French police confirmed Belgian press reports quoting Fourniret as saying a fortune had been amassed by Jean-Pierre Hellegouarch, a man whom Fourniret had once met while in jail in France, and who had allegedly been linked to a left-wing terror group called Action Directe.
Fourniret was quoted as having said he had killed Hellegouarch's female companion in order to get at the money, and had used part of it to buy the chateau.
A Belgian prosecutor told a news conference earlier that Fourniret and Olivier, 55, had been charged with kidnapping and unlawfully imprisoning Elisabeth Brichet, one of the victims discovered on Saturday.
The case follows a major child-abuse trial that shook France. On Friday a couple in the northern French town of Outreau were sentenced to 20 and 15 years in prison respectively on multiple counts of rape and renting out their own four sons for sex.
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