GUN CONTROL

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Wife lured virgins for ‘Ogre of the Ardennes’ serial killer

It is a desolate northern French town, not far from the Belgian border. He is an unremarkable, greying, French former electrician. She is an unexceptional, dowdy housewife. Yet there is nothing ordinary about the coming trial of Michel Fourniret and Monique Olivier in the steel-and-glass modern courthouse of Charleville-Mézières on the banks of the Meuse river.

The trial is of France's most prolific serial killers of recent times. Fourniret, 65, is charged with the murders of seven young women in Belgium and France, although investigators believe that he is responsible for many more. Dubbed 'The Ogre of the Ardennes', the prosecutors will claim that he acted for the most part with the active help of his 59-year-old wife. STORY