Serial killer main murder suspect

Teaching assistant Joanna Parrish was killed in 1990

A 65-year-old self-confessed French serial killer has been formally accused of the kidnap, rape and murder of a Gloucestershire student in 1990.

Michel Fourniret was named as chief suspect in the murder of 20-year-old Joanna Parrish, killed while working as an English assistant in Auxerre.

Fourniret goes on trial this month for seven other murders, but denies any involvement in Ms Parrish's death.

Her father welcomed the naming but said French police should have acted sooner.

Annoyed by delays

Roger Parrish said: "It is what we've wanted for a number of years, but at the same time we are annoyed it has taken this long.

"They promised us this in 2005 and there's no more evidence to implicate Fourniret now that there was back then."

However, it is thought French police acted after receiving a letter from Fourniret asking to be put on trial for three additional murders, including that of Joanna Parrish.

She was on a year out from her French language degree at Leeds University when she went missing in May 1990.

Wife 'lured victims'

Her body was found in a river near Auxerre a day after she met a man who answered her advert offering English lessons.

Since his arrest in 2003, Michel Fourniret's confessions relating to the deaths of several women near the French-Belgium border have earned him the nickname "The Monster of the Ardennes".

Fourniret goes on trial later this month for seven other murders

Much of the evidence against him came from his wife Monique Olivier, who said she lured the women victims into her husband's van.

The couple go on trial on 27 March for the murder of seven women in France and Belgium - the youngest aged 12 - between 1987 and 2001.

Their naming as suspects in the Parrish murder (in French mise en examen) means French police can formally question them afterwards.

Fourniret has already served time behind bars for assault. It was there he met Olivier, a volunteer prison visitor.