Paris: A self-confessed killer dubbed the Ogre of the Ardennes faces trial today for raping and murdering seven young women with the help of his wife in one of the worst serial murder cases in recent French history.

Michel Fourniret, 65, has admitted killing seven women in the heavily wooded Ardennes region of northern France and Belgium over a 14-year period between 1987 and 2001. His wife, Monique Olivier, 59, is accused of complicity in the murder of five of the women but has said she acted under the influence of Fourniret.

The case, among the worst seen in France since World War Two, helped lead to a shake-up of the way French police investigate serial murders including better coordination between different authorities. The couple, linked by what prosecutors call a criminal pact, became acquainted after Fourniret placed an advertisement for correspondents while serving a prison sentence for sex crimes in the 1980s.

If convicted, they face life imprisonment. Fourniret, described by investigators as narcissistic, authoritarian and manipulative, has previously said he would not apologise to relatives of his victims but that he should face the death penalty.

"I dream of a guillotine whose blade would be controlled by a rope long enough so that all the people who have something against me can join together and eliminate me. I owe them that," he told investigators. In addition to the cases being tried this week, Fourniret is suspected of a number of other killings, including that of 20-year-old British woman Joanna Parrish in 1990.

Hundreds of journalists are expected at the trial in Charleville-Mezieres in northern France, which is expected to last two months and takes place not far from where Belgian serial killer Marc Dutroux was convicted in 2004.

Fourniret, a former industrial draughtsman who also worked as a forest warden and school supervisor, was arrested in Belgium in 2003 after one of his prospective victims escaped and called the police. He was extradited to France in 2006. He has a long history of sexual offences and told investigators that he was fascinated by virgins, but psychologists concluded that he was not insane. Instead they believe he took a sadistic pleasure in rape and killing.

He has admitted abducting, raping and killing Isabelle Laville in 1987, Fabienne Leroy in 1988, Jeanne-Marie Desramault and Elisabeth Brichet in 1989, Natacha Danais in 1990, Celine Saison in 2000 and Mananya Thumpong in 2001. He has helped police find some of the bodies buried in the heavily wooded region that straddles the Belgian-French border but has also made a series of what authorities consider evasive and even provocative comments before the trial.

Source : UNI