A search is underway for An and Eefje as new evidence points to a possible location. Unsettling details emerge about the handling of the investigation and a possible cover up, prompting Belgian citizens to take to the streets in a massive protest known as La Marche Blanche or White March.
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No sni.
This is the voice of the priest who oversaw the funeral of Julian Melissa broadcasted on live television Le plus Feme.
Don't you pok?
The footage is harrowing. The priest is visibly outraged and flush with anger, shaking as he delivers the sermon.
Psa di classio gid it to.
Girl Evodi lupusa Pussi.
He rails against the hypocrisy and pious declarations, attempting to smother the questions that are revolted. Hearts push us to ask ten thousand people thronged the streets along Saint Martin's Basilica of Liege to say their last goodbyes to Julian Melissa and support the grieving families who capture the hearts of a nation. In a powerful moment, Julie's grieving father is greeted upon arrival at the church by Paul and Betty Marshal, the parents of Anne Marshal, who was still missing. At this point, Julie's father pulled Paul and Betty into a powerful and lasting embrace as the surrounding crowd erupted in shouts of encouragement. By the time of the funeral, more information was coming in from various interrogations that linked a true to the disappearance of two other girls from the Belgian seaside, Anne Marchal and e Fie Alambraks. Once again, all of Belgium was hoping against hope for a positive outcome.
Psychobats is somebody who understands emotions.
And I told them it is very exceptional that somebody abducts two children at the same time.
Should have been the end of it in nineteen six, but my god, it was just the beginning.
I think Belgium was a paralyzed for perverts in those days.
Welcome Tola Monstra, I'm your host, Matt Graves. The discovery of Julian Melissa's bodies elicited a wave of collective grief that reverberated throughout the nation. How could someone murdered these two little girls we'd seen time and time again on missing persons posters and news bulletins. The coroner determined their cause of death as quote deprivation of nourishment. In other words, they had starved to death. The coroner also confirmed that both girls had suffered sexual abuse. Words cannot express the horror. Shortly after Julian Melissa's bodies were discovered, the body of a white, middle aged man was also found at the property in Sars Laoisiere. On the same day of the gruesome discoveries, de True officially identified the bodies of Julian Melissa, and he also confirmed the identity of the third corpse. It was that of his former accomplice, forty four year old Bernard Weinstein. You recall that in the mid nineties, Weinstein was in Dtrue's criminal file as a possible accomplice. They had worked together on various criminal enterprises. Weinstein was a Frenchman with a long rap sheet. He'd previously been convicted of theft and armed robbery and had spent nine years in prison in France. He'd initially come to Belgium to get away from his past, but soon found himself back in the game again. Just before his death, there was a warren out for his arrest. De True was worried that if Weinstein were arrested, that he'd rat him out about a heist they'd done together. On the day Weinstein's body was discovered, the True admitted to murdering him. He said he'd killed him because Weinstein wanted to harm Julian Melissa. Now that Weinstein was dead, the True proceeded to conveniently blame him for almost everything, including the kidnapping of Julian Melissa. Here are extracts from de True's exact statement read by an interpreter.
I broke Weinstein to my house to prevent him from continuing to do stupid things. I had crushed up some raban and addeded to his soundwitch. He fell asleep, and I took him down to the cellar and explained to U Gulie and many said that Wenstein wanted to kill him. I then took the girls upstairs and told them that they would be sleeping in the bedroom for a while. So I put Wenstein on the bed in the cell and twisted the chain around his neck secute with a bad luck, and attached it to a ring on the wall. I left it long enough for him to reach the toilet bucket in the cell. I then gave him a big doze and took him to his grave. He was still breathing when I buried him.
So the true claiming to be the Great Savior, said he murdered Weinstein to protect Julie and Melissa. But if that was the case, why would he go through the trouble of imprisoning him for several days before killing him. Police questioned the tru's wife, Michelle Martin, about this. These are her words, not her voice.
Mark asked me to prepare sandwiches to put Bernard Weinstein to sleep. He wanted to steal five hundred thousand francs that Bernard had received from his mother to buy her house. Afterwards, Mark told me that to make Weinstein confess to where he had hidden his money, he had to finally use torture. He used clams placed around his testicles, and Weinstein finally confessed where his money was.
