Marc Dutroux

The victims

Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo, both eight, vanished on 24 June 1995 after going out for a walk near Liège. Two months later, An Marchal, 17, and Eefje Lambrecks, 19, two Flemish friends on holiday on the Belgian coast, disappeared after an evening out in August 1995. In May 1996, 12-year-old Sabine Dardenne was taken while cycling to school in Tournai, and in August 1996, 14-year-old Laetitia Delhez was abducted while walking home from a swimming pool in Bertrix. Sabine and Laetitia survived. Julie, Mélissa, An and Eefje did not.

A man already known to the justice system

In 1989 Marc Dutroux was convicted of raping children and sentenced to 13 years, but he was freed early for good behaviour after serving about three years. He was therefore on conditional release when the abductions of 1995 and 1996 took place. The girls were held in a concealed cellar at his house in Marcinelle, near Charleroi, where they were sexually abused. Julie and Mélissa died while held there, and An and Eefje were also killed. Bernard Weinstein, an accomplice, was killed in November 1995.

Missed chances

Later investigations showed how many warning signs had been missed. The gendarmerie had kept a file on Dutroux since 1985, known as Operation Othello, and had begun watching him in late August 1995, shortly after An and Eefje were taken, yet that material was not passed to the investigating court until long after the rescue. In December 1995 Dutroux was arrested and jailed for several months over a stolen van. During that period police searched the Marcinelle house. According to reporting by the Brussels Times on the 30th anniversary, an officer heard girls’ voices from behind a wall but the hidden space was not found, and videotapes seized in the search were not viewed.

Arrest, rescue and a nation’s anger

The break came in August 1996, when a witness to Laetitia’s abduction gave police the licence plate of Dutroux’s van. He was arrested on 13 August 1996 together with his then wife, Michelle Martin, and accomplice Michel Lelièvre. Two days later Dutroux led police to the cellar, and Sabine and Laetitia were found alive on 15 August. On 17 August the bodies of Julie and Mélissa were found at another of his properties in Sars-la-Buissière, and the remains of An and Eefje were recovered at Jumet on 3 September.

Public outrage grew when investigating judge Jean-Marc Connerotte, who had led the rescue inquiry, was removed from the case after attending a fundraising dinner for victims’ families. On 20 October 1996 a huge crowd joined the White March in Brussels, demanding justice and a reformed judiciary — more than 300,000 people, by most Belgian accounts, in what was described as the country’s largest gathering since the Second World War. In April 1998 Dutroux briefly escaped from the courthouse in Neufchâteau and was recaptured within hours, prompting the resignations of the justice and interior ministers.

The Arlon trial and its aftermath

The trial opened before the assize court in Arlon on 1 March 2004. More than three months later, on 22 June 2004, Dutroux was convicted of abductions, unlawful detention, rapes and murders and sentenced to life imprisonment. Michelle Martin received 30 years for her role and Michel Lelièvre 25 years. A fourth defendant, businessman Michel Nihoul, was acquitted of involvement in the abductions but received five years for drug trafficking and criminal association.

Martin was granted conditional release in 2012. After Belgium’s Court of Cassation rejected appeals by prosecutors and some families, she left prison on 28 August 2012 to live in a convent of Poor Clare nuns in Malonne. Lelièvre was granted conditional release in September 2019 and freed later that year after about 23 years in custody, under strict conditions including a ban on contacting victims. Dutroux’s own bid for release in 2013 was refused, and in 2019 a court ordered a fresh psychiatric assessment at his lawyers’ request; he remains in prison.

Recent developments

On 31 July 2024, a search of Dutroux’s cell in Nivelles prison found envelopes containing about 200 photographs of nude women, some of whom may have been minors. By June 2025 prosecutors considered they had grounds to seek a criminal court referral for possession of child sexual abuse images, and a handwriting analysis was ordered. Dutroux denies the images are his and claims they were planted. As of August 2026, the 30th anniversary of his arrest, the investigation was still open, and Julie’s father, Jean-Denis Lejeune, publicly criticised its slow pace.

How the case changed Belgium

A parliamentary commission of inquiry, whose hearings were broadcast live on television, found serious errors and a damaging lack of coordination between police services, though it did not conclude there had been an organised cover-up. Its work paved the way for the political Octopus agreement, which replaced the old split between municipal police forces and the gendarmerie with a single integrated police service organised at federal and local levels. Other reforms followed: the Franchimont law strengthened victims’ rights in criminal proceedings, a High Council of Justice was created in 1999, specialised sentence enforcement courts began work in 2007, and the missing children’s centre Child Focus was founded. Three decades on, the case remains Belgium’s defining example of how institutional failure can cost lives.