All language subtitles for Worlds.Most.Evil.Killers.S01E04.English

-In the summer of 1996,

the whole
of Belgium was in shock

when two young girls
who'd been kidnapped,

raped and tortured were rescued
from a makeshift dungeon

below a house in Marcinelle.

As the weeks passed, the bodies
of four other young girls

were found buried at properties
linked to the same man.

-Some of them starved to death.

Others were buried alive.

These are some of the most
horrendous crimes

that any criminologist
will ever come across.

-It was the beginning
of a terrible nightmare

for the entire nation.

-It was such a huge thing.

No one could believe that such
a person could exist in Belgium.

It was unthinkable.

-With the help of his wife,
Michelle Martin,

convicted pedophile
Marc Dutroux's unhealthy desire

for young girls
had turned deadly.

The youngest victims who died
in his homemade dungeon

were just 8 years old.

-It is unimaginable cruelty
and something that sets

Dutroux apart
from some other serial killers.

-Marc Dutroux, the man dubbed
the Monster of Marcinelle,

had earned his place as one of
the world's most evil killers.

[ Theme music playing ]

♪

♪

-It was a case that sent
shockwaves across Europe.

For a year during the mid-1990s,

a Belgian killer had been
abducting,

torturing,
and raping young girls,

keeping them chained inside
his abandoned properties.

It wasn't until the summer
of 1996,

when two of the young girls
were found alive

inside a basement in Marcinelle,

that the Belgian public
discovered the heinous crimes

committed by Marc Dutroux.

-Behind the facade of this
perfectly ordinary-looking house

lay a chamber of horrors.

Down in that cellar,
it's alleged that Dutroux built

a cage to keep his victims.

They were locked away
like animals,

raped repeatedly
and mentally tortured.

-But this killer's story
begins over 60 years ago.

Born in Ixelles on
the 6th of November, 1956,

Marc Dutroux
was the oldest of five children.

-His parents were teachers and,
at one point,

emigrated to the Belgian Congo
where they taught,

but when the crisis
erupted in that country,

they brought Dutroux back
to Belgium in 1960.

-His parents eventually
separated in 1971,

and 15-year-old Dutroux
stayed with his mother.

-We know that his mother
was incredibly dominant.

His father was very aggressive.

So I think it was quite
a hostile environment

to grow up in,

and I think those attachments
or lack of attachments

with his parents
in those early years

did play quite a role
in the person he became.

-Trained as an electrician
but often unemployed,

Dutroux soon began
a long criminal history,

including convictions for
car theft,

mugging, and drug dealing.

-Dutroux had a lot of contact
with the police.

He stepped up from car theft

into a rather grand form
of car theft,

which involved shipping
quite expensive luxury cars,

which he'd stolen in Belgium,

out of the country
into Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

-The profit from his crimes
led to Dutroux

owning seven properties

in and around the city
of Charleroi,

45 miles south of Brussels.

By 1983, 26-year-old Dutroux
was married with two children,

but he'd begun an affair
with a schoolteacher

called Michelle Martin.

The 23-year-old would eventually
become Dutroux's partner in life

and crime, with whom
he also had three more children.

The severity of Dutroux's crimes
escalated from theft

to sexual assault,

and in 1989, he was found guilty
of the abduction

and rape of five young girls,

one of whom was just
11 years old.

-Marc Dutroux was a predator

who selected his prey
very carefully.

He wanted to choose people
who were easy to target

in the first place,
easy to abduct

but also easy to manipulate once
he had them under his control,

so he would go for the most
vulnerable victims

that he could find
that fulfilled his desires.

-Dutroux's now-wife, Michelle,

was found to be complicit
in the abductions

and served two years
of a five-year sentence.

-The psychiatrists suggest

that Martin and Dutroux,
husband and wife,

are a classic example
of folie a deux --

that one egged the other on

and that, therefore,
the sum of the two of them

was even more dangerous
than one alone.

-I think when we look
at the relationship

between Dutroux and his wife,

who was implicated
in many of his crimes,

it is quite interesting.

It is quite possible
that some people see her

as just another
one of his victims,

somebody else who was
manipulated and coerced by him,

and when we look at Marc Dutroux
and his behavior,

he is incredibly
charming at times,

and he can be very persuasive.

