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The residents of Belgium were in shock after two young girls were rescued from a makeshift dungeon under a house in Marcinelle, a gritty, industrial suburb of Charleroi. During the 12 & 14-year-old’s hellish time in captivity, they had been kidnapped, raped & tortured.
As weeks went on, the bodies of four more young girls were found buried on properties that were linked to a convicted pedophile. Some had starved to death while others had been buried alive. It was the beginning of an unimaginable nightmare for the entire nation as no one could fathom that someone this evil lived among them.
This is the story of the victims of one of the world’s most evil serial killers, Marc Dutroux, the man dubbed The Monster of Marcinelle.
The nation was outraged when they learned that not only had police been warned of Marc’s evil intentions, but they’d actually been inside his home while two 8-year-old girls were being held captive. Sadly, their cries were dismissed as children playing outside & although they could have been saved, they were later murdered.
It took an astonishingly long time to arrest Marc & in that time, four lives were lost while the two girls who were saved had been tortured & traumatized.
Marc Dutroux was born in Ixelles, Belgium on November 6, 1956 as the oldest of five children. His parents, Victor & Jeanine, were teachers who once taught in the Belgian Congo in Central Africa, but during the Congo Crisis that spanned from 1960-1965, they brought Marc back to Belgium with them in 1960.
In 1971, when Marc was 15-years-old, his parents separated & after leaving their aggressive father, he stayed with his dominant mother. He would later claim that his parents had beaten him as a child.
Although he went on to train as an electrician, Marc was often unemployed & he soon set out on a road of crime that included car thefts, mugging & drug dealing. He was known to ship luxury cars he’d stolen from Belgium & ship them to other countries such as Czechoslovakia & Hungary.
With the money he was making illegally, he purchased seven properties in & around Charleroi. By 1983, the 26-year-old was married with two children. However, he was not a faithful man & began having an affair with a 23-year-old school teacher, Michelle Martin, who eventually became not only his partner in life, but also in crime. They went on to have three children together which meant that Marc now had five children total.
Sadly, his crimes began to escalate from theft to sexual assault & in 1989, he was found guilty of the abduction & rape of five young girls, one as young as 11-years-old. He was given a 13 ½ year sentence. Many of these girls had been out walking alone when he & an accomplice, Jean Van Pentehem, prowled the streets in their van, pulling the girls into the back, putting tape over their eyes & mouth. They would then rape them repeatedily before releasing them.
Marc’s second wife, Michelle Martin, was found complicit in these crimes & went on to serve two years of a five year sentence while Jean Van Pentehem was sentenced to 6 ½ years.
According to psychiatrists, Marc & Michelle were a classic case of what is known as folie à deux, a French term meaning the madness of two, otherwise known as shared psychosis or shared delusional disorder. This is a rare psychiatric syndrome when a delusional belief is transferred from one person to another.
After serving only 3 years of his 13 ½ year sentence, despite the horrific nature of the crimes he committed, Marc was released in 1992. Not only had he raped & sadistically tortured these five young girls, but his own mother repeatedly warned police just how dangerous he was. They also heard from an informant, Claude Thirault, who told police that Marc planned to abduct & sell young girls for commercial purposes. This ranged from prostitution to pornographic films to even possibly ritual sacrifice.
According to Claude, the police were aware of Marc’s sick intentions as early as the summer of 1993. He went on to tell them that Marc was in the midst of constructing a basement bunker that would hold the young girls he planned to capture.
Marc offered to pay Claude $6,000 per girl, specifically requesting slender girls with long hair. He even provided him with a crash course on child abduction: seize them from behind, place a sedative-soaked rag over their face, throw them into the back of the car & engage the child-safety locks.
When two 8-year-old best friends, Julie Lejeune & Melissa Russo, were kidnapped on June 24, 1995 after going for a walk, Claude went back to police only days later. He reminded them of the report he made about Marc two years earlier & urged them to investigate him in relation to the missing girls, specifically mentioning the man’s basement.
