Monique Olivier: Accessory to Evil (2023) s01e02 Episode Script

[telephone ringing]
[beep]
- [answers in French]
- [interpreter] Hello?
[Monique Olivier's interpreter]
Yes, hello.
How are you, Mrs. Olivier?
Um, I'm okay.
Tell me. Do you regret speaking up?
Do I regret admitting what happened? No.
I regret that I wasn't able to stop it.
But, you know, I don't regret it.
I'm in prison, I deserve to be here.
You shouldn't think of me as being
the same as him or put me in the same box.
I'd like people to actually understand me.
That I'm not worthless.
Do you understand that it's difficult
for the families to hear that?
[Olivier hesitating]
I know, but
You should try and understand people
before you put a label on them.
[panting]
[Delgenes] When we were asked to defend
Monique Olivier, I was 35 at the time.
I had only been an attorney five years,
but I didn't hesitate.
Honestly, I only needed five minutes
to think about it.
I already knew
how we were going to proceed.
Everything was clear
from her first confessions.
She took part in the abductions
and in locking them up.
At times she was involved
in burying the bodies.
She had an active role as an accomplice.
[man] Monique Olivier has been transferred
to the Charleville county jail.
She is accused of being complicit
in five of the seven abductions,
rapes and murders.
[woman 1] Investigators say she gave
details she couldn't have made up.
She also admitted to having
an active role in some of the abductions.
[woman 2] Olivier is said
to have fully and willingly agreed
to her husband's plans.
She shows a lack of compassion or
emotional response towards the victims.
[Delgenes] I have never asked myself
whether someone deserves to be defended.
An attorney's job is to defend
and have no fear.
If you're afraid to defend,
you shouldn't do it.
A coward is useless. You can't be afraid.
You don't defend someone 'cause you think
they're innocent. That'd be too easy.
Whatever confessions or statements
they make, I'll always be there.
I don't think that people are born bad.
Monique Olivier doesn't fall into
the usual category of serial killers.
We've been asking
"Who is Monique Olivier?"
Have you ever thought to ask,
"Who was she?"
Michel Fourniret,
the French forest ranger,
had been charged in Belgium
for abducting minors and indecent assault.
His wife has accused him of murdering
nine children and young girls.
With at least ten murders,
usually involving rape,
experts say he is
the most prolific serial killer in France.
Whatever may have happened to Estelle,
you have to give her back to us.
[woman] The murders by the Ogre of
the Ardennes and his wife shocked Europe.
The remains of a teenage girl who
disappeared ten months ago
have been found in Belgium.
[man] The Fournirets are said
to have raped and killed young girls
in France and Belgium
in an extremely sadistic manner.
[woman] Fourniret's wife
presents as a submissive wife
who is scared of her husband,
so has not spoken up until now.
[man] She's a housewife
who helps to rape, kill and abduct.
But in the end, she is a housewife.
MONIQUE OLIVIER: ACCESSORY TO EVIL
EPISODE 2
THE EVIL PAC
[Delgenes] I go to the prison
to meet Olivier.
DINANT - BELGIUM
And I arrive in a room
that is often very noisy.
The floor is tiled. There's a meal cart
going around with plates clanking on it.
There are keys. Huge keys, in huge locks.
Bang, bang. Opening and closing.
Loud bangs!
And you can hear the guards
talking to each other. Prison is noisy.
I remember her being very defensive.
Really nervous, too. Her arms, the way
she held herself. I mean, very defensive.
My first thought was,
"This is going to be complicated".
Because she was complicated.
[woman 1] Monique Olivier's personality
remains a mystery.
Some experts believe her husband
exerted total dominance over her,
while others believe
Monique Olivier was the killer's muse,
a woman who really only came alive
through her husband's crimes.
[woman 2] Experts are trying to
understand the role Olivier played
in the couple's criminal activity,
which spanned 17 years.
When I met Monique Olivier
for the first time,
I was struck by how tall she was.
EXPERT COURT PSYCHOLOGIS
I saw someone who was very unassuming.
She only looked down at the ground,
and she sat on the edge of her chair.