So it wouldn't surprise me if
he'd set out with the intention

of recruiting somebody
to help him in his crimes,

and this is somebody
who fell for his charms

and went along with it.

-Dutroux was released on parole
in 1992

after serving three years
of a 13-year sentence,

having showed good behavior.

-I find that extraordinary.

You can be convicted of the rape
and abduction of five girls,

the youngest of which is 11,
and you can walk out of jail

after three years of
a 13-1/2-year sentence.

-Georges Huercano,

a Belgian investigative
journalist,

has spent over 10 years
reporting on the Dutroux case.

[ Speaking French ]

-Dutroux is an expert
manipulator.

He made everyone cry.

He made everybody believe that
his family had abandoned him.

As an exemplary prisoner,
he came out very quickly.

The prisons are overpopulated,
and, for authorities,

he was nothing more
than a car thief.

-By the summer of 1995,
Dutroux was a free man

and living with his wife,
Michelle,

in one of his Charleroi homes
in the suburb of Marcinelle.

On the 24th of June,
two eight-year-old girls,

Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo,

went missing from the town
of Grace-Hollogne

just 55 miles east of Charleroi.

♪

-As there was no ransom request,

no information about whether
they had been kidnapped,

probably they had been
abducted by a predator,

a pedophile who has in
most cases killed his victims

to silence them...

But who could imagine that a man
was going to take away the girls

to keep them alive,
locked alive, inside a cellar?

Nobody.

-Dutroux, with the help
of his wife, Michelle,

had abducted the two children

and were keeping them prisoner
inside a homemade dungeon.

-Dutroux constructed a cell
beneath his house in Charleroi,

which was seven feet long,
three feet wide,

and approximately
five feet high,

hidden behind a very strong
elaborate door,

which was then covered
with concrete

and was hidden
in his basement.

He put these two eight-year-old
girls, Lejeune and Russo,

into the cell

and kept them there for
the next three months.

-As Julie and Melissa remain
locked up in Dutroux's dungeon,

his sexual depravity
was escalating,

and just two months later,
he would abduct two more girls,

but this time,
it would lead to murder.

On August 23, over 100 miles
away on the Belgian coast,

two more girls disappeared.

Best friends 17-year-old
An Marchal

and 19-year-old
Eefje Lambrecks

had gone missing
while on a camping trip.

When the girls
didn't return home,

their friends instantly alerted
Eefje's father, Jean.

-We immediately had the feeling
that something was wrong

because she was always
open about things.

She always said where
she was going and who had seen.

She would never not tell anyone
and just stay away.

That was not
what Eefje would do.

-The last reported sighting
of An and Eefje

was at midnight in the central
train station of Oostende,

a coastal town
in northern Belgium.

Initially, the local police had
dismissed the parents' concerns.

-They did not draw up a report.

They said, "They must have
gone out.

They'll return soon,"

but during those first days,
nothing was done,

and afterwards,
their friends contacted us,

and we went to see
the police at Hasselt.

They did respond,
and at that stage,

the police at the coast
started investigating.

The police then asked questions,
if she was...

You know, if perhaps she was
addicted to drugs or something.

My response was that Eefje
did not approve of those things.

She was against it.

I did not believe anything
like that,

but anyway, you start doubting,
or sometimes,

you start wondering,
"Did I miss something?"

-An Marchal's father, Paul,

went to visit
investigative journalist

Douglas De Coninck to see
if he could help.

-I remember very well that

Paul Marchal
came into the office.

He pleaded, "Please, please,
please put a picture

of my daughter
on your front page,"

and I think while we were
laughing at him and said,

"Oh, God.
This poor man,

his daughter is sure somewhere
partying with some friends,

and she will show up
in a few days."

-But An and Eefje
were not out partying.

In fact, Marc Dutroux,

with the help of a man
called Michel Lelievre,

had abducted, raped and murdered
the two young women.

-They were inveigled
into the van

that Dutroux used
for the abductions.

Because this is a dungeon
beneath the house

was full of the two
eight-year-olds,

they chained these two girls to
a bed in the rest of the house.

When exactly Marchal
and Lambreck died,

and precisely how, has always
been a little mysterious.

What is not in doubt is that
they were tortured and raped

and eventually strangled.

-In December 1995,

Dutroux was arrested in relation
to a car theft.

He was convicted and served
almost four months in prison.

During this time, the police
searched his Marcinelle home.

