THE COUPLE WHO HUNTED VIRGINS

French gothic...

Michel Fourniret, a diminutive, bespectacled man, was dubbed the "Ogre of Ardennes" for the crimes he committed alongside his grey-haired wife, Monique.

He has been found guilty of murdering seven girls and women aged between 12 and 22 from 1987 onwards. By his own admission, however, he has killed more - strangling, shooting or stabbing his victims with a screwdriver.

From their chateau on the forested border region between France and Belgium the pair would head out in their small van, sometimes with their baby son in the vehicle, looking for victims.

Monique Oliver and Michel Fourniret had signed a criminal pact: she pledged to help him find the young women he sought; he, in return, promised that he would kill her former husband.

But only Monique carried out her role, presenting the picture of domesticity that lured young women into trusting the couple.

Prosecutors said Fourniret was "obsessed" with virgins. Monique, meanwhile, defended her actions, saying her husband manipulated and terrified her. "The fear was constant, it lived within me" she told the court.

The 66-year-old Fourniret, a forest warden, first made contact with Monique while he was in detention, awaiting trial for a sex crime. He is reported to have placed an advert in a Catholic magazine for a pen-pal. She replied and they began a correspondence. When he left prison, in 1987, they moved in together in a house in the south of Paris, before later purchasing the castle surrounded by woods in France's Ardennes region, near the border with Belgium.

The killing spree began just two months after Fourniret was released. Monique reportedly later told police that her role had been to "hunt virgins" for her husband.

Travelling in their van, the couple approached 17-year-old Isabelle Laville, who was on her way home from school. Under the pretence of asking her directions, they managed to persuade her to travel with them to show them the way. Her remains were found at the bottom of a well almost two decades later.

A year later, 20-year-old Fabienne Leroy was seized from a supermarket car park east of Paris. Her body was found near a military base the day after she disappeared. She had been shot in the chest.

The bodies of Fourniret's other victims - all of whom he admitted to killing but denies raping - were found in the grounds of his chateau, on a beach or deep in the forest.

Fourniret was discovered when, in 2003, a 13-year-old girl he attempted to abduct managed to escape. She managed to bite her way through the ropes around her wrists and flee, having the presence of mind to make a note of his registration number.