She looks like she just got out of bed.
No makeup at all, a little scruffy.
EXPERT COURT PSYCHOLOGIS
And it was the same all morning.
[Daniel Zagury] She was misleading
the entire time.
She spun a story of a poor, submissive
woman who was afraid of her husband.
And in front of us, we had a woman
who whimpered and was evasive.
EXPERT COURT PSYCHIATRIS
She was completely lackluster.
And you think,
"How am I going to manage this?"
It was really very tiring.
EXPERT COURT PSYCHOLOGIS
Constantly bringing a woman back onto
the subject we wanted to discuss,
and she says, "I don't remember anything."
"Stop, I've got a headache.
You're harassing me."
"I can't take any more, leave me alone."
This whole performance that she puts on.
It was long and difficult.
We're dealing with an enigma
that we have to explain later.
That's what society requires of us.
People who meet her think she's nice.
She doesn't cause problems,
she's interesting
If you need a hand, she'll help.
Simple, in a way.
Someone you would never imagine
to have the criminal story she had.
This is my personal opinion,
but I'm convinced
that if she had met someone good,
she would have done good with just
as much determination, will or complicity.
She's not motivated by evil.
Except she met Michel Fourniret.
Monique Olivier and Michel Fourniret
met in 1987.
Michel Fourniret was 45 at the time.
Monique Olivier was 38.
Monique Olivier was divorced
and had two children from that marriage.
She had also lost custody
of those children.
At the time, Michel Fourniret was
incarcerated at Fleury-Mérogis,
and Monique and Michel began
to communicate through a personal ad
in a Christian magazine,
Le Pèlerin, that Michel had placed.
[interpreter] Prisoner seeking to
correspond with someone of any age
to forget loneliness.
CLASSIFIED ADS
[Pirson] Then,
over a period of ten months,
up until Michel was released
in October 1987,
he sent 133 letters,
and Monique Olivier sent 84.
So, a significant amount
of written communication.
What's interesting is that we haven't
sufficiently analyzed
the importance of these exchanges
in order to explain
how this relationship came about.
- [buzzer sounds]
- [gate opens]
[Andante from Piano Concerto no. 21
by Mozart]
FLEURY-MÉROGIS PRISON
FRANCE
Good evening. Macha Béranger,
here with you until one a.m.
[Fourniret] Hello, Monique.
I was moved by your letter.
And I don't know what to say.
I listened to another "Hello, Macha"
on France Inter late last night.
[music continues, muffled]
[Olivier] Good evening, Michel.
I really enjoy your letters.
At one a.m., I'll be listening
to "Hello, Macha" as well.
Michel, help me stay awake tonight.
I need you. Stay with me.
The word that stands out
from Monique's letters is loneliness.
[Olivier] Hello, Michel.
I often go walking in the woods,
but always alone.
[birdsong]
I have no one to accompany me.
I particularly like the wild boar
and rabbits that I meet during my walks.
[Pirson] Michel Fourniret understands this
and senses that she is vulnerable,
that she has a kind
of emotional dependence
because of this fear
of abandonment and loneliness.
Gradually, he implements a strategy.
His prey is in sight.
Michel Fourniret weaves his web.
[Fourniret] Rest assured,
Monique, my friend,
there is someone, somewhere,
who needs you.
You are not alone anymore.
You are not alone anymore.
After four months, he asks her
to marry him on the 16th of June.
On the 19th of June, she replies that
she accepts and wants to marry him.
[Olivier] In reply to your question,
will I marry you,
the answer is yes.
Did you have doubts?
If you did, I'm disappointed
in my favorite little jailbird.
No matter what people say about me.
Monique Olivier is experiencing
a real romantic idyll.
She believes she's met someone
who really cares about her,
who writes exceptionally well,
and has values.
The only thing is,
and this is not insignificant,
is that she knows
why Michel Fourniret is in prison.
[Fourniret] Your favorite jailbird
has been accused of rape.
Let's just say that my whole life has
been spent stealing, raping, lying,
and I'm sure I'm forgetting some.
He's in prison because he has been
found guilty of assaulting women.
