Arrested for his role in the kidnapping of Sabine Dardenne and Laëtitia Delhez, Marc Dutroux again cracks and admits to involvement in the kidnappings of Julie & Melissa. Carine Russo talks about the fourteen months of "scandalous silence" surrounding her daughter's disappearance.
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We saw two young girls walking along the street and he said, do you want to earn one hundred and fifty thousand Belgian francs? And I said sure, but how? And then he said we had to kidnap the girls first, and then he'd show me.
These are the words of Claude Tirou describing a conversation with Mark de True just after his release from prison.
And I said, listen, I don't go around kidnapping young girls. And he said, look, it's easy. You grab them from behind the neck with one arm, cover their mouths. Then you just throw them in the back of the van and you can knock them out if you need to. I said, no way, I'm not going to do that. And after he dropped me off at home, I immediately called the police and reported it. When I found out about the disappearance of Sheli and Melissa, I suspected that Mark was involved, and I went back to the police. It's too bad they didn't listen to me.
Psychopaths is somebody who understands emotions, and.
I told them it is a very exceptional that somebody abducts two children at the same time.
To 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 to la monstre. I'm your host, Matt Graves. The release of Mark da True after his first prison sentence marked the beginning of a new wave of depravity that would change this country forever. It began on the eighth of April nineteen ninety two, the day de True was released from prison for good behavior after serving less than half his sentence for thirteen and a half years. His wife, Michelle Martin, marked the day in bold in her journal with just one word freedom. Despite having later claimed that she was manipulated, Michel was certainly excited to jump back into life with de True. She had meticulously planned his release, and their first stop was to see a doctor who granted them with disability status. This allowed them to claim benefits of eighty thousand Belgian francs a month, above the average salary in Belgium at the time. Always thinking ahead, the True got the doctor to prescribe him powerful tranquilizers haldol and rhydnol. Hydnol is roughly ten times stronger than valuum and has come to be known as the date rape drug, often referred to as rufees on the street. So the state granted a psychopath convicted of raping children with early release, a free salary and a steady supply of rufees and sent him on his way.
He was really a master manipulator. I mean, he is a kibosh and known criminal who has been convicted of raping and kidnapping children, and he somehow gets sort of prison early and gets to stay to pay him a pension. On top of that, they gave him the kind of drugs used to rape people. It's crazy, I mean, what's on earth the way they think you.
As soon as November nineteen ninety two, eight months after being released from prison, the police were called to an ice skating rink where Da True was accused of molesting a girl. Nothing came out of it, and De True wasn't arrested. In September of ninety three, a mand True had met while in prison reported that he tried to convince him to help him abduct a young girl, but this wasn't followed up either.
Then.
In nineteen ninety four, Datru and his wife welcomed an eighteen year old girl from Slovakia who wanted to spend the summer in Belgium. He slipped her some roofies and then raped her at home. She didn't even know it happened until it later turned up on a video cassette seized at one of Datru's properties. Apart from his sexual crimes, the True dove right back into stealing for a living as well in nineteen ninety four. In ninety four, De Truz started working with another criminal from France named Bernard Weinstein. Weinstein had recently moved to Belgium from France, where he had spent nine years in prison for theft and armed robbery. He and De Drew worked together on various criminal enterprises, mostly involving a vehicle theft ringd True's crimes with Weinstein bring us to nineteen ninety five, where this series started. Over the next fourteen months, de True in his accomplices, would abduct six young girls whose names we should never forget, Julie Lejeanne, Melissa Rousseau, Anne Marchal, Effi Alambrichs, Sabine Darden, and Letitia DALs. Despite the warning signs his criminal passed and reports that De True might be responsible for the abductions, authorities failed to ever even question him. It wasn't until August of nineteen ninety six, weeks after Letitia de Les was abducted, that Detrit True would be arrested. A witness came forward to identify the license plate of his van seen near where Letitia had disappeared. Eventually, he would admit to abducting Sabine and Letitia, and he led police to his dungeon in Charlewai, where the girls were found alive. You'll recall from episode four that I interviewed a police officer named Michel du Moulin, who got to True to admit to the kidnapping of Letitia d LEAs and took him to the secret dungeon from where Letitia and Sabine d'arden were rescued. After discovering the scale of d Truz's activities. Police strongly started to suspect his involvement with a disappearance of Julian Melissa in nineteen ninety five. De Moulain continued to interrogate to True about this after the discovery of Letitia and Sabine. Here is words from an interview read by an interpreter.
