Disappearance of Estelle Mouzin

Estelle Mouzin, a nine-year-old girl, disappeared on Thursday, 9 January 2003, while walking home from school in Guermantes, France. She was last seen in front of a bakery as she made her way to the home of her mother, Suzanne Mouzin, who was in the process of divorcing the girl's father, Eric Mouzin. Her mother reported her missing to the local police shortly after 7:00 p.m. that evening, and the disappearance drew extensive national media coverage.

The first person investigators suspected was Michel Fourniret, a serial killer arrested in Belgium in June 2003. Police initially discounted him after a phone call appeared to have been placed from his home around the time Mouzin vanished, giving him an apparent alibi. Two weeks before the disappearance, a girl of the same age had narrowly escaped an attempted abduction by a man in a white van; shown a photograph of Fourniret, she said he was not the man involved. Investigators nonetheless found a video recording and photographs of Mouzin on Fourniret's computer, and while leading police to the burial site of one of his other victims, he described clothing similar to what Mouzin had worn the day she vanished. In 2007, citing his alibi and insufficient evidence, police abandoned the pursuit of Fourniret in this case. The investigation, led by Commissioner Jean-Marc Bloch, ultimately involved the interrogation of more than 130 people and searches of every house in Guermantes. A further round of searches on 31 January 2008, in Brie-Comte-Robert and Lognes, included the Royal Wok restaurant over suspicion that human remains might be found there; only animal remains were recovered. In 2010, French authorities issued a new appeal for witnesses using a computer-aged portrait of Mouzin.

The case turned in late 2019. On 27 November, Fourniret — by then already serving a life sentence for other, unrelated murders — was indicted for kidnapping and false imprisonment resulting in death. On 23 January 2020, Fourniret told investigating judge Sabine Khéris that his memory had failed him but that he should be considered guilty in Mouzin's case. The following day, his former wife, Monique Olivier, told the judge that Fourniret had abducted and killed Mouzin, and that she herself had placed a phone call from his son's home on the day of the disappearance to help create his alibi. Fourniret confessed to killing Mouzin on 6 March 2020. Olivier's lawyer later stated that Fourniret had taken Mouzin to Ville-sur-Lumes, in the Ardennes, to confine her, and that he raped and strangled her there; partial DNA traces matching Mouzin were subsequently found on a mattress at a property once owned by Fourniret's sister. Fourniret died in 2021 before he could be prosecuted for the killing.

In 2023, French authorities sought to indict Olivier for her role in Mouzin's kidnapping, alongside separate murder charges involving two other women. At trial, Olivier admitted she had watched over Mouzin while Fourniret was at work and said she regretted not saving her. She was convicted on all charges in December 2023 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Estelle Mouzin's body has never been found, and a march is held each year in her memory.