Marc Dutroux Victims

Case background and investigation

Between June 1995 and August 1996 six girls and young women were abducted in Belgium. According to VRT and Euronews, eight-year-olds Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo disappeared from Grâce-Hollogne, near Liège, on June 24, 1995. An Marchal, 17, and Eefje Lambrecks, 19, vanished in August 1995 while on holiday in Ostend. Sabine Dardenne, 12, was taken in May 1996 while cycling to school near Tournai, and Laetitia Delhez, 14, was taken on August 9, 1996 after leaving a swimming pool in Bertrix.

Marc Dutroux, who had earlier been convicted of sexual offences and released early, was arrested on August 13, 1996 together with his then wife Michelle Martin and Michel Lelièvre. The Brussels Times reports that a witness to the Bertrix abduction had noted part of a vehicle registration, which led investigators to him. Two days later, on August 15, Dardenne and Delhez were found alive in a concealed cellar in his house in Marcinelle, a district of Charleroi. According to Wikipedia's summary of the case, the bodies of Lejeune and Russo were recovered on August 17, 1996 and those of Marchal and Lambrecks on September 3, 1996.

Reporting by NBC News on the trial states that the two eight-year-olds starved in the cellar while Dutroux was in custody for several months on a vehicle theft case, and that Marchal and Lambrecks were drugged and buried alive. Euronews and The Brussels Times describe how police searched the house during that period without finding the hidden cell, that an officer who heard voices attributed them to noise from outside, and that seized videotapes were not reviewed.

Public anger at the handling of the investigation grew after the investigating judge, Jean-Marc Connerotte, was removed from the case. On October 20, 1996 about 300,000 people joined the White March in Brussels, according to VRT, and the affair led to reforms of Belgium's police and justice system. Wikipedia records that Dutroux briefly escaped from custody in April 1998 and was recaptured within hours.

The trial opened in Arlon on March 1, 2004. On June 17, 2004 a twelve-member jury convicted Dutroux of abducting the six girls and of killing Marchal, Lambrecks and an accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, NBC News reported. On June 22 he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Martin received 30 years and Lelièvre 25 years. Michel Nihoul was acquitted of involvement in the kidnappings and received five years for drug and people trafficking offences.

Martin was conditionally released in 2012 and Lelièvre in 2019, according to Euronews. RTBF reported in June 2025 that Dutroux, then 67, remained in prison and that legal experts considered conditional release very unlikely, since the conditions set by law were not met.