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“Bring back the guillotine” say parents of British woman murdered in France 30 years ago[1]
The parents of a British woman murdered in France more than 30 years said they wish the guillotine had brought back for the ‘evil’ couple responsible. Joanna Parrish, 20, was working as a teaching assistant at a school in France when she placed an advert offering English lessons in a local newspaper. Michel Fourniret, dubbed the ‘Ogre of the Ardennes’ and regarded as one of France’s worst serial killers, responded to the advert in May 1990 and the pair met.
Joanna, from Newnham-on-Severn, Glos., was never seen alive again and her body was discovered in the River Yonne, near Auxerre, France the following day. Fourniret confessed to murdering 11 females – including Joanna – but died in 2021 before he could stand trial. At the time he was serving a life sentence for the murders of seven girls and young women – and died in 2021.
But after his ex-wife Monique Olivier, now 75, was given a second life term this week for her role in the murders, Joanna’s parents said they felt some ‘relief’ at the verdict – but held nothing but hatred for her killers. Her mum Pauline Murrell said: “It really wasn’t necessary for all those other girls to die. I really wish they still had hanging, actually…
I thought a guillotine would be ideal. “That’s what I kept looking at her (Olivier) and thinking. I’d guillotine you and I’d sit there with my knitting and watch.” Olivier was charged with complicity in Joanna’s murder, as well as complicity in the murder of 18-year-old Marie-Angele Domece in 1988. She was also accused of the kidnap of nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin, whose body has never been found.
The couple said that although Fourniret wasn’t alive to be held accountable for their daughter’s murder – they were relieved he was no longer able to hurt anyone else. Pauline added: “I think I feel mainly that, thank God, he’s not around to kill anybody else. “She won’t be around, but I just can’t help but think that if the police at the beginning, the gens d’armes, had at the beginning done their job properly, then a lot of other girls would still be alive – because he would have been caught. “But, I don’t know why they didn’t, they just were completely inadequate. That’s my main feeling; it wasn’t necessary.” Dad Roger Parrish added: “I think I would have wanted to have faced him in court, but frankly, I don’t really think that would have made any difference to him anyway, knowing the kind of person that he was, a psychopath… a completely narcissistic psychopath, who only thought of himself. “I would have wanted to have been there when he was still alive.
But he’s dead now and the world’s a better place for it.” Before the jury retired to consider their verdicts, Olivier said: “I regret everything I did and I ask for forgiveness from the families of the victims, while knowing that it is unforgivable.” The defendant, who is already serving a life sentence for her involvement in her husband’s other killings, was found guilty and sentenced to a second life sentence, with a minimum of 20 years. The couple said they had been fighting for decades for justice and would have carried on for as long as it would take. Mr Parrish added: “We were determined right from the start that it would just take as long as it takes. “Of course, we never really thought that it would take 33 years and there have been periods, perhaps during the 1990s, before Fourniret was identified, that we thought, maybe we’re going to have to be doing this for the rest of our lives. “But as soon as he and Monique Olivier were identified in the early 2000s, certainly I was absolutely convinced that they were responsible, with or without the evidence.” “I think probably our strongest feeling now is one of relief, relief at the verdict and that the jurors and the court has recognised Monique Olivier’s major part in our daughter’s murder.” The couple said the biggest obstacles they faced over the years was a lack of help and information from the French authorities.
Mr Parrish added: “The hardest part was convincing the French authorities that we weren’t ever going to go away, we weren’t ever going to go away. “It didn’t make a difference. We’d still go on fighting, you know, we’d still go on struggling. “We’ve tried to get on with our lives and I think we both have done. We’ve both got certain interests and pleasures and, and of course we’ve got our grandchildren now, a big, big part of our lives. “If we still had to devote some of our time to carrying on this struggle, then we would have done.” In their official statement released after the verdict, Mr Parrish said they were “satisfied that the court has recognised Monique Olivier’s part in the murder of our daughter and sister.” He added: “There’s never been any doubt in our minds that her presence was a major part in gaining Jo’s confidence and her active participation in her murder has been proved beyond any doubt. “We do hope now, after this last obstacle, that we can remember our daughter and sister with a smile on our faces, which is how all of her friends remember her. “After Christmas, we’re going to take a holiday as this is an extremely personal moment for our family and we do ask that our privacy is respected at this time.” And they said they wanted to remember their daughter for her kind and bright personality.
Mr Parrish said: “I want her to be remembered for the person that she was. We’ve had so many letters and lately emails and comments from friends, people who were neighbours at her primary school, at her grammar school, at university. Just people that knew her, that all say very, very similar things.
That she was kind, helpful, hardworking and very conscientious. “Never ever did we have to force her to get down to work, she’d just do it and that’s how we’ll go on remembering her.” Pauline added: “And her smile. I look at the sun and the sun reminds me of Jo, actually. I always think of her.
And other people in the village have said the same thing: smile and look at the sun and there’s Jo.”