FRANCE: The wife of self-confessed serial killer Michel Fourniret (63) has implicated him in two more murders in France in 1988 and 1990, including the unsolved killing of a 20-year-old British woman, a prosecutor said yesterday.
French judges earlier this month placed the Frenchman under investigation for the murder of six other women between 1987 and 2001, one step short of pressing charges under French law.
His wife, Monique Olivier (53), is also being investigated on suspicion of being an accomplice in three cases.
She told investigators in Belgium - where the couple are being held - that her husband had killed two more women, French public prosecutor Mr Yves Charpenel said.
Fourniret, who was questioned by French judges about his wife's allegation, denied he had anything to do with the disappearance of Marie-Angèle Domece in 1988 and the murder of Briton Joanna Parrish, found strangled in a river in May 1990.
"He lost his temper and said he refused to hear the statements of his wife, saying they did not matter to him," Mr Charpenel said.
Mr Charpenel said Olivier's statements were being taken seriously by investigators. "Monique Olivier gave extremely detailed accounts of two crimes, which she says she witnessed. These accounts match the facts already known by judges in the two cases," he said.
Both women went missing in the département of Yonne in central France, where another serial killer, Emile Louis, was convicted last year of murdering seven women between 1975 and 1979.
Most of Louis's victims were mentally handicapped women, as was Domece, although it was not clear if she was a resident at the same centre as the others. Her case file was closed in 1989 but reopened in 2002 to allow for new evidence to be submitted.
Parrish's murder made headlines in Britain. She was drugged, tied up and raped before she died.
Fourniret was arrested in Belgium in 2003 accused of trying to kidnap a girl. Since then, he has confessed to killing nine people in the past 15 years. Three cases are under investigation in Belgium.
Mr Charpenel said earlier this month he hoped to try Fourniret and his wife in France in 2006. French judges will now attempt to determine whether they can include the two additional murders in the list of charges against Fourniret.