Sexually.
[Gérard Chemla] He had a little notebook
where he wrote down the assaults.
He describes the victim and kept a record.
He was like those butterfly collectors
who pin the butterflies they've caught
onto a little card.
His victims were worth
nothing more than an insect.
[Fourniret] One, 1977.
High-school student. Exposure.
Two, 1981.
Schoolgirl. The emotion of this child
when I kissed her face.
Four, 1982. Dania.
Says she's not a virgin
The most serious case
My intent to possess her
can't be fulfilled Six. She's a virgin
Eight.
Express my intention to penetrate her
She undressed me
Tells me she's a virgin
Sixteen. 1984.
Young girl, wants to run.
I have to hold her down with some effort
and she gets me arrested.
Other women
would have stopped corresponding.
That's where her greatest guilt lies.
She should have thought,
"He's here for sexual assault."
He's in prison for about eight years.
Right away, she should've stopped.
I think,
in order to understand Monique Olivier
you need to understand the extent to which
she felt like a failure
throughout her life.
[Zagury] Monique Olivier wasn't
looking for a criminal.
She was looking for a Lino Ventura type.
A strong man who would, in some way,
avenge the failures of her past.
[birdsong]
My name is Elisabeth Le Quen D'Entremeuse.
FRIEND OF MONIQUE OLIVIER
My formal title is Countess, but you might
say Countess Flat Broke. [laughs]
I knew Monique Olivier in 1971.
She seemed like an ordinary woman.
She was reserved. Shy.
In '72, I wanted to get
my driver's license.
I hadn't seen her for a few months.
Then, by chance, I ran into her at the
driving school next to my parents' house.
DRIVING SCHOOL
I went to the driving school.
I was surprised to see her.
She had changed a lot.
Mmm.
Sadder.
Depressed.
It was strange.
And she said, "My husband's next door,
in a driving theory lesson."
"I can't disturb him. I can't talk."
I didn't know she'd met someone.
And then she told me that her husband
keeps a close eye on her
and that she can't talk.
It seemed like Monique
was afraid of André.
- [man] How long were you together?
- Oh, about ten years or so.
MONIQUE OLIVIER'S EX-HUSBAND
- [man] You had two children with her?
- Two children, yeah.
[man] And, what kind of woman was she?
How were things with her?
Um, things were great.
She was quite a flexible woman.
A woman like any other woman
at the end of the day, you know.
She was very attentive with her children.
She was not a woman who made decisions.
Not at all.
You still had to guide her, you know?
At the time, she said
there was nothing special about him.
She had no problem with him
until he became this painter.
And then, according to her,
the fumes from the products and the paint,
his behavior started to change.
He became much more aggressive.
He threatened her. He thought
she was having affairs with other men.
[Olivier] He has no talent.
But he always thought he was, and still
thinks he is, an incredible painter.
I had to pose for endless hours.
As soon as anyone came over,
I had to leave.
He told me he wanted to
keep his model all to himself.
She said he was jealous, possessive,
and would often make a scene.
And she said he beat her.
She told me about
some very specific incidents of torture
where she was the victim.
[Olivier] One evening,
when the door was locked
he kicked me in the lower back.
[screams]
He hit my legs with a big belt.
I ran through the house,
but I was trapped.
He grabbed me by my hair,
dragged me into the bathroom,
filled the bathtub with hot water
and threw me against the tiles.
He held my head under the water,
then let me go.
She also told me he used to pimp her.
He would take her to parks to meet men.
She described this man
as being her first persecutor.
Monique Olivier always claimed
her husband was violent.
Her first husband.
But this was never confirmed or proven.
You always have to use
the conditional tense.
She made the claim, but there was
no legal action, or anything like that.
He always denied it.
So all we have is her own account.
She's the victim.
It's not the others.
People have to understand that it's her.
She's the victim.
She may be embellishing things.
We can't verify what she says.
So she left and ran away. Then she
gives her husband custody of her children.
I, MS. MONIQUE OLIVIER, HEREBY DECLARE
THAT I PERMANENTLY ABANDON
MY TWO CHILDREN
[Delgenes] Monique Olivier
is basically alone.