They were agonizingly close
to finding out

Dutroux's darkest secret.

-Twice in December 1995,
on the 13th and the 19th,

police searched
the house in Charleroi.

One of the most poignant

and tragic parts
of that search,

which included
a search of the basement,

was that the police failed
to identify the dungeon.

Even more horrifying,

the two policemen
who searched the house

were accompanied by
a locksmith

who had helped them.

The locksmith
told the policemen

that he heard screams.

The policemen said,
"Oh, it must be from outside,"

and disregarded him.

The terrible truth is it was
from the two eight-year-olds

hidden in this cell,
this dungeon.

-At Dutroux's house, officers
had also found

several VHS cassette tapes,

but investigators didn't
watch them until much later.

-There was a video, a home video
there made by Marc Dutroux

where he was filming
the developments

in the works in his child cage.

This was essential proof that
they were on the right track,

but for some strange reason,
they did this house search,

and they didn't exploit

the information
they got from it.

-The police mistakes
came at a fatal cost.

By the time Dutroux arrived
back home after his release

from prison in March 1996,

Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo
were dead.

His wife, Michelle, had allowed
the two eight-year-old children

to starve to death
in the makeshift dungeon.

-Dutroux had told her to feed
their large German shepherd dog,

look after him.

He neglected to tell Michelle,
apparently,

to feed the two eight-year-olds
in the dungeon.

Some say, in defense
of Dutroux's wife,

that she was so terrified
of the whole idea of the dungeon

and the fact
that they might do something

or she wouldn't be able to
to control them

meant that she couldn't go in,

and so she therefore
allowed them to starve to death.

I've always regarded that

as an over-benevolent
description

of what probably happened,

but what I do believe
is that,

between them,

they allowed these children,
eight-year-old girls,

to suffer dreadfully,

and there is no excuse
in my mind for that.

-Dutroux didn't wait long

to find a replacement for
the two girls.

On the 28th of May, 1996,

he kidnapped 12-year-old
Sabine Dardenne

on her way to school,
and locked her in his dungeon.

For the next three months,

Dutroux emotionally
tortured Sabine

by making her think
she was in contact

with her mother and father.

-She wrote letters
to her parents,

but obviously
he didn't send the letters.

He read them.

He used what was in the letters
to manipulate her,

yet she resisted.

Despite everything, she did not
create that attachment with him.

-Dutroux was still on the hunt
for more girls.

On August 9, he abducted
14-year-old Laetitia Delhez

as she walked home from her
local swimming pool,

before taking her back
to his Marcinelle home

to join Sabine Dardenne
in the underground dungeon.

But Laetitia's kidnapping
would be the first step

in the dramatic downfall
of Marc Dutroux.

-By accident, it was
an eyewitness

who saw her being bundled
into a van on that day

and got part
of the number plate.

-The man had seen a suspicious
white van

driving away
from the swimming pool

where Laetitia was last seen,

a white Renault Trafic
with a license plate

beginning with the letters
"F-F-R."

Prosecutor Michel Bourlet
began to investigate.

[ Man speaking French ]

-I had the beginning
of a license plate

and a make of car
to work with.

There were 20 names
that matched,

and the police officer said,

"Ah, among these 20 names
there is a certain,"

and he said that
with a Flemish accent

because he was Flemish,

"Dutroux, Dutroux,
this name sounds familiar."

So I asked,
"Who is this Dutroux?"

"He's a man who lives
in Charleroi

who owns a white van
with a license plate

beginning with the letters FFR

who was sentenced in 1989
on multiple abductions

and rape charges
to 13 years in prison,

so he is
a high-profile suspect."

-One of the police officers
working with Michel

had been involved
in a separate investigation

called Operation Othello,
led by authorities in Charleroi

looking into
Dutroux's movements.

-He provides us with

all the information
from that dossier,

which he had been collecting
since July 1995.

We are currently in August 1996.

-Investigator Michel and his
partner, Jean-Marc Connerotte,

found even more damning
information in the Othello file:

the testimony of a man
who'd been approached by Dutroux

to help him kidnap girls.

-He had asked a certain
Claude Thirault,

from the Charleroi region,

who is also a fugitive
who needed money.

He said to him, "I'll pay you
to help me abduct girls,"

but this guy was
a police informant,

so he went and told
the gendarmerie,

"There's a guy named
Marc Dutroux who lives there.