Julie & Melissa went missing from the town of Grâce-Hollogne, 57 miles (88 km) northeast of Charleroi. Their parents desperately searched for them throughout Belgium & the neighboring countries of France, Luxembourg, Germany, the Netherlands & Britain.
With the assistance of Michelle, Marc abducted the girls & kept them inside his homemade cell he’d constructed beneath his home that was 7 feet long, 3 feet wide & about 5 feet high that was concealed behind an extremely heavy door that was then covered in concrete & hidden away in his basement. The girls were kept in this horrific place for the next three months while his sexual desires were only escalating.
One month later on August 23, 1995 two more girls were abducted along the Belgium coast over 100 miles away, best friends, 17-year-old An Marchal & 19-year-old Eefje Lambrecks. Although 17-year-old An normally vacationed with her family along the coast of France or Spain, during the summer of 1995, she asked her parents if she could travel to Ostend with six of her friends.
Although they initially opposed this idea, they knew that their daughter was growing up & would be turning 18 in four short months so they agreed. According to her father, Paul Marchal, he said, We decided we had to let her go sometime. You can’t hold on to your children forever.
An said goodbye to her family on August 22 & the following day, she contacted her dad, asking if he could share his recipe for a curried-chicken dish that she planned to make for dinner the next day. However, when the phone rang at 9:45 pm the following night, Paul heard An’s friends on the other end, explaining that An & Eefje had gone to a magic show the night before & never came back. The last reported sighting of the girls was at midnight near Ostend Station.
They explained that although they went to the police station to report their friends missing, the officers only laughed at them. Paul contacted the police that evening & drove to Ostend the next morning & when he met with police, he found them equally dismissive toward him.
Officers suggested that the girls likely met up with some nice boys & were out having fun. However, An had only taken a t-shirt with her, leaving her glasses & contact lens solution behind. Meanwhile, he found the ingredients for the curried chicken recipe he’d shared with her in the refrigerator.
Eefje’s father, Jean Lambrecks, also knew in his heart that something terrible must have happened to the girls since his daughter was always a very communicative person. He knew that she wouldn’t have gone off without contacting her family or friends.
Paul decided to take matters into his own hands as he searched for clues & that fall, he took a paid leave from his teaching job to devote himself completely to the search of his daughter. In January of 1996, the police chief in Bruges asked him to stop his publicity campaign, to stop bothering police, calling him a difficult man. Paul was sickened & stunned, saying, When you lose your daughter, you become a difficult man. Paul believed in his heart that An & Eefje were still alive somewhere & he knew that time was so important.
Rather than being out partying as investigators suggested, An & Efeje had been abducted, raped & murdered by Marc & an accomplice, Michel Lelièvre. Since Julie & Melissa were already being held captive in his basement dungeon, after he’d kidnapped the girls, An & Eefje had been chained to a bed in the main part of his home. The details of their murder are unclear as well as when they were killed, but investigators eventually learned that they had been tortured, raped & strangled.
On December 6, 1995, Marc was arrested for a car theft & served nearly four months in prison. On both the 13th & the 19th of that month, police searched his home, including the basement that housed his dungeon, but because they hadn’t identified the dungeon, even though they were only feet away from where the officers stood, Julie & Melissa hadn’t been found.
Despite the fact that a locksmith had gone into the home with investigators & told the officer that he heard screams, he was disregarded & the officer attributed the screams to children playing outside. Although they came across several VHS tapes, for whatever reason, they didn’t watch them until much later. These videos were created by Marc that depicted the dungeon. Tragically, these mistakes were fatal for 8-year-olds Julie & Melissa.
By the time Marc was released from prison in March 1996, the girls were dead. His wife, Michelle, had allowed them to starve to death in his absence. She later testified that she had been too scared to go downstairs to feed them since she feared they would be like wild animals who would attack her.
On May 28, 1996 Marc was back out on the prowl for another victim & this time, he abducted 12-year-old Sabine Dardenne on her way to school & locked her in his dungeon. Over the next three months he emotionally tortured the young girl, allowing her to believe that she was in contact with her mother & father. She wrote them letters that were never sent, but instead he used the content of her letters to manipulate her.
