Last Saturday in Guermantes, Eric Mouzin organized a final white march in memory of his daughter Estelle, who died twenty years earlier. Michel Fourniret, who admitted “taking his life” but was never tried for this crime, died a year and a half ago leaving behind him questions that will remain unanswered. On the sidelines of this gathering in the small town of Seine-et-Marne where Estelle was kidnapped, Eric Mouzin confided for the first time to having met the serial killer in person. It was only a few days before the death of Michel Fourniret.
This interview was a failure, according to the confidences of Eric Mouzin with France 2. Michel Fourniret, whose state of health was then worsening day by day, was unable to deliver any information. But in reality, it was not the first time that Eric Mouzin sought to speak with the serial killer… In detail, this confrontation had already almost taken place years before, as Eric Mouzin confides in the podcast “The Shadow”, produced by Spotify and Europe 1 Studio.
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“Michel Fourniret tells me that he wants to meet me…”
In 2005, two years after the start of the investigation into the girl’s disappearance, Eric Mouzin says he received a letter from Michel Fourniret offering him a meeting. At the time, Estelle Mouzin’s father suspected that it was not just an outstretched hand. “Everyone tells me that he is such a perverse being, that it can be fun for him to sow doubt…”, he explains at the microphone of journalist Chloé Triomphe.
“I don’t want to become his toy”
But for this father who has been mobilized body and soul for years to find traces of his daughter, the opportunity that presents itself cannot be missed. Eric Mouzin therefore accepts Michel Fourniret’s invitation, but under conditions. In the podcast “L’Ombre”, he still remembers: “To the Versailles investigators, I say that I want to go there, but not like a sheep to the slaughterhouse… I want to go there knowing exactly how I must behave towards an individual of this ilk.” Michel Fourniret was sentenced for eight murders to incomprehensible life imprisonment, the various experts diagnosing perversity and extreme dangerousness.
For this meeting, Eric Mouzin therefore asks to be trained before going to face Michel Fourniret. The father of the family recounts in “L’Ombre” the response he then obtained from the investigators in charge of the “Fourniret file”: “I was told: ‘we could put you in touch with a RAID or GIGN negotiator who can say how we behave in front of individuals like that.’ But afterwards, we don’t talk about it again. […] And he’s bound to manipulate me. I don’t see him throwing himself on his knees at my feet saying to myself ‘I did something stupid, I ask forgiveness.'” In the absence of an answer to his request to be mentally prepared to face this criminal known for being a great manipulator, Eric Mouzin finally refuses to take part in the visit.
In the podcast “L’Ombre”, Eric Mouzin said that the meeting had finally taken place without him. And in the face of the investigators, Michel Fourniret suddenly had nothing more to say about the disappearance of Estelle…
To discover behind the scenes of the Estelle Mouzin affair, listen to “L’Ombre”, the Original podcast produced by Spotify and Europe 1 Studio which offers a rereading of the investigation.
>> Find our special file on the Estelle Mouzin affair and the shadow of Michel Fourniret by clicking here