Feelings ran high this week as Fourniret was being examined about the abduction and murder of a local girl, Celine Saison, aged 18.

She disappeared on her way home and her body was found some time later. She had been strangled.

Fourniret admitted the murder but kept denying he had raped her until the very last minute, when he answered a direct question in a roundabout way, acknowledging his guilt.

Celine's family had relived the horror of her disappearance but then her father looked the murderer straight in the eyes and told him he hated him so much he hoped he would live long enough to spit on his grave. There was a ripple of applause form the listeners outside the courtroom.

The people of Charleville, however, were much more vociferous in their condemnation. When the Fourniret couple left the court to return to prison there were insults and threats including a wish to tear them to shreds.

Later, the local paper interviewed a man at Floing who had Fourniret as a neighbour for three years.

He had found him distant, but polite and and correct. Not the sort of chap you could have a joke with - except one odd time when he turned up at a village party in drag - dressed as a prostitute!

Otherwise, in retrospect, the man wondered if he was being groomed as a witness, when, for example, Fourniret made a point of coming to speak to him in the morning in his slippers and pyjamas, after a night when he had returned home in the early hours.

If he asked a question which Fourniret wished to avoid he would reply, "If anyone asks you, tell them you know nothing."