Mum begged French Brady and Hindley to reveal details of daughter Joanna Parrish’s 1990 murder
Last week serial killer Michel Fourniret confessed that he had killed Jo Parrish in 1990
IT was the hardest letter that Pauline Murrell would ever write.
She was asking France’s Myra Hindley for the truth about how her daughter was murdered.
Local investigators were convinced that language student Jo had been lured and then murdered by a depraved husband and wife, dubbed the French Hindley and Brady, who were jailed for life a decade ago.
Just like Myra Hindley and Ian Brady in the Sixties in Manchester, SHE hunted down young victims for HIM to rape and kill.
But French detectives had lost key DNA evidence against Monique Olivier and Michel Fourniret, and without a confession the evil pair could not be brought to justice for Jo’s killing.
So, in a three-page letter, Pauline pleaded to evil Olivier — a mother with three children of her own — to reveal what happened to Jo in 1990.
Despite her anguish and anger, Pauline politely wrote: “As one mother to another, you are the only person who can help us.
“Madame, I beg you to re-examine your conscience and tell me the truth.
“I hope that you will be able to give us a bit of the peace of mind that we have been seeking for so long.”
Pauline received no reply. But last week, eight years after she wrote the letter, Olivier’s husband repeatedly confessed to an investigating magistrate that he had killed Jo plus another girl, Marie-Angele Domece, 18, who vanished in 1988.
And last night sources close to the investigation told The Sun that Olivier, now 69, had a major part in persuading Fourniret — dubbed The Ogre Of The Ardennes — to confess to Jo’s murder.
One source said: “Monique Olivier may not have replied to Joanna Parrish’s mother but we believe that letter certainly played on her mind.
“She was the one who pushed Michel Fourniret to finally confess.”
Now prosecutors expect former electrician Fourniret, 75, and Olivier, who are already in jail for seven murders, to stand trial next year for killing Jo.
Yesterday at his home in Newnham on Severn, Gloucs, Jo’s father, retired civil servant Roger Parrish, recalled his ex-wife Pauline writing the letter to Olivier.
He said: “I don’t think the letter was appreciated by Monique Olivier’s lawyers at the time and we never received a reply.” Olivier’s legal team even accused Pauline of provocation.
Pauline has said: “I thought that, as a mother of three sons herself, she would understand — that maybe she would have the same parental feelings as a normal person.
“That’s why I sent the letter. All we ever wanted was the truth so that we could move on with our lives.”
Jo was last seen alive in the early evening of May 16, 1990, in Auxerre, where she taught English at a local school as part of her four-year modern languages course at Leeds University.
She was rushing to meet a man who had answered an ad she placed in a local paper offering English lessons. Jo never arrived for the 7pm meeting outside the Banque Populaire.
Police now believe she was abducted in rush-hour traffic by Olivier, who was cruising the streets in a van looking for virgins for Fourniret to defile and murder.
Described as “devils with two faces”, the pair first came into contact when Fourniret was in jail for sex offences and Olivier answered a magazine advert he placed looking for pen pals.
As they wrote, she fell under his spell, calling him “my beast” and Shere Khan after the man-killing tiger in Kipling’s Jungle Book. Fourniret offered to help former nurse Olivier by murdering her two ex-husbands when he got out of jail.
In exchange, she agreed to help him find virgins. When he was freed in 1987, Olivier was waiting in her green Peugeot estate.
Fourniret never kept his part of the bargain but less than two months after his release, Olivier made the first sick offering to her beast.
She selected timid 17-year-old Isabelle Laville because she looked like a younger version of herself. The white Citroën van drew up alongside Isabelle.
Olivier asked for directions and persuaded the girl to get in.
Down the road, Fourniret was waiting, jerrycan in hand, posing as a motorist who had broken down and needed a lift. Olivier stopped the car and let him in. Nearly 20 years later, Isabelle’s body was found in a well.
