The Crime Web: Marc Dutroux

Mark Dutroux belongs to the category of serial killers who are able to convince authorities that they are not a risk to society. Like Kemper, Dutroux was able to convince psychiatrists and social workers that he was rehabilitated. He was released in 1991 from prison after serving only 3 years of a 13 year sentence for the sexual abuse of 5 children.

Little did authorities know at the time, but they had released a child predator back into Belgium to again abduct, drug, abuse and murder children with his accomplices.

Children soon started disappearing across Belgium, but police failed to conduct a concerted investigation. Numerous tips pointed to Dutroux, including one from his mother. But police failed to take action or refused to share information.

In 1993 Police were told that Dutroux was constructing makeshift cells in one of his houses to hold kidnapped children before sending them overseas. No action was taken.

When he was asked about the series of holes and trenches he was digging, Dutroux told police that he was building a new cellar under the house along with other refurbishments, he was actually building the cells for the victims he soon procured.

In August 1995, he had Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo being held prisoner when police searched Dutroux's houses again, but again found nothing.

Again they returned in December where they carried out further searches with the same result. By Dutroux's account, his two accomplices, businessman/politician Bernard Weinstein and a vagrant named Michel Lelievre had carried out the actual kidnapping of Melissa and Julie. The mastermind told interrogators that he paid the sidekicks the equivalent of $1,600 to get a girl, after he the cells were ready.

Another of Dutroux's accomplices is his wife Michelle Martin. The couple have three children aged 12, 3, and 8 months old. Inexplicably this woman has been party too all Dutroux's acts of violence and sexual abuse. While her husband was in prison and she was pregnant with their third child, although she was aware of what was happening in the underground cell, she didn't do anything at all in order to save Julie and Melissa's lives.

Dutroux had set up a virtual gang of criminal pedophiles. Their aim was to kidnap little girls, seven or eight years old, and use them in pornographic movies, that would have as subject sexual abuses to minors, for a European market. Police say the going rate for videos involving children is often anywhere between $400 and $12,000, with the price higher the more perverse the sexual activity. In France, Germany and Holland the demand for such tapes is very high and the tapes can cost between 20,000 and 40.000 dollars. The gang could count on friends in high places and very ingenious hiding places. In Marchant Au Pont there is a house were Dutroux was building three underground cells interconnected by a tunnel.

However police finally stumbled onto Dutroux's trail when a witness noted the number plate of the care he used when abducting 14 year old Laetitia Delheze as she was walking home from a swimming pool.

On August 13 1996 Dutroux, his wife Michelle and one of their accomplices, Michel Lelievre,25 years old, are arrested. Michel Lelievre, who lived in Dutroux's Charleroi house, amid claims that he acted as guard for the kidnapped children. After two days Dutroux confessed and told police they would find Laetitia. She is being held prisoner with Sabine Dardenne, 12 years old, who had disappeared on her way back home from school on May 9th. She had been held captive by Dutroux for 79 days.

The child-rapist confesses to other macabre episodes. It is he, himself, who divulges another hiding place, the garden of his house, where the mutilated corpses of Julie and Melissa are buried, three meters underground. Next to them is the cadaver

Dutroux's accomplice Weinstein. The two girls died of starvation when Dutroux was arrested and incarcerated for an unrelated violation. According to Dutroux, he fed Bernard Weinstein barbiturates and buried him alive for allowing the girls to die.

In another house, one of several owned by Dutroux where his accomplice Lelievre had been living, the police find 600 pornographic videos that have underage girls as victims and Dutroux, his wife and other people still not identified as perpetrators of the sadistic acts. The tapes with Julie and Melissa have not yet been found.

A 55 year old estate agent named Jean-Michel Nihoul took care of the distribution of this material as well as participate in the abuse of the children.

Not only that, it emerged from this statement that Dutroux was building some underground cells to hide the girls and even the address : Avenue de Philippeville 128, exactly the place where Julia and Melissa were being held prisoner.

On August 24, 1995, two months after the disappearance of Julie and Melissa, the police again searched the properties of Dutroux. This time he succeeded not only in hiding Julie and Melissa but also in kidnapping another two girls, An Marchal, 17, and Eefje Lambreks, 19 two friends on vacation by themselves for the first time.

Except as provided by the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the author.
Original Written: January 30, 2002