No family, parents or husband.
Children she doesn't see anymore
because they're with their father.
Fourniret is going to give her
attention. She's going to like that.
[Pirson] Michel Fourniret is going to
feed her the idea that he is there,
and that he not only wants to avenge her,
but he wants to bring her justice,
enabling her to get her children back.
This is going to give her
a great sense of hope,
and allow him to fulfill his own desires.
[Delgenes] When Michel
first writes to her,
he doesn't talk about his perversion,
it's not in the letters.
And once he starts talking about it,
it's too late.
There is a theme that
re-emerges almost compulsively.
Obsessively, even.
It's the fascination with virginity.
He's obsessed with it.
[Fourniret] Monique, I confided in you
I've never received the gift of virginity.
I'm afraid that the demon
of this frustration
will take advantage of a mental lapse to
drive me to find and finally possess it.
Whatever the cost.
[birdsong]
[Ployé] At the age of 12, he had
a sort of primal, delusional experience.
He was out on his bike
and he saw the Blessed Virgin,
the Immaculate Conception.
He left his bike and collapsed in a field
in some sort of state of ecstasy.
[Zagury] His grandmother
supposedly fell pregnant by
a passing Belgian forest worker.
And his mother was illegitimate.
There's this idea of depravation
around women that
I believe, is central to understanding
his obsession with virginity.
[water dripping]
[crow cawing]
I must've seen a dozen or so
serial killers in my life,
which is quite a lot, you know.
But there was a moment when I wavered
while assessing Michel Fourniret.
I felt disgust, but it went much further
than that, to the point of nausea.
He had an absolutely disgusting way
of talking about his victims with Olivier,
calling them "membranes on legs".
He said, "What I want
is to pierce a membrane".
LAWYER FOR THE LAVILLE FAMILY
I want to deflower a virgin.
What's extraordinary and unbelievable
is he refers to his penis as "my rainbow".
"My rainbow is going to stand up
and I want to pierce a membrane."
Basically, "I want to rape a virgin."
[Fourniret] This damn membrane. I want it.
When my penis has pierced a virgin's womb,
I will be a man like any other.
And nothing will be able to
shake my fidelity
to an incredible woman called Monique.
[Behr] They continue their correspondence,
and come to the following agreement.
COURTROOM
"Firstly, I, Monique Olivier,
will find you a virgin."
"Secondly, you will kill my ex-husband."
"And thirdly, we need to get some money."
So now, through this, they have a pact.
It's a give and take.
"I, Michel Fourniret, will help you
take revenge on your ex-husband."
"And in return, you will help me."
"You will help me on my quest
for virginity,
to find 'membranes on legs'."
[Fourniret] I need to put together
a program. Firstly, what do I want?
To have enough money
to forget about money.
To have a young slit.
To live like an adventurer.
The pleasure of risk, abductions.
Most women would have refused the pact.
For reasons
of basic morality.
She didn't.
Her moral conscience
seems to be pretty thin.
It might seem crazy
that people who hardly know each other
would write these things.
It's like something that remains
in the realm of fantasy.
But they actually did it.
11 DECEMBER 1987
AUXERRE - FRANCE
I don't think she thought, "Tomorrow,
I'll be killing and abducting children."
"And I'm going to kill them with Michel."
But at a certain point, when
he's about to be released from prison,
and wanted to put his plan in place,
she realizes it's true.
And that's her big criminal error.
It's the moment he tells her,
and they get in the van,
and he explains the plan to her.
She should have said to herself,
"Okay, this guy has a problem."
But she goes along with it.
[Behr] The murder of Isabelle Laville
is their first crime together.
The first time they act.
The scenario he worked out
with Monique Olivier is as follows.
Michel Fourniret spotted this young girl.
He identified her route.
"To gain her trust,
Monique, you'll approach her."
"A few kilometers down the road,
you'll stop because I'll be hitchhiking,
pretending I've run out of gas."
At that point, she's free to act.
She can take the car
and go to the police station.
But no, she makes her way
towards Isabelle Laville.