These first hand insights in the Dutruze character paint a chilling portrait of a manipulative psychopath. He took out Weinstein to eliminate a thread, but made sure to rob him first, he was constantly scheming to maximize advantage. Now he was again trying to leverage the whole affair to blame Weinstein for the kidnappings and to justify murdering him out of concern for Julian Melissa's well being. As this was playing out, authorities were interrogating one of d'true's accomplices, michel Lelievre. He admitted to involvement with a separate kidnapping of seventeen year old and martial an eighteen year old Effia Lambres from the Belgian seaside. A Doc Martin's shoe matching the size and description of the shoes Anne Marschall was wearing at the time of her disappearance, was found in Detru's house in Marcinelle. Once again, de True was cornered. There was evidence directly linking him to Anne in Effie's disappearance. Sod True admitted to seeing the girls, but claimed they'd left with his associate. Surprise surprise, Bernard Weinstein.
Anne Marshal, and Effia Lambreks were last seen at a Belgian seaside resort, and in spite of the latest discoveries, police say they have not lost hope of finding them alive.
After clearly linking the True to Anne in Effie's disappearance and then hearing his claims that they had been with Bernard Wants Einstein. A search was immediately undertaken at Weinstein's residence in the town of Jumee. The True actually owned the property and was renting the place to Weinstein at the time. For the second time in less than a month, the entire country was watching as police and work crews searched a property. This time, expectations of finding the girls alive were low. The families of Anne and Efia held out hope until the very last minute. This is an interview with a Flemish TV reporter talking to Jean Lambrecks.
This morning, Old Beeber's are seeing that an if you could be buried in Jumet, what's a knowable use? Are you thinking about this too?
I don't want to believe in the possibility that they're there. Yeah, but yes, as long as I don't have confirmation that they're there, I don't believe it or I don't want to believe it.
And here's the voice of Betty Marshall, the mother of Anne, which is still optimistic.
Yeah, yes, absolutely, I have the impression that things are moving forward. Yeah, I'm keeping my hopes up.
On Saturday evening you were pessimistic and reports on television.
Yeah, when I heard about Chili and Melissa then.
And also the discovery that Anne, if you were kidnapped by your psycho party.
Yeah, but I'm holding on to the idea that the girls are older than the others. Maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe, to put it bluntly, they were so old. I don't know. But if that's the case, then maybe they're live and that gives us hope.
It's tuning to imagine hoping that your daughter was sold into child prostitution. That being said, it was a better prospect than the outcome that had befallen Julian and Melissa Median work crews assailed the site in Juma where Anne and Effie were thought to be hidden or buried. Bad weather had hampered the search, but the eyes of Belgium and now the world were focused on this abandoned property in Jumae, near Charlewa. After several days of searching without results, the excavator hit a patch of unsettled earth. They knew the change in soil cover was a sign that something had been buried there. Once again, silence descended. Upon a search site in Belgium. On September third, nineteen ninety six, the bodies of Anne Marschal and Effie Lambrecks were found where Bernard Weinstein had been living in the town of Jumae. Their emaciated bodies showed signs of starvation. However, the cause of death was determined as suffocation after being buried alive.
Horrifying beyond words, investigations into Dudru's background brought fresh hope to the families of two teenage girls, and Marshall and Effia Lambreks, who had also been missing for a year. Hope died when the police confirmed human bones they dug up at one of the houses owned by Mark de True were those of Anne and Efia.
The failure of authorities to protect Julie, Melissa, Anne and Effia was now on display for the country to see. The victim's families had already been publicly critical of the lack of investigation. Now those criticisms intensified.
At her funeral, Anne's father made it clear he believed his daughter would still be alive. If the authorities had acted quicker.
Paul Martial, Anne's father said, quote, for a year, we were left out in the cold. If forces had been mobilized like now under Bourlais, we might not have been having this funeral today. Paul is referring to the King's prosecutor, Michel Boulet, who you heard from in episode four. Bourlet and investigating judge Jean Marc Conrad were the only two officials who were exempt from criticism because, unlike other jurisdictions, they jumped into action when the cases landed on their desk. Across Belgium, anger in the streets was beginning to spill over. Any time the True was transported, a huge police presence was required to keep keep the crowds at bay, who smashed barriers and tried to overwhelm police to get at him. As people learned of the True's previous crimes of child abduction and rape in his early release from prison, the anger started shifting towards the judicial system.
Public outrage at the catalog of atrocities attributed to this man has escalated into nationwide anger at the system which allowed the True and his accomplices to operate unchecked and at will for years Belgium justice is on trial.