He offered me money
to kidnap children."

-With such strong evidence,
obviously, Mr. Connerotte and I

decided immediately
to take major action

concerning Marc Dutroux.

-Michel and his team were
planning a synchronized raid

on all seven of
Marc Dutroux's Charleroi homes.

If they could find him,
it may lead them

to missing 14-year-old
Laetitia Delhez,

and there was a good chance
that she may still be alive,

but they needed to act fast.

On the 13th of August, over 40
special ops police officers

took part in
a synchronized raid

on all seven of Dutroux's
properties in Charleroi.

[ Man speaking French ]

-At about 1:00 in the afternoon,
I was at the headquarters

of the gendarmerie of Charleroi
at the very moment

when Mr. Connerotte
received the news

that in one the properties
in Sars-la-Buissiere,

Dutroux was found with
his wife and the vehicle.

This was the time to act
as it seemed

that Dutroux was about to change
the license plate on the van.

-Dutroux, his wife,
Michelle Martin,

and an accomplice,
Michel Lelievre,

were taken in
for questioning.

Over several hours
of interrogations,

all three maintained
their innocence.

-He was consistent in his lies,

following each lie
by telling another lie.

It was a manipulative behavior,

but otherwise,
he stayed very, very calm.

Belgian authorities
had no choice

but to eventually
release Lelievre,

who denied being
with Dutroux

on the day
Laetitia was kidnapped.

But moments after he left
the police station in Charleroi,

a startling witness account
came through.

[ Man speaking French ]

-The neighbors of his property
in Marcinelle saw Marc Dutroux

and Lelievre return
on Friday evening

carrying a child
covered by a blanket

as they returned to his house,
to Dutroux's house.

-Lelievre was immediately
re-arrested

and taken back into custody.

As his accomplice's alibi
began to crumble,

Dutroux's interrogation
took a drastic turn.

[ Man speaking French ]

-Dutroux knows that we had proof

that Laetitia was in the car,
so he says,

"Yes, I was in Bertrix,"
which he denied at the start.

"I met a young girl.
I talked with her,

and then she told me
she was tired of her parents."

Stories because there were
parts against him,

and he changes the stories to
suit his narrative on the spot.

Then at the same time,

Lelievre said she was with
Dutroux,

and finally, on Thursday,
he ends up telling us,

now that all of these parts of
the story contradict each other,

"I will give you
the two girls."

-Dutroux pointed to a poster
inside the interrogation room

of another missing girl,
Sabine Dardenne.

Twelve-year-old Sabine had been
kidnapped by him in May.

-Two days after his arrest,

Dutroux confessed and took
the police to the basement

where Sabine and Laetitia
were found alive.

-On the 15th of August, 1996,

Dutroux led the investigators
to his property in Marcinelle

where, hidden behind
a false wall in the basement,

was the dungeon where he'd been
keeping Sabine Dardenne

and Laetitia Delhez
locked up.

-He pulled down the wardrobe

and inside the cage behind
was Sabine and Laetitia.

-And then we got this, yeah,
that moment of incredible news

that two kidnapped girls
had been found alive

in the cage of a person
who had been convicted

before for this kind of crimes.

-It was such a huge thing.

All the journalists were
on the scene at the time.

The news, magazines were there.

It is as if there had been
a terrorist attack.

No one could believe that such
a person could exist in Belgium.

It was unthinkable.

-Douglas De Coninck was
one of the few journalists

who was allowed
to enter Dutroux's basement.

-We had seen pictures.
We had been seen images,

but being there is difficult
to describe

because it's, like,
constructed to...

You wouldn't even put a dog
in such a small place.

This was really the kind of cage

they made to hide girls
from the police.

-As Belgium awoke in shock
to the news

that a man
from Marcinelle had abducted,

raped, and tortured two girls
over several months,

the families of Sabine Dardenne
and Laetitia Delhez

rejoiced that their daughters
had been found alive.

[ Man speaking French ]

-There are rare occasions
when we find the relatives,

and the policemen
or a magistrate

has the opportunity
to return a child

who had been kidnapped
in such circumstances alive.

It's fantastic, obviously.

It is a joy that can be
shared with the parents.

-Over the next 48 hours,
investigators continue

to relentlessly question
Dutroux.

They were desperate to find
the two eight-year-old girls,

Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo,

who had been missing
for almost a year.