And she offers her a lift.
Monique's involvement is critical.
Isabelle would never have gotten into
a car that was being driven by a man.
Fourniret gets in the car.
They talk, then at some point,
she's the one
who makes the girl swallow
the drugs from the glove compartment.
It's Rohypnol.
Known as the "date rape drug".
They get back to Saint-Cyr-les-Colons.
Isabelle is not really conscious,
so she helps him take her to the bedroom,
where he will rape her.
Fourniret can't get an erection.
But that doesn't stop him.
He goes to Monique,
who performs fellatio on him
to give him back his vigor, and enable him
to go through with the rape.
The fact that she performs fellatio
on Fourniret to get him hard again,
that's going pretty far.
It's as though she's the one
raping the little girl, essentially.
When I asked her,
"How could you do that? The horror?"
"How could you do something so awful?"
Uh
No response.
She said "I don't know how I could have
done that." That's it. But she did it.
[Ployé] I spoke to her a lot
about the victims of the crimes.
No sense of guilt.
None.
And I tried to see if there
was any kind of emotional pulse.
Now, clearly, she does not have that.
She spoke to me about the victims
as if they were objects.
Or in formulaic phrases like,
"Losing your virginity doesn't kill you".
"Rape doesn't kill you."
It's really quite strange.
She is indifferent
to the suffering of others.
It doesn't concern her. She doesn't
feel what another person may feel.
That's where we see that she has
no empathy for the victims at all.
She feels nothing.
[door creaking]
[slam echoing]
[Ployé] Before meeting Mrs. Olivier,
Fourniret had never killed.
Two months after they meet
he kills.
That's no coincidence.
Mrs. Olivier gave him
the opportunity to do so.
It's Mrs. Olivier who gave
him a license to kill.
[Isabelle's sister]
She's even more guilty.
She's the one who spotted her
and lured her into the car.
She could have said, "No, I'm not
going to pick her. Just keep going."
She could have gone to the police
and revealed everything.
If she hadn't been there,
maybe none of this would have happened.
I consider Isabelle Laville's murder
as a human sacrifice.
It was destined
to bind them together forever.
Nine months after the rape and murder
of Isabelle Laville,
their son, Sélim, was born.
He was born on the 9th of September, 1988.
Isabelle Laville was murdered
on the 11th of December, 1987.
Do the math. That's nine months.
And that's where this whole satanic,
evil, human sacrifice dimension comes in.
You kill someone,
you give birth to another.
All these horrors
occupy their sick brains.
What makes this case unique
is that this is a criminal couple.
Maybe even a criminal family.
[Chemla] Monique Olivier
and Michel Fourniret's son
is at the center of all the crimes.
He was born exactly nine months
after the first murder.
They celebrated the first murder
by making a baby.
He is the alibi for the abduction
of a whole load of young women.
Imagine the context of their son's life.
It's an abomination.
NAMUR
BELGIUM
[woman] Elisabeth,
if you can still hear me
you need to hear this.
The only thing that matters to us
is that you come back
so we can hold you in our arms.
That's absolutely all that matters.
You're the center of our lives.
Your brother and all of us are waiting.
Give us a small sign you are alive,
if you can.
[Cédric Visart de Bocarmé]
Elisabeth Brichet was a young girl,
much like any other 12-year-old girl.
She lived with her mom.
She had a friend who lived
about 400 meters away from her home.
In the afternoons, she would ask her mom
if she could go
and spend time with her friend.
She would go home
in the evening, when it was dark,
and that's when Elisabeth disappeared.
The case of the abduction of little
Elisabeth took up 15 years of my career.
It's the kind of case
that we didn't want to give up on,
and saw as a failure on some level.
We almost made it personal,
telling ourselves, "We have to find her".
You can't abandon a case like that,
when you have a mother like Elisabeth's,
who we got to know, who comes to see you
and checks if there's any news.
We ended up sharing her pain with her.
That's the kind of case
you don't stop working on.
And you constantly ask yourself,
"Did we do the right thing?"
"Did we really look everywhere?"