Mark de dru said that he kidnapped Leticia because Sabine wanted a friend. She wanted me to bring her Julie le Jeanne, and I thought, wait a minute, Julie la jean. I was convinced he made a Freudian slip. Julie le jean had gone missing way before Sabine was kidnapped. I knew at this point that we were onto something, so then I really started to squeeze him about Julian and Melissa. After a lot of back and forth, he admitted that Julie and Melissa had been in the dungeon, but that someone else had brought them there.
Two days after taking police to where Sabine and Letitia had been locked away, the True cracked again. On August seventeenth, nineteen ninety six. He said that his friends Bernard Weinstein and Michel Lievre had kidnapped Julian Melissa and brought them to him. He said that they were at one of his properties in a town called sarce La Boussier, and agreed again to take police there. The excitement of finding Sabine and Letitia two days earlier had given the families of Julian Melissa hope. After fourteen months of the worst kind of fear and anxiety, they learned that the true may have been involved with the disappearances of their beloved girls. The fathers of Julian Melissa wasted no time in heading the Charlela to speak with locals and distribute flyers. In interviews with the news media at the time, you could feel a sense of hope in their voices. This is the voice of Gino Rousseau, the father of Melissa.
Knowing that Sabine and Letitia were fond, I came to deliver a three thousand flyers.
We've never lost hope.
But everything we've said since the disappearance of Julian Melissa, and by that I mean the hypothesis of pedophilia and sexual kidnapping, if I can say that way, I ended up being true. So we still have hope, but we are frustrated because it's been fourteen months. But in a way, we're happy to see that everything we've done for Julian Melissa has held other children.
And this is Jean de ni Le Jeanne, the father of Julie from the same interview.
It's wonderful for the two families to be able to get their children back. It's a feeling we'd like to be able to taste as well. We couldn't sleep last night because we're thinking that if the true says something that could help us find Julia Melissa, we don't want to miss anything. Do you think there could be a connection between these two cases.
We think so.
In any case, we hope so because it could be the end of the thread we've been looking for fourteen months. And if we could find the end of that threat, even if the girls aren't in Charlotte, Wah but somewhere else, if they came through here, it would at least be a trace.
It's what we hope.
In any case.
It's hard to imagine actually hoping that your child was in the clutches of a man who was just arrested for kidnapping girls and locking them away in a dungeon. Such was the desperation of these families, it could mean their girls were alive, certainly damaged, but at least alive. The entire nation had gotten to know these families through their relentless campaign to find their missing girls. Most all of us living in Belgium at the time were familiar with the faces of these two cute little girls, Julian Melissa. Everyone was on edge as news spread about the search happening in the town of Sarcee la Buisiere. Douglas d' konigo we heard from in episode two is an investigative journalist who covered this case closely from the start. He described what it was like to be caught up in the whirlwind news cycle from the time that da True was arrested and Sabinea and Letitia were rescued to win the search for Julian Melissa in sarsh Labuisier started.
So here we were the fifteenth of August nineteen ninety six. I just came back from holiday with my colleague. I was doing the news chief on this Thursday. So on Wednesday evening, I remember I got a phone call from my colleague Walter at the book, but he said something might happen with this Lititicia case in Vertrie. She had vanished a few days before, and they just gave me the hints be alert for something happening with this Slatiticia case. You had no idea where to start, where to be, where to begin. I just remember this Thursday evening, must have been around eight o'clock. There was a news wire on bellgaide the agency saying Letitia and being found a live press conference in Charlaha within an hour or so. This was the calmest day at work you could ever imagine, turned into the most crazy one ever. Be immediately sent a reporter to Charleaa. We started doing phone calls to the police. You have to change the car of the newspaper. It was crazy, crazy evening, and we've been working up long past midnight, I guess. And then came the next day. It was Friday, when Belgium woke up with images of Sabina and Lititzia getting out of this cage, welcomed by hundreds of people. I remember the bonfire in Bertrid because they had been copies of a four but a face only. They had thousands, tens of thousands. The whole region was full of these papers. They decided to recollect all these photos of Lititzia missing to put them on a big bonfire, and that was the biggest party they ever had Pertrie. So for us journalists, we on this Friday, we still were in a very small team. We started getting information about Mark True. We started getting innovation information by Michelle Martin. We think we made a special edition of twenty pages. We've been working like like hell this very first day of the True affair, and we ended up in a pizzeria around I think eight or nine in the evening with some colleagues. We just found that we deserved a good meal and a few bottles of good wine. Was really we thought it was the end of a joyful moment in our careers, witnessing deliberation of these two girls, seeing people dancing in the streets. Yeah, and I think just before the pizza arrived, there was the first mobile phone ringing and then the second. And in those days you had these beepers, and every journalist hurt the beep and just a few words saying digging in Salabrizie. And I think from the very first seconds were digging. We knew that Mark the True had a second house in Salabrize.
