Murder of Joanna Parrish

Joanna "Jo" Parrish (30 July 1969 – 17 May 1990) was a 20-year-old language student from Newnham on Severn, Gloucestershire, England, who was murdered in the Burgundy region of France while working at a local school as part of her degree course in 1990. Parrish, an undergraduate of Leeds University who was studying French, disappeared after placing an advertisement in a local Burgundy newspaper offering private English lessons, and arranging to meet a man who it is believed contacted her with details of a potential student. Her naked body was found in the Yonne River at Auxerre on 17 May 1990. She had been raped, beaten and strangled. The crime remains unsolved to the present day.

A major suspect in the case was Michel Fourniret, a convicted serial killer known as "The Beast of Ardennes", who detectives suspected because the murder had similarities to crimes he was convicted of in 2008. Fourniret's wife, Monique Olivier, also gave police several statements linking him to Joanna Parrish's death, but she later withdrew the allegations, claiming they had been made under duress. The case was closed in 2011, but re-opened the following year after the emergence of fresh evidence.

Background

Joanna Parrish spent much 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 assistante 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.^[1][2]

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, and 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.^[2][3][4] Her naked body was found the following day in the River Yonne, three miles outside the town.^[2] She had been raped, beaten and strangled.^[5]

Investigation

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.^[3][6] Fourniret had been in the area at the time of Parrish's murder,^[3] and the crime had similarities to his modus operandi. In particular, Parrish had died in similar circumstances to a number of his victims, having been raped and strangled,^[2] 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, Monique Olivier twice told detectives that he had confessed to the crime,^[3] as well as claiming 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.^[2] She later retracted her statements,^[7] saying they had been given under duress.^[2]

In the wake of Fourniret's conviction, DNA evidence collected at the Joanna Parrish crime scene was taken to a specialist laboratory for examination. But at a meeting with French investigators in June 2009 Joanna's father, Roger Parrish was informed that it had been mislaid. Speaking at the time 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] But 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 frusttration 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] Joanna's mother, Pauline Murrell, wrote Olivier a letter calling on her to tell the truth.^[2]

Fresh inquiries

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 TV 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] The new inquiries would look at this evidence, as well as re-examining evidence collected against Fourniret in the original investigation.^[3]

References