'Ogre of the Ardennes' finally admits killing British woman Joanna Parrish

A notorious French serial killer known as the ‘Ogre of the Ardennes’ has finally confessed to the murder of British student Joanna Parrish 28 years ago, her family's lawyer said on Friday.

Michel Fourniret, 75, was already serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of seven other young women, but until now police had been unable to prove that he killed Joanna. 

The naked body of the 20-year-old Leeds University language student was found in the River Yonne near Auxerre, Burgundy in 1990, a day after she was reported missing.

She had been raped, beaten and strangled following her abduction after placing an advertisement in a local newspaper offering English lessons.

Her father, Roger Parrish, who had long suspected Fourniret despite the killer’s repeated denials, spoke of his relief last night. Mr Parrish, a retired Land Registry official from Newnham on Severn in Gloucestershire, told local reporters that his family would have “closure at last”.

Didier Seban, a French lawyer acting for the Parrish family, said Fourniret’s confession marked “the culmination of a long battle for justice lasting 28 years.”

Fourniret admitted to an investigating judge earlier this week that he had killed both Joanna and Marie-Ange Domece, a mentally handicapped teenager who disappeared in 1988. Her body has never been found.

Fourniret was the prime suspect in both cases for years. He and his wife, Monique Olivier, were arrested in 2005 in connection with the other seven killings.

Olivier was also jailed for life as an accomplice after it emerged that she had picked up some of his victims for him as she drove their car around the Ardennes woods in eastern France, near the German border, with their baby son in the back seat.

She twice told investigators he had killed Joanna, but later retracted her statements, saying they had been made “under violence”.

Joanna’s father and her mother, Pauline Murrell, criticised what they said was the haphazard investigation into her death. Ms Murrell said in 2015 that there had been “absolute cock-ups from beginning to end”.

Referring to Inspector Clouseau, the comically inept French detective played by Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther films, she added: “This is Clouseau-esque. I’ve said it in France. They knew what I meant.”

Joanna’s parents, who separated after her death, had kept up pressure on the French police to find her murderer.

She was studying French and Spanish at Leeds and was on a placement teaching English at a lycée in Auxerre when she was killed on 17 May 1990.