had long been the prime suspect for the murder of Briton Joanna Parrish, who was raped and murdered in Auxerre in 1990 while working as an English teacher during a gap year. Her body was found in a river.
Marie-Angele Domece, a French teenager, was killed two years earlier and her body has never been found.
Fourniret was sentenced to life in prison in 2008 for the rape and murder of seven other young women, but police had been unable to pin the murder of Ms Parrish, 20, on him until now.
He has now reportedly confessed to killing Ms Parrish and Ms Domece during a number of court hearings in the past week, Didier Seban, her family’s lawyer told AFP. He has not yet been charged with the killings, according to Mr Seban.
"He made detailed and repeated confessions. He clearly recognises, and this several times over, having killed Joanna Parrish and Marie-Angele Domece," said Mr Seban.
"It's a new development, a resolution of the affair, it seems, in a remarkable way.”
It was the “end of a long legal battle," he said. Fourniret's lawyer and French prosecutors declined to comment.
Fourniret’s ex-wife Monique Olivier had previously identified him as the murderer of a woman in the Auxerre area but later retracted her story. She has been found guilty of complicity in five murders and was also jailed for life.
Ms Parrish's father, Roger Parrish, told the broadcaster the confession had come as a shock and that he hoped it was not another "false lead".