THE parents of a woman murdered 28 years ago are finally hoping to see “justice for Jo” after a shock “confession” by a convicted French serial killer.

Newnham-on-Severn university student Joanna Parrish was found dead in an Auxerre river in 1990, and her family have never wavered in their bid to bring her murderer to justice.

And that may be at hand after father Roger Parrish received a phone call on Friday (February 16) from contacts in Paris saying the main suspect Michel Fourniret had finally “confessed” in front of a judge to the 20-year-old’s death. 

He and ex-wife Pauline Murrell now hope to see “the Ogre of the Ardennes” in the dock later this year to finally provide some “closure”.

“We will both be there to see him in court,” Mr Parrish told the Review this week. “Nothing can bring Jo back, but we want to see justice done for our daughter.”

The parents have never given up their long campaign, with Mr Parrish handing in a petition to French authorities in 2015 on the 25th anniversary of Jo’s death calling for the reinvestigation of the case, and her mother sending a letter to Fourniret’s accomplice and wife Monique Olivier, pleading with her to reveal the truth about their daughter’s death.

Having dropped the case in 2011, French authorities reopened it recently with a cold case review, while sources close to the investigation say Olivier may have persuaded Four-

niret to confess, despite her never replying to the letter.

“The news that he’s admitted it came out of the blue, it’s something of a shock,” admitted retired Land Registry official Mr Parrish. “But we’ve always thought he did it, and this is positive news.

“I’m still being a bit cautious because we’ve been built up and let down before by the French system and the DNA being apparently destroyed or lost.

“But we’re waiting to hear a few more details from the lawyers and they seem quite confident that the case will go to court,” added Mr Parrish, who received the news by phone while looking after his

grandchildren in Glou­cester.

“There’s been a cold case review going on for the last 18 months, so we expected to hear some news, but hearing that he’s confessed has still come as a bit of a surprise.

“We’re convinced he was responsible. Despite the loss of the scientific evidence, there was so much circumstantial evidence pointing to him.

“I’m not sure why he’s admitted it now after so many years, but I believe their son Selim has authorised a book by a French journalist and they’ve visited the two in their separate jails, which may have opened up a line of communication, with the ex-wife urging him to confess.

“There were some doubts along the way, about the legal system and the missing DNA, but we were never going to give up. We’ve fought hard to get this man in court, and it may be that the petition and the letter kept the issue in the open and have now brought a result.

“We absolutely want to see this man brought before court, and we’ll both be there the day he appears on trial.”

Fourniret, now 75, and his ex-wife, now 69, were arrested in 2005 in connection with the rape and killings of seven other women and girls before being convicted and jailed for life in 2008. Last year, he admitted another murder and has now apparently “confessed” to two more – the killings of Joanne Parrish and Marie-Ange Domece, a mentally handicapped teenager who disappeared in 1988, and whose body has never been found.

Nicknamed the Myra Hindley of France, mother-of-three Olivier hunted down and abducted some of the victims for him to rape and kill as she drove their car around the Ardennes woods in eastern France, near the German border, with their baby son in the back seat.

Olivier twice told investigators Fourniret had killed Joanna when they lived in a village near Auxerre, but later retracted her statements, claiming they had been made under duress.

Joanna was teaching English at a lycée in Auxerre as part of her French and Spanish degree course at Leeds University when she was found dead in the River Yonne in Auxerre on May 17, 1990, having been abducted, raped and strangled.

She had placed an advertisement in a local newspaper offering English lessons and was rushing to meet a man who had answered the ad when it is thought she was abducted in rush-hour traffic by Olivier, who was cruising the streets in a van looking for victims.

The Parrish family’s lawyer Didier Seban said this week that Fourniret had appeared in court “two to three times” in the past few days and admitted the killing each time.

He said it “should lead to charges” and “the culmination of a long battle for justice lasting 28 years”.

Described as “devils with two faces”, the pair first came into contact when Fourniret was in jail for sex offences and Olivier answered a magazine advert he placed looking for pen pals.

As they wrote, she fell under his spell, calling him “my beast” and Shere Khan after the man-killing tiger in Kipling’s Jungle Book.

But a 13-year-old girl the couple abducted in 2003 in Belgium escaped and gave police the registration of their van, bringing an end to their reign of terror.