[crickets chirping]
[Elisabeth's mother] I don't know
that uncertainty is the hardest thing.
What's hard thing is she's not here.
That someone hurt her.
That's what I know.
She's not here, and someone's hurt her.
The rest, I don't know.
- [man] But somewhere, someone knows?
- Yes, someone knows.
The investigation lasted a very long time,
as it started in 1989
and it went until 2004.
That's when Mrs. Olivier
finally confessed.
[woman] At 2:15 this afternoon, two
armored cars arrived at Saint-Servais,
where Elisabeth was abducted 15 years ago.
Michel Fourniret is in the first vehicle.
His wife arrived a few minutes later.
The reconstruction of the events
of that tragic night
on the 20th of December '89 can begin.
Today, Michel Fourniret
has decided to cooperate.
He's showing the investigators
how he managed
to trick little Elisabeth
into trusting him.
As expected,
Monique Olivier is also cooperating.
He fell for little Elisabeth,
who, he claims,
was walking along the pavement
as a little ballerina.
He then followed her slowly
to Vanessa Geluck's house.
Eventually, he turned around, came back
and parked opposite the house.
And then he waited for her there.
Fourniret waits in the car for three hours
with Mrs. Olivier at his side,
waiting for Elisabeth
to come out of her friend's house.
He sits in ambush.
He stays there for three hours,
with their child, who's a few months old,
and crying because he's hungry.
Then, Elisabeth comes out of the house.
It's dark.
Mrs. Olivier lures her in.
She approaches Elisabeth, pretending
to be the mother of a sick baby,
asking for help
because she needs to find a doctor.
She asks Elisabeth to show her where
she can find a doctor for this poor baby.
After that, she was
never seen alive again.
[Francis Nachbar] No one can imagine
how a mother could use her pregnancy,
and use her baby in his Moses basket
in order to abduct young girls.
FORMER PUBLIC PROSECUTOR
Use him to hurt them
the way she and Fourniret hurt them.
It's hard to imagine a man doing that,
much less a woman
who has children of her own.
[Prouvost] She's not very maternal.
The fact that she took
the child in the Moses basket
to go and look for victims,
that doesn't bother her at all.
As a mother, she doesn't care at all.
She doesn't see the significance of what
she's done in the way we might see it.
There wasn't much space,
as it were, for little Sélim,
other than in the front seat of the car
as a way to attract young girls.
She didn't start out as a criminal,
but she became one.
What she did was absolutely unspeakable.
It shows
an extraordinary level of criminality.
[reporters asking questions in French]
After Fourniret first confessed,
one of the first priorities was
to try and find Elisabeth's body.
That's when we learned
that Fourniret owned a château in France
and that Elisabeth's body
might be buried near the château.
[man] Fourniret is reported to have
hidden bodies near the Château de Sautou.
The Château de Sautou has become
the most notorious château in France.
It's here, in the surrounding grounds,
that Fourniret attests to burying
the bodies of some of his victims,
which are among the murders
he has acknowledged so far.
[Behr] In 2004, we were informed
of the existence of this château.
It was incredible,
because it wasn't just any château.
It's a big château
in a black forest of around 15 hectares.
The investigators discovered
that he had an excavator,
which we found out
he affectionately called Dino.
It worked at night.
More like a house of horrors.
[Nachbar] The excavations began
based on Fourniret's information.
I was completely obsessed by the search
for the bodies that we hadn't found yet.
We knew they were at Sautou,
because he told us.
There was over ten hectares.
It's very vast and they've been buried
there for 19 years. It would be difficult.
There were helicopters.
There were journalists everywhere.
We even found some in the woods
under a camouflage blanket.
It was a like a real entrenched camp,
and everyone was hoping that we would
find the bodies we were looking for.
[Nachbar] Olivier was there.
She didn't speak.
She looked at you
with a blank, absent stare.
And then we dug the first hole
at a considerable height.
And then, Michel Fourniret said to me,
"You know, Mr. Prosecutor,
no one will come out of this unscathed."
"Not even you."
Roughly one and a half meters down,
I'll remember it for the rest of my life
I hear a scream.
[man screams]