The King's prosecutor Michel Bourlat and investigating judge Jean Marc Conrad became the lone symbols of hope for Belgium justice with support from the victim's families. Also came support from the public. The two took on the case with zeal and began to put the pieces together, investigating the True and his accomplices not only for the six missing girls, but for their possible involvement in a much larger child trafficking network. They quickly started focusing on a corrupt businessman with political connections named Michel Nihoul, who had close contact with the True in his accomplice Michel Lelievre around the time of the last abduction of Letitia Dalles. Michel Leoul was often referred to as Jean Michel. In the days leading up to Letitia's disappearance, there were no less than thirty three phone calls between Nihoul, de True and his accomplice Michel Lelievre. Furthermore, on the day after Letitia's disappearance, Nihoule gave the True and Le Lievre a thousand ecstasy pills with a market value of around fifteen thousand dollars at the time. In early police interviews, Michel Le Lievre said that the True and Nihoul were trying to get him involved in a human trafficking scheme with them, but he claimed he didn't want anything to do with it. Finally, Letitia de Les testified that one of her first memories after waking up into True's house after being kidnapped was overhearing a telephone conversation between De True and a certain quote Jean Michel, where De True had gleefully exclaimed that it all worked out. Nioull was arrested and his mugshot was plastered all over the media. I remember this picture as looking like the embodiment of sleaziness, his pudgy face, unshaven after hours of interrogation, and his shark eyes peering into the camera with scorn. Nioul's face became the symbol of high level connected corruption in Belgium. Not long after the rescue of Sabine and Letitia, the prosecutor Boulet and investigating Judge Conrad were invited to a potluck spaghetti dinner thrown by Letitia's family and community members to celebrate their rescue. When a photo of this dinner was published in a newspaper, De True, whose newly appointed attorneys, protested that Conrad's presence at this dinner was a violation of the principle of objectivity that governs investigating judges. It wasn't a problem that Bourlai was there, as he was a prosecutor. However, Conrad was an investigating judge whose neutrality was sacricynct. When the High Court of Appeal was called to deliberate on this matter, the public was immediately skeptical. Many people felt that this was a pretext to take out an investigating judge who was getting too close to the elite powerbrokers with links to a child trafficking ring. Their skepticism grew into anger when the decision to suspend Conrad was rendered.
Belgium's Supreme Court agreed, with lawyers acting for Mark de True, that the judge had lost his objectivity. A week of wildcat strikes and demonstrations all over the country followed the dismissal of Conrad, whose investigations into the pedophile gang made him a nutal hero. Sirens sounding firemen turned hoses on the law courts, the nation's bikers and Hell's Angels, three thousand of them drove through the capital in protest.
All hell was breaking loose in the streets of Belgium. To understand the context, you have to consider that since the nineteen eighties, there were a slew of unresolved affairs in Belgium where police and government officials were suspected of cover ups. This affair was different. The public had adopted the victims and their families into their hearts. We were talking about children here who were brutally abused and murdered. First there was shock at the discovery and what had happened to these girls. Then there was anger at a judicial system that allowed a man like the True out of prison. Now there was rage against the entire institution of the Belgian state. Remember that Mark the True had already been convicted of kidnapping and raping girls in the eighties and only served a few years of a relatively light sentence. People were beginning to believe that there was a high level cover to hide the states in competence, or even worse, to protect powerful people. As you heard in the CNN cliff, Hell's Angels descended upon Brussels, and fire departments turned their hoses against court houses. Imagine the scene of entire fire department brigades pulling up to the Supreme Court and giving it a good hosing down. The symbolism was powerful. The firemen were rebelling against the judicial system that they saw as dirty and corrupt and in need of cleaning up. This was a pivotal moment in the history of this country. If one of the parents would have grabbed a megaphone and called for the people to burn the city down, I'm convinced it would have happened. Instead, they called for citizens to join them in a peaceful protest. They called La mache blanche or White March, symbolizing peace and innocence.
The Pies de resistance the White March. Three hundred and twenty five thousand people, more than three percent of the population rallied to the call to march on Brussels. Led by the parents of Dutru's victims and families of children still missing, the country is calling for change. Among them a fourteen year old girl whose rescue from the clutches of Mark de True and his gang led to their arrest.
Official estimates of protesters were revised upwards after that report. It's now thought that up to four hundred thousand people took part, over three percent of the population at the time, making it the largest protest in the history of Belgium. For comparison, this would be the equivalent of ten million U S citizens protesting in the streets. It was a moment of national solidarity across all strand hands of Belgian society. This is Bruno Denis, a Belgian citizen who shared with me what it was like to be part of the Marche blanche or white March. Yeah, it was.
