Helen Archer | On 08, Aug 2023

Murderous couples – Fred and Rose West, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, Canada’s ‘Ken and Barbie’ killers Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka – hold a special kind of grim fascination for the public. The women, especially, are seen as grotesque aberrations to their sex. This five-part series, directed by Christophe Astruc and Michelle Fines, looks back on one such case in recent memory, that of serial killer Michel Fourniret and his wife, Monique Olivier, who was with him from 1987 until his arrest in 2003, during which time he is known to have killed at least 12 women and children.

Operating in France and Belgium, he was caught only after the failed abduction of a 13-year-old girl, who managed to escape from the rope she was bound with in the back of his vehicle and ran to get help. It wasn’t long before police tied him to a number of other disappearances and called in his wife for interrogation. The series, too, begins here, before moving back and forwards chronologically to tell the story of their crimes, eking out the narrative so that the viewer – if they are not already aware – finds out the terrible details along with detectives, who slowly begin to realise that Monique was a far more invested partner than they initially thought.

When first summoned to the police station, she’s seen as meek and cowed, her long silences indicating to detectives that she was of low intelligence, bordering on having learning difficulties – a possible victim herself. It is only later that she is revealed to have a much higher IQ than originally thought, which leads to speculation here that she was the manipulator in the relationship all along. The police who interrogated her at the time are interviewed, and their language about her – that she looked like a “witch”, a “gelatinous glob” – is shocking in its misogyny. But as the documentary goes on – and as we, along with the police, recognise the extent of her involvement in the abductions and murders – we begin to understand their frustration, and their utter contempt. Meanwhile, her own lawyer is seen to still be in contact with her – he is filmed taking telephone calls from her in the present day, as she bleats pathetically into the phone, complaining that people are judging her without knowing her.

The couple met when Monique began writing to Michel in prison, where he was serving time for the sexual assaults of five young girls, and they made a pact in writing to begin hunting for victims when Michel was released. Missing from the documentary is any real information about Monique’s life before she met Fourniret, other than the fact that she was married previously, leaving two children with the ex-husband she claims was abusive. Monique and Michel’s relationship, twisted as it is, is the black heart of the series.

Interspersed among it all are interviews with members of the victims’ families, who express their disgust at the crimes and voice the lifelong grief they have been sentenced to. The reconstructions here are disturbing, each girl murdered symbolised by their images in photographs slowly disappearing, showing only the background, as though they never existed. But more disturbing are the police photos of Monique re-enacting her part, as she gives mannequins physical examinations, “preparing” them for their ordeal. Michel was obsessed with virginity, referring to his potential victims as “membranes on legs” – it was Monique’s job to check their victims’ private parts, before getting an impotent Michel “ready” for his assaults.

The series is a steady drip, drip of information that is grubby and murky and sickening, yet somehow compelling. At five episodes, it drags in places, and can be repetitive, ultimately focusing on the search for the remains of more victims, as Monique leads the police on wild goose chases on the grounds of the chateau Michel bought with stolen, blood-soaked money. It is an unsettling trip into the very heart of darkness, a disturbing portrait of a woman so completely devoid of humanity that it all-but defies comprehension.

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