A little more than 2 months later, he abducted 14-year-old Laetitia Delhez on August 9, 1996 while she was walking home from a local swimming pool. Once at his home, she was placed into the dungeon with Sabine. This was one year after he abducted An & Eefje & a little over a year after Julie & Melissa were abducted.
Marc hadn’t realized that as he abducted Laetitia, an eyewitness saw him place her in his white van. Two days after she went missing, he informed the police about the suspicious van & provided the first three letters of the license plate.
When public prosecutor Michel Bourlet traced these three letters, knowing that the van was a white Renault, there were twenty names that matched. When a police officer reviewed the names, he recognized Marc’s & the fact that he had been previously convicted of multiple abductions & rapes of young girls.
One of the officers working with Michel Bourlet had been involved in another investigation called Operation Othello which was led by authorities in Charleroi that monitored Marc’s movements beginning in 1994. By the summer of 1995, when Julie, Melissa, An & Eefje were abducted, they had gathered enough information to relay to other police departments that the man was intending to build a prison cell in the basement of one of his homes in order to keep children before sending them abroad.
Yet despite this information, nothing had been done even though more than a year had passed by this point.
On August 13, 1996, more than 40 officers took part in a synchronized raid on all of Marc’s seven properties in Charleroi. At 1 pm, they came upon one of the properties where they found Marc, his wife & the white van. It appeared that he was getting ready to change the van’s license plate.
Marc, his wife & Michel Lelièvre, his accomplice in An & Eefje’s abductions, were taken to the police station & over the course of several hours of interrogations, they all maintained their innocence. Marc was very calm throughout the whole process.
Investigators released Michel Lelièvre, who denied being with Marc on the day that 14-year-old Laetitia Delhez was abducted. However, only moments after he left the police station, they learned that Marc’s neighbors in Marcinelle had seen both he & Marc come back on the Friday evening that Laetitia was abducted. They were carrying a child who was covered with a blanket, bringing her inside the home. With this information, he was rearrested & taken back into custody.
As evidence began stacking against him, Marc Dutroux’s interrogation started to take a turn. Knowing investigators had proof that she had been in his van, although he initially denied being in Bertrix where Laetitia had been abducted, he suddenly changed his story. He said he talked with a young girl who complained that she was tired of her parents. However, it was clear that he was lying since his stories completely contradicted each other.
As he sat in the interrogation room, Marc suddenly pointed to a missing person poster of 12-year-old Sabine Dardenne, who he abducted about 2 ½ months previously on May 28. Two days after his arrest, he confessed & on August 15, 1996, he led police to his basement where they found both Sabine & Laetitia alive.
Journalists captured the moment that the tearful girls were taken away from this house of horrors & reunited with their family. The fact that someone this dark & evil lived among the community, hiding such unthinkable acts within his home, was just unbelievable.
One journalist who was allowed to enter & film inside Marc Dutroux’s dungeon, was speechless by what he saw; conditions you wouldn’t even think to house an animal let alone innocent, young girls.
Over the next two days, investigators continued to question Marc, desperate to find the four girls who had been missing for more than a year, Julie, Melissa, An & Eefje. As they spoke with him, they inflated his ego, telling him how he fooled the police & slowly, but surely, he let more & more information come out until he confessed to kidnapping 8-year-olds Julie & Melissa. Not admitting that he murdered them, they hoped they would find them alive as they had Sabine & Laetitia.
Sadly, it was in the back garden of his home in Marcinelle where they found the bodies of 8-year-olds Julie Lejuene & Melissa Russo, the two girls who starved to death in the horrific dungeon in Marc’s basement. When confronted with this information, Marc denied being the person responsible for their abductions & took no accountability for their deaths, saying that since had been in prison when they died, it was his wife who should have provided them with food.
Police also found the body of Bernard Weinstein, one of Marc’s accomplices who is suspected of helping him kidnap Julie & Melissa in June 1995. His body was also found in the garden after he’d been buried alive.