-Marc Dutroux was playing a game
with these investigators.

He knew that he never would
get out of prison anymore.

He knew that he would presented

as the most famous criminal
we've ever had in Belgium,

and he wanted to exploit
that situation.

-He had to be flattered.

They had to make him believe

that they believed
his pitiful story,

make him believe that things
were not that bad for him.

"It's true that you were
ingenious on this one.

You were not caught,
and you fooled the police

and here and there."

At that point, his ego
had been flattered,

and little by little,
he let information slip.

That's his attitude.

-After 48 hours of this
cat-and-mouse game,

Marc Dutroux finally revealed
to investigators

that he had abducted
the two eight-year-old girls.

Officer Jean Pierre Adam
was in the interrogation room.

[ Man speaking French ]

-As he did not say
he had killed them,

we hoped they would be alive.

We had to go fast.

It could have been a matter
of life or death for them.

They could very well have been
left there

without food or drink.

-But there was no happy
ending this time.

In the back garden of Dutroux's
house in Marcinelle,

police found the bodies of
Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo.

[ Man speaking French ]

-I'll remember all my life
the moment that I learned

that we had found the bodies
of Julie and Melissa.

It was disappointing because we
always hoped to find them alive.

It was a great moment
of solitude.

Yeah.

I put myself in the place
of the parents.

For them, it is 100,000 times
worse,

but even for me
and my colleagues

who were looking for
the right information,

well, we were
extremely disappointed.

-I could only imagine
what the parents of Lejeune

and Russo must have felt.

I mean, not only have
their daughters disappeared,

but they're allowed
to starve to death

and are then unceremoniously
shoved in a bin bag

and buried in the garden.

It is unimaginable cruelty
and something that sets

Dutroux apart
from some other serial killers.

-Despite the bodies
of both girls

being found buried
in the garden of his house,

Dutroux denied both abducting
and killing them.

-"Well, it's not me
who took them away.

It's not my fault
that they died."

Yes.
That's what he said to me.

It's Martin who should have
fed them,

who did not come to feed them.

-The police also found the body
of a French man

named Bernard Weinstein
buried in Dutroux's garden.

It's believed that he helped

Dutroux kidnap Julie
and Melissa in June 1995.

Back in the police station,

the pedophile soon confessed
to abducting another two girls.

-In the meantime, we also had
a fairly rapid confession

about the abduction of An
and Eefje on the Belgian coast.

-It was the news that Eefje's
father, Jean, had been dreading.

[ Man speaking French ]

-To begin with,
we were not told anything.

Then the police started
asking questions,

if we had any more people,
children,

if he'd been involved
with more children.

Finally, Dutroux also admitted
that he had An and Eefje.

-Dutroux pointed investigators
to a property

in the Jumet district
of Charleroi

owned by Bernard Weinstein,

the accomplice whose body
had just been found

in Dutroux's
back garden in Marcinelle.

On September 3, 1996,

near a shack not far away
from the house,

police exhumed the bodies of
An Marchel and Eefje Lambrecks.

They had been missing
for over a year.

Postmortem results revealed
the pair had been buried alive.

-At that time, it was only then
that people began to make more

or less the connection
between everything.

No one had made the link.

-The nation was
completely stunned.

Between 1995 and 1996,
Marc Dutroux,

a convicted child abuser,
had abducted

and raped six young girls aged
between eight and 19 years old.

Four of them were now dead.

-For him, his fantasy
was to take young girls.

He soon realized that Julie
and Melissa

were sexually
too young for him,

so he took ones
that were a little older.

That was An and Eefje,

but he found that they were
too difficult to manage

because they were older,
stronger, more intelligent.

There was one that escaped
several times.

He had to catch her again,

and it became unmanageable
for him,

so he killed them as well.

In his crazy and depraved mind,
the first ones were too young,

the others were too old.

He chose in between, so he first
took Sabine and then Laetitia.

-These are some of the most
horrendous crimes

that any criminologist
will ever come across,

but this is somebody
who just wouldn't have felt bad

about his victims at all.

He has no sense of connection
to them or empathy with them.

-Due to the size of the ongoing
investigation,

it would take seven years before

Dutroux, Martin and their
accomplice, Michel Lelievre,

were finally taken to trial.

