born 6 November 1956 is a Belgian serial killer and child molester, convicted of having kidnapped, tortured and sexually abused six girls during 1995 to 1996, ranging in age from 8 to 19, four of whom he murdered. He was also convicted of having killed a suspected former accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, later proved insane. He was arrested in 1996, four years after the disappearance of his victims had begun, and has been in prison ever since, though he briefly escaped in April 1998.
Dutroux’s widely publicised trial took place in 2004. A number of shortcomings in the Dutroux investigation caused widespread discontent in Belgium with the country’s criminal justice system, and the ensuing scandal was one of the reasons for the reorganisation of Belgium’s law enforcement agencies.
Early life and anti-social tendencies
Born in Ixelles, Belgium on 6 November 1956, Dutroux was the oldest of five children. His parents, both teachers, emigrated to the Belgian Congo, but returned to Belgium when Dutroux was four. They separated in 1971 and Dutroux stayed with his mother. He married at the age of 19 and fathered two children; the marriage ended in divorce in 1983. By then he already had had an affair with Michelle Martin. They would eventually have three children together, and married in 1989 while both were in prison. They divorced in 2003, also while in prison.
An unemployed electrician, Dutroux had a long criminal history including convictions for car theft, muggings and drug dealing. Dutroux’s criminal career, involving the trade of stolen cars to Czechoslovakia and Hungary, drug dealing and also violent crimes such as mugging, gained him enough money to live in relative comfort in Charleroi, a city that had at the time high unemployment. He has been described by experts as a psychopath.
He owned seven small houses, most of them vacant, and used three of them for the torture of the girls he kidnapped. He lived mainly in his house in Marcinelle near Charleroi (Hainaut), where he constructed a concealed dungeon in the basement. Hidden behind a massive concrete door disguised as a shelf, the cell was 2.15 metres (7 ft) long, less than 1 metre (3 ft) wide and 1.64 metres (5 ft) high.
First arrest and failure of the system
In February 1986, Dutroux and Martin were arrested for abducting and raping five young girls. In April 1989, he was sentenced to thirteen and a half years in prison. Martin received a sentence of five years. Showing good behaviour in prison, Dutroux was released on parole in April 1992, having served only three years, by Justice Minister Melchior Wathelet. Upon his release the parole board received a letter from Dutroux’s own mother to the prison director, in which she stressed concern that he was keeping young girls captive in his house – which was essentially ignored.
Following his release from prison, Dutroux was able to convince a psychiatrist that he was psychiatrically disabled, resulting in a government pension. He also received prescriptions of sleeping pills and sedatives, which he would later use on his victims.
Abductions and arrest
Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo (both aged eight) were kidnapped together from Grâce-Hollogne on 24 June 1995, probably by Dutroux, and imprisoned in Dutroux’s cellar. Dutroux repeatedly sexually abused the girls and produced pornographic videos.
On 22 August 1995, Dutroux kidnapped 17-year-old An Marchal and 19-year-old Eefje Lambrecks who were on a camping trip in Ostend. He was probably assisted by his accomplice Michel Lelièvre, who was paid with drugs. Since the dungeon already contained Lejeune and Russo, Dutroux chained the girls to a bed in a room of his house. His wife was aware of all these activities. Dutroux killed Marchal and Lambrecks several weeks later by drugging them and burying them alive at one of his properties in Jumet.
Second arrest and failure of the system
In late 1995, Dutroux was arrested by police for involvement in a stolen luxury car racket. He was held in custody for three months between 6 December 1995 and 20 March 1996. During this period, Lejeune and Russo starved to death in the dungeon. Michelle Martin allegedly fed her husband’s German shepherd dogs but not the girls, who were later buried in bin bags in the back garden.
There are documented reports that police searched Dutroux’s house on 13 December 1995 and again six days later in relation to his car theft charge. During this time, Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo were still alive in the basement dungeon, but the police failed to discover them. Since the search was unrelated to kidnapping charges, police searching the house had no dogs or specialised equipment that might have discovered the girls’ presence, and they failed to notice the significance of the freshly plastered and painted wall that concealed the dungeon, in an otherwise decrepit and dirty basement. While in the basement, officers heard children’s cries, which they decided had come from the street outside.
Two months after his release, Dutroux, with help from Lelièvre, kidnapped 12-year-old Sabine Dardenne who was on her way to school on 28 May 1996. She was imprisoned by him, once again, in the dungeon where he had kept his previous victims.
Third arrest and discovery of the crimes
On 9 August 1996, Dutroux and Lelièvre kidnapped 14-year-old Laetitia Delhez when she was walking home, from a public swimming pool. But an eyewitness identified part of a license plate which matched a vehicle registered to Dutroux. He, his wife and Lelièvre were all arrested on 13 August 1996. An initial search of his houses proved inconclusive. But two days later, Dutroux and Lelièvre both made confessions. Dutroux led the police to the basement dungeon where Dardenne and Delhez were found alive on 15 August 1996. In an interview conducted several years later, Dardenne revealed that Dutroux had told her that she had been kidnapped by a gang but her parents did not want to pay the ransom and the gang was planning to kill her. Dutroux said he saved her, and that he wasn’t one of the gang members she should fear. He let her write letters to her family, which he read but never posted.
