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Michel Fourniret
The question of the intelligence of Michel Fourniret’s ex-wife and her role in the criminal career of her ex-companion were at the center of the debates on Tuesday.
Published 12/12/2023 7:53 p.m.
Reading time: 2 minutes
A battle of experts animated the trial of Monique Olivier, Tuesday December 12. Psychologists have looked into the intelligence of Michel Fourniret’s ex-wife as well as her role in the killer’s criminal journey. Since 2004 and the arrest of Michel Fourniret, two visions have opposed each other and continue to clash before the Hauts-de-Seine Assize Court.
On Monique Olivier’s intelligence, and more particularly on her IQ, two experts brought opposing conclusions to the court on the subject. For the first expert, a Belgian psychologist, Monique Olivier presents an intelligence located in the low average, around 95 IQ. For the second, a French psychologist, on the contrary she has very high abilities, an IQ of 131, higher than that of Michel Fourniret. At the bar, the two experts accuse each other, one believes that his colleagues “the brushes are tangled”the other talks about “results that depend on the periods and emotional states of the accused”.
In the end, it is difficult to decide, even if a third and final evaluation carried out recently tends to point to slightly below average intelligence. Whatever happens, this question will not change the debates, believes Monique Olivier’s lawyer: “My client will be convicted and I will not appealsays Me Richard Delgenes, but the challenge here is rather to understand it better.
Submissive victim or active accomplice?
Monique Olivier’s personality also divides experts. Everyone agrees on one point: Monique Olivier’s lack of empathy, her inability to express her emotions. This is also what allowed him to last so long in the face of the horror of the crimes, according to experts. But when it comes to answering the central question, whether the accused was a submissive victim of Michel Fourniret or an active accomplice of the killer, the theories are diametrically opposed. For the first Belgian expert, the unbearable fear of abandonment and solitude is enough to explain why Monique Olivier never fled, why she was able to support the crimes and even participate in them. For this psychologist, there is no perversity in the accused, only, he says, total submission.
A theory totally contradicted by the second expert who speaks on the contrary of an aesthetic of perversity, of a complacency or even a fascination on the part of the accused. She was the muse, he said, of Michel Fourniret, the muse without whom the serial killer would not have had a criminal career of such magnitude. She derived from it, says the expert, a form of personal satisfaction. Twenty years of expert battle which will not have been enough, concluded the lawyer for the victims’ families at the end of the hearing, to unravel the unfathomable character of Monique Olivier.
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