During those years, the sheer
gruesomeness of Dutroux's crimes

coupled with the major
shortcomings of police

investigations led to widespread
protests across the country.

-It's as if something
falls on your head,

and you say to yourself,
"But how did we not see it?

How did we not see it happen?"

Those events deeply
shook society.

You wondered what we're going
to build tomorrow on.

-Dutroux's case had grabbed
the headlines

of every news outlet in Belgium

and had become
an international story.

Belgian society was on
the verge of breaking point.

The trial against Marc Dutroux,
his wife, Michelle,

and an accomplice,
Michel Lelievre,

was due to begin
on the 1st of March, 2004,

nearly eight years
after the bodies of four girls

had been found in two properties
linked to Dutroux.

By the time the trial arrived,
the story had become

one of the biggest controversies
in Belgian history.

-Belgian society still remains
deeply divided

over whether they've got
the right people in the dock

and just how thoroughly
the case has been investigated.

-You lived and went
to sleep with this trial.

It was like an addiction.

There was so many pages
in the newspaper,

so many hours
on television.

-The prosecution had brought
over 200 charges

against Dutroux
and his accomplices.

-There was the kidnapping,
the abduction,

rape and murder of young girls,

so if you multiply
that by four or five,

there were roughly 235,
255 charges attributable to him.

The trial began on
March 1, 2004,

at the Arlon assize
court in southeast Belgium.

Dutroux pleaded guilty
to the murder

of his French accomplice,
Bernard Weinstein,

but denied kidnapping

eight-year-olds Julie Lejeune
and Melissa Russo

and killing camping friends
An Marchel and Eefje Lambrecks.

-He continued to deny
kidnapping Julie and Melissa,

and he also denied the fact
that he had killed An and Eefje,

but the most important thing

with regards to the kidnapping
of Julie and Melissa,

he said, "The death of Julie
and Melissa is not my fault.

I was in prison."

-He said
one was already deceased

and the other practically dead.

He tried, he said,
that's what he said,

to save her,
but he could not do it.

He could not do it,
so he buried them.

-As the prosecution began
to make its case,

the most gruesome details
of Dutroux's crimes

were laid bare in front
of the eyes of the jury

and of the families
of the girls.

[ Man speaking
foreign language ]

-They asked about the photos,
how they had been found.

Photos had been taken,
and I left the courthouse.

I did not look at those photos.

They were too horrible.

-True, that it's very dramatical
to be there

because we have to see,
again,

everything that was not so easy
to see and to accept.

-The testimony of kidnapped
12-year-old Sabine Dardenne,

now age 21, described how
Dutroux had repeatedly raped her

during the 80 days

she was held prisoner
inside Dutroux's dungeon.

-For 14 weeks,
the self-obsessed psychopath

used the courtroom
as his stage,

communicating
with his captive audience

from behind the glass cage

where he was made to sit
for his own protection.

-I start to
understand him better

just by hearing him
talking in direct.

For example, one of the moments
that I never forget

was the air-co
didn't work any more.

It was just terribly hot
in that courtroom,

and there were
some people saying,

"We cannot go through this.

We should stop today and wait
until the plumber has arrived,"

and then, suddenly, Marc Dutroux
knocked on his glass

and said, "I can fix it."

He started
a whole explanation about

what was wrong with the system
and how to fix it,

and he just had to be
released from the box,

and he would do it.

-Marc Dutroux is a textbook
psychopath, in my opinion,

and when we look
at psychopathy,

these are people who are not
as emotionally complex

as the rest of us.

They don't have that
same depth of feeling.

They lack a conscience.

They operate pretty much
like robots,

so they are able to kind of
live in the present,

just simply follow their own
wants and desires,

but I think one important thing
to remember about psychopaths

is they're not mentally ill.

They are rational.

They're aware of what
they're doing.

Their actions are the results
of choice.

-What many found so disturbing
was the role

of Dutroux's wife, Michelle,
who became a silent witness

and, at times, accomplice
to his heinous crimes.

-This Michelle Martin,
she's a total riddle

because she's different.

She's not like Dutroux.

I think if she had not met
Dutroux,

she might not have done
what she did,

and here, she also tried
to explain she regretted it,

but it's so strange that,
as an explanation,

she was going to feed the dog,
and, in the house,

the kids were downstairs,
yet she did not go to them.

How can people live
with themselves?

It's not them who created
the horror

but the fact that
they can live alongside it...