On 17 August 1996, Dutroux led police to another of his houses in Sars-la-Buissière (Hainaut). The bodies of Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo as well as another accomplice Bernard Weinstein were found in the garden. An autopsy found that the two girls had died from starvation. Dutroux said he had crushed Weinstein’s testicles until he gave him money, he then drugged him and buried him alive. Later Dutroux told the police where to find the bodies of An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks. They were located on 3 September 1996 in Jumet (Hainaut), buried under a shack next to a house owned by Dutroux. Weinstein had lived in that house for three years.
Hundreds of commercial adult pornographic videos, along with a large number of home-made sex films that Dutroux had made with his wife Michelle Martin were recovered from his properties.
Shortcomings of initial investigations
Authorities were criticised for various aspects of the case. Perhaps most notably, police searched Dutroux’s house on 13 December 1995 and again six days later in relation to his car theft charge. During this time, Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo were still alive in the basement dungeon, but they were not found.
Several incidents suggested that Dutroux’s intentions were not properly followed-up. Dutroux had offered money to a police informer for providing girls, and told him that he was constructing a cell in his basement. His mother also wrote a second letter to the police, claiming that he held girls captive in his houses.
Allegations of massive cover-up
There was widespread anger and frustration among Belgians due to police errors, the general slowness of the investigation and Dutroux’s claims that he was part of a sex ring that included high-ranking members of the police force and government. This anger culminated when the popular investigative judge in charge of investigating the claims was dismissed on the grounds of having participated in a fund-raising dinner for the girls’ parents. The investigation itself was wound up. His dismissal and end of the investigation resulted in a massive protest march (the “White March”) of 300,000 people on the capital, Brussels, in October 1996, two months after Dutroux’s arrest, in which demands were made for reforms of Belgium’s police and justice system.
On the witness stand, Jean-Marc Connerotte, the original judge of the case, broke down in tears when he described “the bullet-proof vehicles and armed guards needed to protect him against the shadowy figures determined to stop the full truth coming out. Never before in Belgium has an investigating judge at the service of the king been subjected to such pressure. We were told by police that [murder] contracts had been taken out against the magistrates.” Connerotte testified that the investigation was seriously hampered by protection of suspects by people in the government. “Rarely has so much energy been spent opposing an inquiry,” he said. He believed that the Mafia had taken control of the case.
Parliamentary investigation and continued anti-social behavior
A 17-month investigation by a parliamentary commission into the Dutroux affair produced a report in February 1998, which concluded that while Dutroux did not have accomplices in high positions in the police and justice systems, as he continued to claim, he profited from corruption, sloppiness and incompetence.
Public indignation flared up again in April 1998. While being transferred to a court house without handcuffs, Dutroux overpowered one of his guards, took his gun and escaped. Police in his native Belgium, France, Luxemborg and Germany placed their police forces on an “all-borders alert” along with a major manhunt. He was caught a few hours later. The Minister of Justice Stefaan De Clerck, the Minister of the Interior Johan Vande Lanotte, and the police chief resigned as a result. In 2000, Dutroux received a five-year sentence for threatening a police officer during his escape. In 2002, he received another five-year sentence for unrelated crimes.
The trial
Dutroux’s trial began on 1 March 2004, some seven and a half years after his initial arrest. It was a trial by jury and up to 450 people were called upon to testify. The trial took place in Arlon, the capital of the Belgian province of Luxembourg, where investigations had started. Dutroux was tried for the murder of An Marchal, Eefje Lambrecks and Bernard Weinstein, a suspected accomplice. While admitting the abductions, he denied all three killings, although he had earlier confessed to killing Weinstein. Dutroux was also charged with a host of other crimes: auto theft, abduction, attempted murder and attempted abduction, molestation, and three unrelated rapes of women from Slovakia.
Martin was tried as an accomplice, as were Lelièvre and Michel Nihoul. To protect the accused, they were made to sit in a glass cage during the trial. In the first week of the trial, photos of Dutroux’s face were not allowed to be printed in Belgian newspapers, for privacy reasons but this ban remained in force until March 9. Throughout the trial, Dutroux continued to insist that he was part of a Europe-wide pedophile ring with accomplices among police officers, businessmen, doctors, and even high-level Belgian politicians.
In a rare move, the jury at the assize trial publicly protested the presiding judge Stéphane Goux’s handling of the debates and the victims’ testimonies.
On 14 June 2004, after three months of trial, the jury went into seclusion to reach their verdicts on Dutroux and the three other accused. Verdicts were returned on 17 June 2004 after three days of deliberation. Dutroux, Martin and Lelièvre were found guilty on all charges; the jury were unable to reach a verdict on Michel Nihoul’s role.
Sentencing
On 22 June, Dutroux received the maximum sentence of life imprisonment, while Martin received 30 years and Lelièvre 25 years. Michel Nihoul was later acquitted from the charge of being an offender on kidnapping and murder of the girls by the court. The jury was asked to go back into seclusion to give answer to the question whether Michel Nihoul was an accomplice or not. On June 23, Dutroux lodged an appeal against his sentence. Dutroux is currently being held in solitary confinement at Nivelles Prison.
Although Michel Nihoul was acquitted of kidnapping and conspiracy charges, he was convicted on drug-related charges and received five years.
On Sunday, Aug. 19, 2012, about 2,000 demonstrators in Brussels, Belgium demonstrated against Michelle Martin’s possible early release from prison. She has since been released, 13 years into her sentence.
