Murder of Joanna Parrish

Joanna Marie Parrish[1] was born on 30 July 1969 to Pauline Murrell and Roger Parrish. She spent many of her formative years in the Gloucestershire village of Newnham on Severn, and was a student at Ribston Hall High School in nearby Gloucester. She attended the University of Leeds to study for a four-year degree in French, a sandwich course that required her to undertake a work placement during the third year. At the time of her death in May 1990, she was teaching English as an assistant at the Lycée Jacques Amyot in Auxerre, and was due to finish a week after her disappearance. Her parents had planned to visit her in France to take home her belongings, while Parrish herself would travel on to Czechoslovakia to join her boyfriend, a fellow Leeds student who had also been working overseas.[2][3]

To supplement her income during her stay in Auxerre, Parrish had advertised her services as a teacher in a local newspaper, offering private English lessons. According to a flatmate, she had been contacted by a man asking her to teach his son. She arranged to meet the caller outside the Banque Populaire in Auxerre at 7pm on 16 May 1990, but did not return home from the appointment.[3][4] Her naked body was found the following day in the River Yonne, three miles outside the town.[3] She had been raped, beaten and strangled.[5]

A key suspect in the investigation was Michel Fourniret, convicted in 2008 of the murders of seven girls and young women in France and Belgium between 1987 and 2001 – crimes that earned him the nickname "The Beast of Ardennes" – and he was declared an official suspect.[6] The crime had similarities to his modus operandi. In particular, Parrish had died in similar circumstances to a number of Fourniret's victims, having been raped and strangled,[3] and there were puncture marks on her body similar in appearance to puncture marks found on some of the others who had been killed.[4]

The theory that Fourniret was responsible gained added strength when his wife claimed to have witnessed her husband kill a young woman in Auxerre before dumping her body into the river. Olivier was convicted as an accomplice to the murders after helping her husband to procure victims by offering them a lift.[3] She later retracted her statements,[7] saying they had been given under duress.[3]

In the wake of Fourniret's conviction, DNA evidence collected at the Parrish crime scene was taken to a specialist laboratory for examination. At a meeting with French investigators in June 2009, Parrish's father, Roger, was informed that it had been mislaid. He expressed his disappointment at the loss of the samples: "It is not completely the end of the line but the biggest chance has slipped through our grasp."[6] In May 2010, it was confirmed that examining magistrates had completed their evaluation of evidence, and decided there was not enough to put Fourniret on trial.[4] The case was formally closed the following year,[8] after prosecutors ruled there was "no case to answer" against Fourniret.[9]

Parrish's family expressed their frustration at the decision by French authorities, particularly as in France, charges cannot be brought against a suspect if a murder case remains inactive for ten years.[8] Parrish's mother, Pauline Murrell, wrote Olivier a letter calling on her to tell the truth.[3]

In June 2012, judges at the Paris appeals court decided to reopen the investigation after the emergence of fresh evidence identifying a new suspect described as "a man with a serious criminal record". A former girlfriend of the individual, known as "TV", told police of an evening on which she recalled seeing the suspect return home "with scratch marks on his face" and "a jean bag looking similar to Miss Parrish's." But it was not clear whether the incident occurred on the same date as the murder.[10]

On 16 February 2018, the lawyer for the Parrish family, Didier Seban, told news organisation that Fourniret had confessed repeatedly to a judge to the murder.[11]