-Dutroux's defense lawyers
argued that he was part

of a Europe-wide
pedophile network.

-It was very weird because

Marc Dutroux had changed his
lawyers on several occasions,

and now he showed up
with four lawyers

with each a different
defense line.

There was one saying,
"He's a psychopath.

Don't listen to all these
stories about networks

or a criminal organization
behind him. No, it's him alone."

It was his other lawyer saying,
"He's part of a big network.

He's just the guy
who kidnaps girls,

brings them to sex parties
and cleans up the mess."

-But the jury ruled out
the involvement of others,

and on June 17, 2004,
they found Marc Dutroux guilty.

-To all the charges
that I brought against Dutroux,

the jury answered positively.

-Well, there was very not
much suspense

because you could feel no matter
how the jury was critical

towards the official story,

it was clear that they would
condemn Marc Dutroux

for every accusation.

-On the 22nd of June, 2004,

Marc Dutroux was given
the maximum life sentence.

His wife, Michelle Martin,
received 30 years in prison

and Michel Lelievre, 25 years
for his part in the crimes.

Despite the four-month trial,
there are still many questions

left unanswered
in the Dutroux case.

-For example,
the exact locations

as well Julie and Melissa
as An and Eefje...

Their parents, until today, they
don't know where it happened,

and it's crucial
because if you want

to determine responsibilities,
to know what exactly happened,

that's what these parents
is promised,

what they absolutely want,

just a convincing explanation
of what happened.

They never got that.

-I was hoping for more justice

so that we'd know
who we were dealing with

and also what happened to Eefje.

How was she murdered?

And that we still don't know.

We do not know the details,

so we have never found out
how she died.

-Dutroux's wife, Michelle,

was controversially released
from prison

on August 28, 2012.

She now lives in hiding
under protection

from the Belgian authorities.

-Dutroux asked to be released
on the grounds

that he'd seen the light,

that he was no danger
to anybody anymore,

that, after all,
they'd released his wife.

Why couldn't they release him?

The request was refused,

and he is in solitary
confinement.

-Marc Dutroux has continued
to deny killing the four girls

and, despite pleas from
the families and the survivors,

has never given an explanation
for his actions.

Many people believe his crimes
spread further and wider

and that there were
other accomplices involved,

leaving some with a feeling that
justice had not been served.

-We did not get any answers,

and we started
our own investigation.

We examined dossiers ourselves.

We found out some things,

but much more is still unclear.

-The fact that this was a case
of child abduction,

this was a case where the deep
violence used against children

was so evident,
so uncommon,

that it was hard to believe
that this guy not only

was released from prison
after only a few years

but managed to find a way
to start immediately again

with kidnapping girls,
buying houses,

and he was like...

everything that could be worse
was worse.

-Dutroux's crimes
not only affected

the families of his victims --

the entire country was sickened
by this deadly psychopath.

-Unfortunately, Dutroux is
the one thing

that Belgium would not want
to be remembered for.

In the years between 1996
and '98,

one-third of the Belgian people
whose name

was Dutroux asked
to change their name.

It is a commentary on how
deeply affected

the country was
by this lone wolf.

♪

-Well, some of the things
that Marc Dutroux did

were incredibly depraved,

and he didn't seem to have
any bad feelings about that.

He completely lacks
any empathy for his victims.

He treated his victims
essentially as commodities,

as items to use and discard
when he was fed up with them.

-He is depraved.
There are no physical signs.

He's a man who, if you meet
on the street, you'll meet him.

He doesn't stand out, but when
you analyze his personality,

it's that of a depraved man,
that's all, an intelligent man

who knows what he wants
but is depraved.

-He's a psychopath, someone who
has no feelings for people.

He thinks he can reconstruct
his fantasies.

He believes that he is going
to kidnap two girls away

and that they will become
attached to him

and that they will love him.

He will grow old with them.

One must be seriously
disturbed to think that.

-Marc Dutroux's hideous crimes
left many families in mourning

and a whole nation stunned.

By manipulating those
around him,

he was able to satisfy
his depraved sexual urges.

We may never know the truth
about how far

and wide Dutroux's network
of crime spread

or how many children
may have suffered

in his homemade dungeon,

but we can be sure
that Marc Dutroux

will never be free to cause harm
to anyone ever again.

♪

♪

♪