The killings continued. The following year Olivier, now heavily pregnant, lured 20-year-old Fabienne Leroy into the car by claiming she needed someone to go with her to hospital.
Olivier examined the terrified girl to make sure she was a virgin before handing her over to Fourniret, who raped her then shot her dead.
Once, they used their young son Selim as bait, telling their victim they needed a doctor for their child.
At other times they left him with a babysitter and went on “virgin-hunting” weekends. Fourniret claimed he needed to hunt virgins at least twice a year.
It is believed he tried and failed to inject air into some of his victims’ bloodstreams to try to induce heart attacks before strangling or battering them to death.
Olivier admitted watching Fourniret’s worst attacks from behind a two-way mirror in their home, the Chateau of Sautou, in Donchery, north east France, and ignored the screams. She later “re-enacted rapes” with her husband, according to prosecutors.
Bodies of several victims were found in the grounds of the property that Fourniret had bought after swindling a bank robber out of his ill-gotten gains.
But in May, 1990, the beast and his accomplice were living in the village of Saint-Cyr-Les-Colons, near Auxerre, where Jo was working.
Police believe that after abducting Jo, they drove her into the countryside where Fourniret beat and strangled her before dumping her into the nearby River Yonne.
The next day her naked body was found three miles downstream.
The post mortem revealed small slashes in the shape of a cross on her forearm, identical to ones found on some of Fourniret’s other victims, including Fabienne.
Roger said: “Jo found herself in a dark world so alien to her own.
“For a moment, good and evil collided and there was only ever going to be one outcome because that evil was so powerful.”
A 13-year-old girl the couple abducted in 2003 escaped and gave police the registration of their van. The killing spree was at an end. Olivier later admitted they had taken Jo but then withdrew her confession.
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Without solid forensic evidence, Jo’s parents, who split up around the time of Jo’s death, feared they would never learn the truth. Now, with a confession, they may finally get justice.
Roger said yesterday: “Seeing them both in court for Joanna’s murder would be the final hurdle.
“I’m slightly reluctant to use the word closure because it will always be there with us.
“Like all parents, we thought our daughter would be with us throughout our lives but her absence is unbearable.
“Our son, Barney, was just 17 years old when he was confronted with this horrible reality.
“We are now the grandparents of three grandchildren and one day it will be necessary for us to explain to them what has become of their Aunt Jo.”
Toll of terror
MICHEL FOURNIRET has so far been found guilty of killing seven women in north-east France.
The first victim, Isabelle Laville, 17, was taken as she walked home from school in December 1987. She was raped and strangled. Her body was only found in 2006, in a disused well.
Fabienne Leroy, 20, was lured into Fourniret and pregnant Olivier’s car in August 1988 when they pretended they needed a doctor.
Next was Jeanne-Marie Desramault, 21, who lived in a convent and met the couple on a train. She disappeared in March 1989. Body was found in July 2004. She had been strangled.
The youngest to die, Elisabeth Brichet, 12, was taken in December 1989 and strangled. Her body was not found until 2004.
Natacha Danais, 13, was lured into the couple’s vehicle in November 1990. She had been on a family outing but was sent home to get her mum’s purse. She was stabbed twice in the chest and strangled.
Next, in May 2000, Fourniret spotted student Celine Saison, 18, below, and asked her for directions. She got in his car and was strangled. Her body was found two months later.
Another schoolgirl, Mananya Thumpong, 13, was then spotted and befriended by the killer, who had decided: “I’m going to take her.” She was strangled in May 2001 and her body was found in a forest the following year.
As well as these seven convictions, Fourniret has now confessed to killing Jo Parrish, 20, and Marie-Angele Domece, 18, who vanished in July 1988. Olivier says he also murdered Farida Hamiche, 30, in 1988.
Another girl, 13, was snatched in Belgium in 2003 but escaped by jumping from the moving car.
Additional reporting: Peter Allen