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Michel Fourniret

French serial killer (1942–2021)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ153355
Source-derived summary

Michel Paul Fourniret (4 April 1942 – 10 May 2021) was a French serial killer who confessed to killing 12 people in France and Belgium between 1987 and 2003. After he was arrested in June 2003 for the attempted kidnapping of a teenage girl in Ciney, Fourniret confessed in 2004 to killing nine people, eight females and one male, having been informed on by his then-wife, Monique Pierrette Olivier (born 31 October 1948). Fourniret was convicted of seven of these murders on 28 May 2008 and sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole, while Olivier was given life with a minimum term of 28 years for complicity.

In February 2018, Fourniret confessed to killing two more women. On 16 November 2018, Fourniret and Olivier were convicted of the murder of Farida Hammiche, the last of the eight women that Fourniret confessed to killing in 2004. Fourniret was given a second life sentence and Olivier was sentenced to a further 20 years of imprisonment. In March 2020, Fourniret confessed to killing Estelle Mouzin, who disappeared from Guermantes in 2003.

Early life

Fourniret was born in Sedan, France, the son of a metal worker and a homemaker. He claimed to have been sexually abused as a child by his mother. Acquaintances remembered him as a quiet, intelligent child who enjoyed chess and classical music.

Editorial summary

“Michel Fourniret” enters the record as french serial killer (1942–2021). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Michel, Fourniret and French can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1942, 2021, 1987, 2003—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1942-04-04. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Michel, Fourniret and French.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Michel Fourniret” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Michel, Fourniret and French provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q153355. VIAF identifies the subject as 24891580. The Library of Congress control number is n2007023928. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1942, 2021, 1987 and 2003.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Michel Fourniret” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.