Yeah.
From that moment on the the story being so joyful turned into a real nightmare. So we didn't finish our pizza. I think some eight pizzas in their cars. We all drove to Sleavisia, very difficult to find, but there was no GPS in those days. I just remember standing there in front of the little church of the very Salabia. It is really the smallest village you can imagine, and this whole village was one. Yeah, I was filled with all these big cars, trucks, police cars of course were there. I think we were like fifteen twenty journalists. We all knew exactly what was happening, but who is going to say it? And I remember this great friend and reporter of the Flemish radio station was there really trembling, and he said, I have to do a comment in the midnight news and the radio. Am I going to say that they are looking here for Julia Melissa? Can I be the first to pronounce these words.
Douglas and his colleague spent a long night in Sarche Le Buissiere, and by the next morning more media had flooded the scene around the search site, and everyone waited in hope and fear. This is a news report from that day.
We're here just a few meters from Detro's house. Since early this morning. There's a certain effervescence here. The gender Marie has sealed off the perimeter by a few hundred meters to keep back onlookers. We can't imagine the worst. We don't dare to pronounce the names of the girls who've been missing for several months. The gendarmes are quite calm and they're not letting any information filter out. Everyone's waiting, waiting for a sign or a gesture that could announce the fatality or the climax of one or the other cases.
The entire nation was glued to their television sets, hoping for the miracle rescue of Sabine and Letitia to repeat itself for Julian Melissa. At one point, everything at the search site stopped and search and excavation teams halted their activities. At six point thirty pm on August seventeenth, nineteen ninety six, the bodies of Julian Melissa were discovered at the Truce property in Sarch Labuisiere. They were found very deep in the ground with their bodies tightly tied up. It was the most horrific outcome imaginable and the cruelest conclusion of fourteen months of pain and suffering for the families.
The accusations against Mark de Trux include kidnap, rape, and murder. His victims were children. At one of da True's homes, police found him digging out his basement but thought nothing of it. By his own later admission, he was building a prison to keep kidnapped children. By the time the police found out, it was too late, the girls were already dead. Patricia Kelly, CNN, Brussels.
Well, I'm driving down the E forty towards Liege from Brussels, and I'm on my way to meet with Karin Rousseau, who is the mother of one of the victims, Melissa Rousseau, who was abducted along with Julu Lejeanne in nineteen ninety five. And I'm actually quite nervous about this. Karine Rousseau is an incredible woman. She doesn't really like to talk to journalists anymore. But after about a year of trying, I finally somehow got her to agree to meet with me, and I don't blame her. I mean, for the last twenty six years, her life has been very difficult. Not only did she lose her child, but she was lied to by the police and mistreated by the judiciary, and then of course the whole media circus that followed and to a certain extent still follows her today. Anyway, I don't want to just drag her through all of the painful memories. I really want to ask her about some of the loose ends, and of course I won't be the first to look into that, but some questions that still really need to be answered. Here, okay, Here I am pulling off.
The bridge, arriving in goas a new liege, and I'm driving by this god forsaken bridge where the girls disappeared.
Twenty five, almost twenty six years ago.
I guess.