It was a crazy time.
I mean we it was a shock for all of us. I mean I had small daughters at that time, myself pretty much the same age as the as the victim. So I was very, very shocked. And every Belgian was revolted by the police that was so disorganized, and and the fact that people were not communicating to each other. We still had two different police departments, Jean Darmerie and local police, so it was it's it brought to the surface all the frustration of the population. Now remember when I walked into the streets and we did the marchial blanche. So it was like a huge national gathering where everyone and all the souls of Belgians, being from Brussels or being from Wallunia or from Flanders, even though we speak different languages, were all in that together. You know that the families of the victims were like typical Belgian families, like one family was from the Flemish side, the other one from the Walloon sides, but pretty much people that are paying their tax, going every day, working in normal jobs. And it's also created this sense of gosh, there is something wrong in this country the way it's organized, Like there is us as normal people, let's say, and there's those politicians organizing a system which is failing. And that created a huge support for those families because I think everyone was very yeah, we felt like them actually, and that's why so much people supported them at empathy for them, and we all went through this this White March and Marche Blanche. So there's been a very very emotional and at the same time defining moment for Belgium as a national state.
I would say.
Nothing would surprise those still morning the dead. They gather outside mark the Truz shabby wooden house in the village of Jumae, where the bodies of two teenage girls were unearthed. We never doubted powerful people were involved, said one man.
This woman a greed. Everyone has their price, she said. Revulsion at the crimes committed in the houses used by Marca true has now been compounded by deepening suspicions of political scandal and cover up. With police officers under arrest and the search for bodies continuing. It seems the revelations in this horrific case have only just begun. Timu at News ten at Jumei in southern Belgium.
It's easy to beat up on police investigations with twenty twenty hindsight, but what I've learned about this case goes way beyond armchair criticism of a botched investigation. To understand it, we need to rewind back to the summer of nineteen ninety five, just after the first two victims, Julie and Melissa, were kidnapped.
Me vis unvouve.
This is a message to the kidnappers. We are still without any news of our girls, Julie and Melissa for two weeks now. We've been waiting in inside. We can no longer take this situation.
On the seventh of July nineteen ninety five. Just two weeks after the abduction, the Gendarmerie of Charlerois, where Mark d Trux was living at the time, sent a fax to their office in Grasselonne, where the girls disappeared. In this facts they called attention to Mark da True as a possible suspect and pointed out as prior record and conviction for kidnapping and rape of miners. After a month of back and forth within the Gendarmerie, they asked their central intelligence arm to build a case against a True, and on August ninth, nineteen ninety five, they held an internal meeting with other regional offices to discuss it. During the same week, they received two separate tips from informants claiming that the True might have been involved with the disappearance of Julian Melissa. This came on top of previous informant statements that d True was building prison cells in his basement to hide future kidnapping victims. This was the moment it all should have ended. Any investigating judge in Belgium would have granted a warrant to search d Tru's property based on this information. Think about it. De True was a known sex offender, previously convicted for kidnapping and raping five girls. Since his release in nineteen ninety two, he had been arrested for molesting a miner at an ice skating rink, and police informants had testified that he was building prison cells in his basements to hide away kidnapped girls. In August of nineteen ninety five, roughly a month after the disappearance of Julian Melissa, two separate informants came forward with suspicions that De True might have been involved with a disappearance. One of them stated that de True told him in June that he had a big opportunity in the pipeline, and the other said that de True recently tried to convince him to help him kidnap children. The True was clearly the gendarmeries number one suspect at this point, So why didn't they ask for a warrant immediately? Well, to do that, they'd have to request a warrant from the judge and inform the regular police force in liege who had jurisdiction. So is this a case of one jurisdiction not sharing information and trying to outdo the other. It wouldn't be the first time we've seen this in Belgium or many other countries for that matter. But we're talking about two eight year old girls. Surely you drop everything and stop the bickering when young, innocent lives are at stake, But they didn't do that. Instead, they held their internal meeting on August ninth to create a plan to undermine the investigating judge and police in Liege. Any such meeting required official notes to be taken for the record, but the minutes of this meeting were either not recorded or were destroyed afterwards. Meanwhile, Julian and Melissa were alive and languishing in d True's sordid dungeon. Their parents were talking to the gendarmes every day and even chasing futile leads themselves. This is the point that you'd expect the gendarmes to roll in like knights in shining armor to vanquish evil and save the girls. A perfect opportunity to show up their rivals in the judicial police, but that didn't happen. It was written in the sky that Dtru's property should have been searched right then and there in the beginning of August. What happened next was astounding. They launched a secret surveillance operation baptized as Operation Othello. It consisted of filming and observing Datru's residence, but only during daylight hours. The judge and police and liege in charge of Julian Melissa's case were kept in the dark. It got up and running on August twenty eighth, after Anne and if You were kidnapped and likely brought to the house. