Joanna Parrish was a university student working in a school in France on her year abroad when she went missing on the night of 16 May 1990.
Her body was found dumped in a river the next day.
She was the victim of one of France’s most prolific serial killers, Michel Fourniret, dubbed by French media as the “Ogre of the Ardennes”.
BBC Two is airing the documentary The Big Cases: The Student Who Never Came Home on Monday 7 October at 7pm shining a spotlight on the investigation that took 33 years to reach a conclusion.
We take a look at what happened to the young British student and her killers.
What happened to Joanna Parrish?
Joanna Parrish was born on 30 July 1969 and grew-up in the Gloucestershire village Newnham on Severn.
At the time of her disappearance, she was an undergraduate student at the University of Leeds, studying for a degree in French.
As part of the course, she was spending a year in Auxerre, in the Burgundy region of France, south east of Paris, working as a teaching assistant in a school.
She had placed an advert in a local paper offering private English lessons to earn some money a fortnight before finishing her time in France.
On the evening of 16 May 1990, she had arranged to meet a man outside a bank in the centre of Auxerre, who she believed had details of a potential student.
But when she did not return to her lodgings in France, the alarm was raised.
Her naked body was found the next day (17 May) in the Yonne River in nearby Monéteau.
She had been raped, beaten, strangled, and appeared to have puncture marks on her body.
Who killed Joanna Parrish?
An initial investigation by French police failed to find a suspect or any leads, despite the best efforts of Ms Parrish’s parents Roger Parrish and Pauline Murrell, and crucial DNA evidence was mislaid.
Then in 2003, Michel Fourniret was arrested in connection with the kidnap of a teenage girl in Belgium.
The following year he confessed to killing nine people, eight women and one man, after his wife Monique Olivier informed on him.
He had committed those crimes between 1987 and 2001 across France and Belgium, with his victims aged between 12 and 30.
In 2008, he was convicted of seven murders and sentenced to life imprisonment. Olivier was also sentenced to life in jail as his accomplice.
Before Fourniret’s conviction, it was revealed he had lived in Auxerre for some time.
Although the investigation into Ms Parrish’s death had been closed in 2011, it was reopened a year later.
The serial killer was then declared an official suspect by French police, as the death of Ms Parrish appeared to have the hallmarks of Fourniret’s murders – rape, strangulation, and puncture marks on her body where drugs had been administered.
Fourinet repeatedly denied his involvement in the death of Ms Parrish, event though Oliver claimed she witnessed her husband kill a young woman in Auxerre before dumping her body into the river.
Then in 2018, Fourniret was interrogated by a new investigator, Sabine Kheris, and he confessed to killing two more women in Auxerre: Marie-Angèle Domèce in 1988 and Joanna Parrish in 1990.
However, he died in 2021 at age 79 before he could be put on trial.
Where is Monique Olivier now?
Monique Olivier, who had divorced Fourniret after their convictions in 2010, was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 28 years after the 2008 trial.
Then in November 2023, Olivier returned to court at the age of 75 on trial for her complicity in the murders of Joanna Parrish and 18-year-old Marie-Angèle Domèce in 1988, and the disappearance of nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin in 2003.
She was handed a second life sentence, with a minimum of 20 years, in December 2023 after being found guilty.
Didier Seban, the Parrish family’s lawyer, said: “For the Parrish family, it has been hard.
“They’ve waited more than 30 years for this trial. They led the charge, coming every year to Auxerre to show their drive to get this done.
“Their dignity throughout… there hasn’t been an angry word, a cry or a desire of vengeance. It’s been a desire for justice.”
In a final turn of events, Olivier was name as a suspect last month in the 1997 disappearance of French teenager Cecile Vallin.
The 17-year-old went missing on a country road leading out of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, a small southern French town less than 20 miles from the Italian border.