As investigators continued to interview Marc, he also confessed to the August 1996 abductions of An & Eefje along the Belgium coast. He told investigators that their bodies could be found in the Jemet district of Charleroi that was owned by Bernard Weinstein, whose body had only just been found.
On September 3, 1996, police located An & Eefje’s remains near a shack by the house after they had been missing for more than a year. The medical examiner concluded that the girls had been buried alive.
Marc’s wife, Michelle Martin, confirmed this, saying that An & Eefje were drugged & brought to this location where Marc & Bernard buried them alive.
Between 1995 & 1996, Marc Dutroux had abducted & raped six young girls that ranged in age between 8 & 19-years-old. Four of these girls would sadly never be coming home to their families. Realizing that Julie & Melissa had been too young for his sexual desires, he began taking slightly older girls moving forward. After abducting An & Eefje, who were 17 & 19-years-old, he realized that they were too difficult to manage because they were older & stronger. Marc indicated that one of the girls had escaped several times from their restraints in the bedroom of his home. Feeling as if they were too unmanageable, he killed them.
This was when Marc chose girls in between these age ranges, selecting 12-year-old Sabine in May 1996 & 14-year-old Laetitia 2 ½ months later.
Because the case was so complex, it took 7 ½ years before Marc Dutroux, Michelle Martin & Michel Lelièvre were taken to trial.
Because of the horrific nature of the crimes paired with the incompetent way in which the case had been handled leading up to the discovery of Sabine & Laetitia, widespread protests were held across the country. The fact that officers had been in Marc’s house in December 1995 & could have saved Melissa & Julie understandably enraged the community. Had they been found, not only would they have been saved, but it would have spared Sabine & Laetitia from the trauma they endured during their time in captivity.
Since the case had been handled so poorly people wondered if Marc was potentially working for a powerful international child-trafficking ring & that he’d been protected to avoid scandal for politicians who were involved.
The trial for the trio began on March 1, 2004, nearly 8 years after the bodies of the four girls had been found on the properties linked to a then 47-year-old Marc. By this point, the story had been the biggest headline in Belgium history. There were more than 200 charges against the three accused.
Marc pleaded guilty to the murder of his accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, but denied kidnapping Julie & Melissa & denied murdering An & Eefje. In referencing Julie & Melissa’s deaths, he claimed that by the time he was released from prison, one of the girls was already dead while another was barely clinging to life. He went on to say that he tried to save her, but had been unable to do so so he buried them.
He claimed that Bernard Weinstein & Michel Lelièvre had been responsible for murdering An & Eefje although he admitted to abusing Eefje. The only time he showed any amount of emotion was when he spoke about Eefje during his three-hour testimony & how he enjoyed talking to her. He said she wanted to be a journalist & to play the saxophone, saying that her death had been a great pity.
As the prosecution made their case, the gruesome details surrounding his crimes were laid out for the jury as well as the girl’s family members. Photos were also shown, many of the family members understandably unable to view them.
A then 20-year-old Sabine Dardenne testified about how after Marc abducted her, he repeatedly raped her throughout the 80 days she was held captive in his dungeon. She made markings in her diary during captivity, drawing either crosses or stars to signify if he only visited with her vs. the days he sexually abused her. She wanted to be a voice for the other four girls who were no longer able to speak for themselves.
Laetitia also testified, saying that during the four days she spent in captivity, Marc chained her to a bed & raped her repeatedly. When both Sabine & Laetitia each stared him in the eye, asking him why he had done what he did, Marc didn’t respond.
For fourteen weeks Marc relished in the attention he received during the trial, using the platform as his stage. He was held behind bullet-proof glass walls for his own protection.
One psychiatrist testified that Marc was a psychopath who knew exactly what he was doing, while three others told the court that their evaluation found that he was also a narcissistic manipulator. According to psychiatrist Walter Denys, of the some 3,000 people he studied over the course of his career, Marc had many of the symptoms of psychopathy, a mental disorder marked by egocentric, immoral & anti-social behavior. He was likely the worst case he’d encountered.