Kareine and Gino Rousseau are now two of the most recognized faces in Belgium. They never wanted it to be this way. Belgium is actually quite a separated country. The Flemish speaking region in the north called Flanders and the French speaking region in the south called Wallonia are very different on speaking. They don't always get along very well. The families of Anne and Effia from Flanders and Julian Melissa from Moolonia had created a bond that resonated with the entire country. Their very public struggle capture the hearts and minds of normal Belgians in a way that's hard to explain. The moment that Julian and Melissa's bodies were discovered is far from the end of this story. What follows strains the limits of believability. I wanted to meet with Karin Hussou and ask her about some things that still don't sit right with me to this day. She welcomed me warmly into her house. It was an unseasonably hot day and Gino was mowing the lawn, which you can hear in the background. Luckily he finished up before I sat down with Karin to talk. You will, however, hear a lot of background noise as we sat outside, and that infamous bridge over the highway is not very far off in the distance. Karine looked great. It was heartening to see her smile. You have to remember that we all got to know her on television in the middle of the worst circumstances imaginable. The footage of her in the hastily organized press conference after the discovery of Julie and Melissa's body. Is the purest physical embodiment of suffering I think I've ever seen. She speaks extremely well, with a distinguishable twang of Liege accent, which she says she doesn't like, but I find charming. I'm relieved that the atmosphere is comfortable and that she seems relaxed. I'd like to share something from an incredible book she published in twenty sixteen called Fourteen Months. It's a collection of diary entry she made during the fourteen months between when Melissa disappeared and her body was found. I asked Karine if she might be willing to read a powerful passage from this book, and she agreed. She wrote it on December twenty seventh, nineteen ninety five, eight months before learning of the death of her beautiful child, Melissa.
Melissa, Mimi, Mimi, my little girl. I call you in the empty house, just to hear my voice resonate with your name like before, and a hope for a tenth of a second that you'll answer. But alas I only hit a wall of silence, the silence that is driving me crazy. That wraps me up in thickens. The silence that is drowning me, silence of your absence, silence of your disappearance, silence of the legal system, silence of the powerful, scandalous silence, accomplice of crime and misfortune. I could never stand the silences, the things unsaid. Do you remember? I could never stand to let any silence come between us, between your father and me, between your brother and you, between any of you and me. I've always been a breaker of silence, no matter what the price, even if it hurt for me. Silence is the beginning of the end, a harbinger of death, the opposite of life. Never could I stand silence.
This was written on a cold December night, six months after the disappearance of Melissa. The silence Karin wrote about then was not only about missing a rambunctious little girl running around the house. It was about the intolerable silence of police and the judiciary. Was this silence just a normal course of action for a case that had gone cold, or could it be something much more sinister. It's hard to imagine that police might have had an idea of who kidnapped Julian Melissa, but never for a warrant or made any effort to make an arrest. But if they did know and did nothing, why who are they trying to protect? It sounds like a conspiracy theory born from the frustration of embittered parents and a community fed up with law enforcement's lack of progress, and many people today insist that's exactly what it is, nothing more than baseless accusations. But sometimes conspiracies are more than theory and need to be put to the test. Meanwhile, back at the crime scene and sarch Labuisiere, where Julian Melissa's bodies were found, police made another shocking discovery. Approximately two hours after finding the girl's bodies, the excavation team found another body. The corpse was that of a middle aged white male showing signs of torture, and autopsy confirmed that this man had been drugged and tortured, but the final cause of death was asphyxiated after having been buried alive. What they didn't know at the time was that there was a link between this corpse and the two teenage girls, Anne Martial and Effie Alambricks, who had gone missing over a year earlier from the Belgian seaside. Next time, on La Montre. As people begin to learn about Dtrue's previous crimes of child abduction and rape in his early release from prison, angers start 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. Belgian justice is on trial.
The country is on the brink of revolution. As citizens take to the street protest.
It brought to the surface all the frustration of the population.
Now remember when I.
Walked into the streets and we did the marcha blanche. So it was like a huge national gathering where everyone and all the souls of Belgians, being from Brussels, or being from Walloonya or from Flanders, even though we speak different languages, were all in that together.
The Monster is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, hosted and executive produced by me Matt Graves, produced by Thomas Resumont of Bubble Sound. Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay are executive producers on the behalf of Tenderfoot TV, with producer, Makeup and Vanity. 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 Eiler. La Monstra includes archival audio from Sonoma, 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.