Estelle Mouzin case: the day DNA spoke for Michel Fourniret

“What you need to know about Michel Fourniret is that he is a man who keeps everything: his gas bills, his Cora purchase tickets, his cushions, his mattresses.” Throughout the investigation into the disappearance of Estelle Mouzin, Me Didier Seban, one of Eric Mouzin’s lawyers, insisted that as many objects as possible seized from the various homes of Michel Fourniret be subject to scientific analyses. To leave nothing to chance, to keep a chance to link the serial killer, whose name appeared at the start of the investigation before the track was dismissed, to the Estelle Mouzin file. Among these objects, a mattress on which a first DNA test had been carried out in 2006. At the time, the result was “inconclusive”: in the state of science at the time, it was impossible to identify indisputably that it bears the trace of Estelle.

“The tragedy in these criminal cases is that we will not look any further,” says Me Seban. The one who will dare to go further is Sabine Kheris, the eighth investigating judge in the case, who decided to start everything from scratch in 2019. In May 2020, she summons Eric Mouzin to her office, without him give more details. He knows just one thing: the mattress seized in one of Michel Fourniret’s houses and miraculously preserved in judicial seals, has again been combed through by one of the best specialists in France “in forensic DNA identification “.

> Find our special file on the Estelle Mouzin affair and the shadow of Michel Fourniret by clicking here

Everything that happened that day in Judge Kheris’ office is covered by the secrecy of the investigation, but Eric Mouzin agreed to tell, from his point of view and for the first time, what meeting so important. In full confinement, Eric Mouzin, his lawyers Mes Seban and Herrmann and Judge Kheris meet at the Palais de Justice in Paris to participate in a videoconference with Professor Doutremepuich, based in Bordeaux. In appearance, the scene that is playing is very banal: “We are just in a huge room, three meters from the screen, and in addition it does not work”, says Eric Mouzin.

However, this interview will change everything, because the expert confirms that Estelle’s DNA is indeed on the mattress. This is the first time in 17 years of investigation that we have irrefutable scientific proof of the involvement of Michel Fourniret in the disappearance of Estelle Mouzin.

Leaving the judge, Eric Mouzin and his lawyers realize what this revelation means. “We are convinced of all the time lost, and of all that there is to catch up to find out the truth about Estelle’s disappearance”, remembers Me Seban. “For years, justice has denied us this truth which was there from the start.” To discover other scenes behind the scenes of the Estelle Mouzin affair, listen to the Original podcast “L’Ombre”, a counter-investigation by Chloé Triomphe produced by Spotify and Europe 1 Studio.