No one could understand how Michelle Martin had stood idly by while her husband did such unimaginable things to these six innocent young girls. There were times that she was also an active accomplice to the heinous crimes. Although she voiced remorse for her participation, those in the courtroom were stunned to hear her say that while she had fed the dog in Marc’s absence, she allowed Julie & Melissa to starve to death.
She testified that she was terrified of her husband & had admitted to investigators that she should have freed Melissa & Julie while Marc had been in prison. She claimed that if he came home & she told him that they’d gotten away, he would have killed her.
After changing lawyers on multiple occasions, at the time of the trial, Marc had four attorneys defending him who claimed that he had been part of a Europe-wide pedophile network.
On June 17, 2004, Marc Dutroux was found guilty of all charges. On June 22, he was given the maximum life sentence while Michelle Martin was sentenced to 30 years & Michel Lelièvre to 25 years.
On August 28, 2012, Michelle Martin was controversially released from prison after serving only 16 years of her 30 year sentence. She now lives in hiding under protection by the Belgium authorities. At this point, Marc asked to be released as well, claiming that he was no longer a danger to society. However, this request was removed & he remains in solitary confinement.
Michel Lelièvre was released in 2019 after serving 23 years of his 25 year sentence.
Marc has never admitted to killing the four girls & has never given any explanation to his actions. Many believe that he is likely responsible for more murders & there were likely other accomplices who hadn’t been tied to him.
Family members felt unsatisfied by the lack of answers resulting from the trial, specifically An & Eefje’s parents, who never truly learned any clear details about their daughter’s time in captivity or when they were killed & the circumstances that surrounded their murders.
There was also a lot of anger that Marc had been released from prison in 1992 after serving only 3 years of 13 ½ year sentence for such horrific crimes against young girls. Despite warnings from not only his mother as well as informant Claude Thirault & from information gathered during Operation Othello, he managed to construct a dungeon & hold six girls within his home between 1995-1996.
The country was deeply affected by this case, to the point that ⅓ of those with the last name Dutroux requested to have their last names changed.
The house of horrors where Marc kept his six young victims was impounded by the city of Charleroi for about 23,000 euros. The money went to a fund to support his victims & their families. While the face of the home was walled off & painted with a mural of a child flying a kite, the city had done nothing with the home until 2022 when it was finally demolished. A memorial garden then replaced the plot of land that was named Between Earth & Sky.
At the request of the victim’s parents, the dungeon where he kept his victims was not destroyed, but instead left intact underground beneath the new memorial garden. They wanted to preserve it for potential future investigation.
For many people of Belgium, this case wasn’t just about one monster, but it highlighted the warnings that were ignored & the leads that weren’t followed quickly enough. Because innocent, young lives were lost as a result of these mistakes, it made these failures feel almost unbearable.
What remains undeniable is the courage of the two survivors, Sabine Dardenne & Laetitia Delhez, whose testimonies helped bring Marc Dutroux’s crimes fully into the light. They wanted to be sure that the world knew exactly who he was & what he had done to not only them, but also to the four girls who hadn’t survived.
Today, the names Julie, Melissa, An, Eefje, Sabine & Laetitia are remembered across Belgium as not only victims of unimaginable cruelty, but as a time when an entire community demanded better protection for its children.
For the families of Julie, Melissa, An & Eefje, the loss can never be undone. As heartbreaking as this story is, it’s so important to remember these innocent young girls.
References:
- Wikipedia: Folie a deux
- Peacock: World’s Most Evil Killers, Marc Dutroux, Season 1, Episode 18
- The New York Times Magazine: Four girls abducted, raped, murdered. A country on trial
- NBC News: Notorious child rapist-murderer convicted
- The Sydney Morning Herald: Dutroux’s wife recounts starving girls to death in cellar
- The Guardian: ‘Despite everything he made me suffer, I did not go insane’
- Oxygen True Crime: Belgian serial killer & child molester Marc Dutroux didn’t act alone – here are his accomplices
- ATI: The sickening crimes of Marc Dutroux, the child-killing ‘monster’ of Belgium
- News 24: ‘Dutroux a psychopath’
