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Serial killer’s widow named a suspect in 1997 disappearance of teenage girl in France
Monique Olivier, who is serving life for aiding her serial killer husband Michel Fourniret, is a suspect in the 1997 disappearance of a teenage girl in France, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
Olivier is formally in custody for the “kidnapping (and) illegal confinement” of 17-year-old Cecile Vallin and is being questioned by a specialist cold case unit, prosecutors in the Paris suburb of Nanterre told the AFP news agency.
Vallin was last seen around 6 p.m. on June 8, 1997, on a country road leading out of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, a small southern French town fewer than 20 miles from the Italian border.
Investigators resumed inquiries into whether Fourniret could have been responsible for the abduction after statements Olivier made in December last year, when she was on trial for helping Fourniret kidnap and murder three other girls.
AP Photo
The court heard that Olivier told Belgian investigators that Fourniret, dubbed the “Ogre of the Ardennes”, had murdered a young “babysitter” around June 1997, while the girl was sleeping at the couple’s house in Sart-Custinne in Belgium. Fourniret “strangled her with his bare hands,” she said at the time.
But Olivier, whose evidence about her time with her late ex-husband has often been hesitant and fragmentary, denied in court that Vallin could have been the victim in question.
“We were never in Savoie,” the visibly irritated Frenchwoman said of the region where Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne is located.
Investigators have now formally placed Olivier — already sentenced twice for complicity in her husband’s murders — in custody in the Vallin case. She’d previously been convicted for her role in four murders and a rape committed by her husband.
Widow sentenced for her role as “bait”
Olivier’s lawyer, Richard Delgenes, said he had been informed she was being questioned but said he was unable to attend the interview and she would not answer without him present. The interview “is counter-productive for the Vallin family,” he told AFP.
The Vallin family’s representative, Cathy Richard, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Local prosecutors launched a kidnapping probe after Vallin’s parents reported her missing in 1997, when searches failed to spot any sign of the teenager and there was no evidence that she had run away.
Thomas SAMSON/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
Olivier, 75, was first sentenced to life in jail in 2008.
She received another life sentence last year for her role as “bait” in Fourniret’s killings of British student Joanna Parrish, French teenager Marie-Angele Domece and 9-year-old Estelle Mouzin.
She met Fourniret through a classified ad he posted while serving jail time for rape, going on to have a child with him and aid him in his crimes.
For 16 years, the couple worked together to abduct and murder girls and young women, the BBC reported. They were finally stopped in 2003, when a 13-year-old girl Fourniret was trying to kidnap managed to escape, leading to his and Olivier’s arrest.
The BBC reported that Fourniret’s known victims — beyond Parrish, Domece and Mouzin — were Isabelle Laville, Fabienne Leroy, Jeanne-Marie Desramault, Elisabeth Brichet, Natacha Danais, Celine Saison, Mananya Thumphong and Farida Hammiche. The victims were shot, strangled or stabbed to death, the BBC reported. Most were killed in the Ardennes region of northern France and in Belgium.
Fourniret received a life sentence with no possibility of parole for seven of the rapes and murders in 2008. He died in prison in 2021 aged 79.
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Yellowstone hiker burned when she falls into scalding water near Old Faithful, park officials say
Yellowstone National Park, Wyo. — A New Hampshire woman suffered severe burns on her leg after hiking off-trail in Yellowstone National Park and falling into scalding water in a thermal area near the Old Faithful geyser, park officials said.
The 60-year-old woman from Windsor, New Hampshire, along with her husband and their leashed dog were walking off a designated trail near the Mallard Lake Trailhead on Monday afternoon when she broke through a thin crust over the water and suffered second- and third-degree burns to her lower leg, park officials said. Her husband and the dog weren’t injured.
The woman was flown to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center in Idaho Falls, Idaho for treatment.
National Park Service / Jacob W. Frank
Park visitors are reminded to stay on boardwalks and trails in hydrothermal areas and exercise extreme caution. The ground in those areas is fragile and thin and there’s scalding water just below the surface, park officials said.
Pets are allowed in limited, developed areas of Yellowstone park but are prohibited on boardwalks, hiking trails, in the backcountry and in thermal areas.
The incident is under investigation. The woman’s name wasn’t made public.
This is the first known thermal injury in Yellowstone in 2024, park officials said in a statement. The park had recorded 3.5 million visitors through August this year.
Hot springs have injured and killed more people in Yellowstone National Park than any other natural feature, the National Park Service said. At least 22 people have died from hot spring-related injuries in and around the 3,471-square-mile national park since 1890, park officials have said.
TRENTON, N.J. — Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver has defeated Republican small businessman Carmen Bucco in a contest in New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District that opened up because of the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in April.
McIver will serve out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends in January. She and Bucco will face a rematch on the November ballot for the full term.
McIver said in a statement Wednesday that she stands on the “shoulders of giants,” naming Payne as chief among them.
She cast ahead to the November election, saying the right to make reproductive health choices was on the ballot as well as whether the economy should benefit the wealthy or “hard working Americans.”
“I will fight because the purpose of politics and the purpose of our vote is to give the people of our communities and our nation a bold voice,” she said.
Bucco congratulated McIver on the victory in a statement but said he’s looking forward to the rematch in November.
“I am not going anywhere,” he said in an email. “We still have a second chance to make district 10 great again!”
Who are LaMonica McIver and Carmen Bucco?
McIver emerged as the Democratic candidate in a crowded field in the July special election. A member of the city council of New Jersey’s biggest city since 2018, she also worked for Montclair Public Schools as a personnel director and plans to focus on affordability, infrastructure, abortion rights and “protecting our democracy,” she told The Associated Press earlier this summer.
Bucco describes himself on his campaign website as a small-business owner influenced by his upbringing in the foster system. He lists support for law enforcement and ending corruption as top issues.
The 10th District lies in a heavily Democratic and majority-Black region of northern New Jersey. Republicans are outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
It’s been a volatile year for Democrats in New Jersey, where the party dominates state government and the congressional delegation.
Among the developments were the conviction on federal bribery charges of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who has denied the charges, and the demise of the so-called county party line — a system in which local political leaders give their preferred candidates favorable position on the primary ballot.
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who’s running for Menendez’s seat, and other Democrats brought a federal lawsuit challenging the practice as part of his campaign to oust Menendez, who has resigned since his conviction.