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, as it's belief that Anne and Ifja were transported to Marsinell under the cover of darkness when the gendarmes weren't filming. In his own words, da True later described the situation as saying, quote, I had the little girls Julie and Melissa downstairs in the cellar, and the older girls upstairs. I didn't want them to know about each other. I took them separately to the dining room to eat with me. All of this organization barely left me any free time. Unquote. What d True described was all happening while his house was being surveilled. A few weeks after the operations started, d True's mother again contacted authorities. On September fourth, nineteen ninety five. She said that she'd heard from neighbors complaining that young girls were being brought in and out of one of his houses at night. The case establishing probable cause is overwhelming at this point. Once again, you have to ask the question, why didn't they put their egos aside and seek a warrant. The official line, still to this day, is that no one believed that the girls could have still been alive at that time. But this line doesn't hold up against official statements and tips. We had one informant saying, quote, de True told me he was building cellars to hold girls before exporting them outside of the country unquote. And on top of that, we have D'tru's own mother signaling complaints about young girls being brought in and out of one of his houses. How could that not lead one to believe that there was a chance the girls could be alive, or that other girls might be in the house in danger of being exported out of the country at any time. Nonetheless, Operation Othello dragged on and on for months. August September November. We know, based on autopsy reports and evidence, that Julie and Melissa were alive and in that cellar literally under the noses of the gendarmerie. In November, the True was considered as a suspect in the sexual assault of a young woman in the nearby village of Obey. Her throat was slit and she was left for dead on a bridge. Given his history, in the fact that he had once lived very close to where the crime had happened, he was an obvious person of interest. Although he was later excluded by forensic evidence. Surely the suspicion alone could have been a pretext for a search of his home, another missed opportunity. Finally, the True got into even more trouble, stemming from a November incident where he and his buddy Bernard Weinstein, along with other accomplices, heisted a utility truck and hid it in a hangar. The plan was to break it down and sell off the parts. It's a complicated story, but the short version is that the stolen truck was then stolen from the thieves. Weinstein and de True suspected the other accomplices, so they kidnapped them and tried to torture the truth out of them, but got fingered when one of the captives escaped and alerted police. The theft case was followed up by the municipal police in Charlewaugh and not the Gendarmerie, so they did their job and arrested him, of course, and on December sixth, nineteen ninety five, de True was sent to jail for theft and kidnapping of adults. At this stage, Anne and Effie were no longer in the house, but Julian Melissa were still locked in the basement cellar. It's a chilling and upsetting image. Belgium is a cold and somber place. In December, Julian Melissa were alone in this unheeded house, locked away in a dark and day of dungeon. Next time, on La Monstra, Julian Melissa's last hope as the gendarmes searched the Truce home.
I don't know a single person who would have left the basement after what they heard, if they knew they were searching for your girls. I cannot conceive how they could stop searching after hearing such clear voices.
And Melissa Rousseau's mother Karin, speaks out about the Parliamentary Commission.
It's complicated because his incompetence is irre incomprehensible. When I saw him at the commission, I had the impression I was in front of a man who was afraid. The gendarmes seemed like okay guys who wanted to find the girls, but at the same time they seemed like they were afraid of.
Everythingle Monstra is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Radio, hosted and executive produced by me Matt Graves, produced by Thomas Resimont of Bubble Sound. Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay are executive producers on the behalf of Tenderfoot TV with producer Makeup and Vanity Set. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers on the behalf of iHeartRadio with producer Trevor Young. Original music by Jay Ragsdale, Sound design by Cooper Skinner and Thomas Resimont, mixed and mastered by Cooper Skinner. Cover design by Trevor eilerl Monstra includes archival audio from SONYMA, RTBF Archives and CNN Archives. Special thanks to back Media and Marketing Station sixteen, Jean Savigna and the teams at iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. Find us on social media at Monster Underscore Pod. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.