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Speaker 2: The Butcher of Moss is released weekly absolutely free, but
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Speaker 4: I can remember it so clearly. Actually, it was a Sunday,
Speaker 4: and my sister Jacqueline and I went to visit on
Speaker 4: mom's place near Mont's, and that afternoon Jacqueline took a bath.
Speaker 4: I can still picture it and her saying, it feels
Speaker 4: good to take a nice bath, so relaxing.
Speaker 2: December twenty second, nineteen ninety six will forever remain etched
Speaker 2: in the memory of Jeangeese Leclaire. That day, she and
Speaker 2: her sister Jacqueline got together at their mother's house near
Speaker 2: the city of mons And, Belgium for a little pre
Speaker 2: Christmas get together.
Speaker 4: Jacqueline didn't bring a change of clothes, so I lent
Speaker 4: her some That evening. I suggested she should stay at
Speaker 4: my place, but she didn't want to. She really wanted
Speaker 4: me to take her home that night on the road
Speaker 4: back to her place. We agreed to speak the following
Speaker 4: day to plan something for Chris as a family.
Speaker 2: The short trip back to Jacqueline's place in the center
Speaker 2: of Moss took about ten minutes. She lived in a
Speaker 2: small third floor apartment in a relatively quiet street for
Speaker 2: a busy city.
Speaker 4: So at around eight pm I dropped her off in
Speaker 4: front of her apartment. I remember it was really cold
Speaker 4: and dark. Her street wasn't well lit at all. So
Speaker 4: to reassure her, and to reassure myself as well, I
Speaker 4: told her I would stay in the car until she
Speaker 4: was sitting inside. She didn't seem scared. She got out
Speaker 4: of the car and opened her front door, and then
Speaker 4: she waved at me and then went inside.
Speaker 2: What Georgette didn't know then was if this would be
Speaker 2: the last time she would ever see her sister. Jacqueline
Speaker 2: one of several disappearances in nineteen ninety six and ninety
Speaker 2: seven in the Belgian city of mass that would become
Speaker 2: one of Europe's most horrifying cold cases, linked to a
Speaker 2: mysterious and sadistic serial killer.
Speaker 5: A cab mysteriously as sexuality.
Speaker 6: The rest the disappearance of a woman from Monts Jacqueline Class.
Speaker 5: The condition of the victims was sickening, and the question remains,
Speaker 5: where is the killer?
Speaker 2: From Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts, I'm your host Matt
Speaker 2: Graves and this is Lea Monstre Season two, The Butcher
Speaker 2: of Moss. Yes, I've just arrived at the central station
Speaker 2: in Moss after an easy one hour train ride from Brussels,
Speaker 2: where I've lived since the summer of ninety five. It's
Speaker 2: been thirty years since I moved here from Austin, Texas,
Speaker 2: but I vividly remember living through this case as it
Speaker 2: began to unfold in nineteen ninety six. It was terrifying,
Speaker 2: and to a certain extent it still is, because decades later,
Speaker 2: the case has never been solved. I've traveled down to
Speaker 2: Mass today with Xavier de com, a private investigator who's
Speaker 2: helped me on other cases. Xavier has an uncanny ability
Speaker 2: to find things in people and to approach hard questions
Speaker 2: from different angles. On this first trip, our goal is
Speaker 2: to get our heads around the case and immerse ourselves
Speaker 2: and how events actually unfolded. From the ground level. Mass
Speaker 2: is a charming city in southern Belgium, just four miles
Speaker 2: from the northern border of France. You can see the
Speaker 2: remnants of the Middle Ages all around the densely packed center,
Speaker 2: just a stone's throw away from where Xavier and I
Speaker 2: are walking right now. We're here to meet with Morgan
Speaker 2: van Leaherberg, an author who studied Jacqueline Leclaire's case extensively.
Speaker 2: After a short walk in the pouring rain, we meet
Speaker 2: at a cafe near the train station. Morgan is a
Speaker 2: font of knowledge about this affair. You'll hear another voice
Speaker 2: in the background who would prefer to remain anonymous given
Speaker 2: his previous role in this sensitive case. We brave the
Speaker 2: weather and make our way towards the last place Jacqueline
Speaker 2: was seen before she disappeared on the twenty second of
Speaker 2: December nineteen ninety six. So we're standing in front of
Speaker 2: Jacqueline's apartment.
Speaker 7: It's really quite a little desolate area here, actually, and
Speaker 7: there's not much happening. Her street's very quiet or very small,
Speaker 7: and you can picture it at night on a winter evening,
Speaker 7: the other being extremely dark, and we're kind of almost scary.
Speaker 2: Morgan got to know and interviewed Jacqueline's sister, Georgette, whose
Speaker 2: words you heard voiced in English at the beginning of
Speaker 2: the episode, so I asked him what she told him
Speaker 2: about that night she dropped off Jacqueline.
Speaker 8: She waited for Jacqueline to go inside and waited until
Speaker 8: she saw her turn the light on in the apartment.
Speaker 8: We are certain that Jacqueline went into her apartment at
Speaker 8: that moment, but when she was dropped off, she was
Speaker 8: wearing her sister's clothes because she didn't have any clean
Speaker 8: clothes after taking a bath at her sister's house. And
Speaker 8: Georgette told me that it could have been possible that
Speaker 8: since she was working all the next week and Christmas
Speaker 8: was coming, she could have gone to the laundromat right
Speaker 8: here next to her apartment that night to do laundry.
Speaker 2: Jacqueline's sister never gave up looking for the truth. Sadly,
Speaker 2: she passed away in twenty twenty two with out of
Speaker 2: her finding answers. All of her testimony that you'll hear
Speaker 2: in this series is based on word for word translations
Speaker 2: of her statements and interviews voiced in English. Already, starting
Speaker 2: from the day after she dropped off Jacqueline in front
Speaker 2: of her small apartment where Morgan and I are standing
Speaker 2: right now, she knew something was wrong. Here are Georgette's words.
Speaker 4: On the next day, December twenty third, Jacqueline was supposed
Speaker 4: to call me or my mother, but she didn't. That's
Speaker 4: when we realized something was wrong. It was from that moment,
Speaker 4: from that lack of contact the next day, that the
Speaker 4: nine mayre began for me and for my mother.
Speaker 2: Jacqueline and her sister were planning to spend Christmas together
Speaker 2: in two days. Having heard nothing from her sister, Jeanchette
Speaker 2: began to worry.
Speaker 4: I didn't go to the police because well, I thought
Speaker 4: they would make us wait like ten days before starting
Speaker 4: a search. So I decided I search for my sister myself.
Speaker 4: I started with the family, checking with her ex husband
Speaker 4: and also around the area where she lived.
Speaker 2: After several days of desperate searching, her family finally went
Speaker 2: to the police and Jacqueline was added to the national
Speaker 2: database of missing persons. The initial investigation consisted of a
Speaker 2: cursory search of her apartment, interviews with family members, and
Speaker 2: her records review. Eventually, her case made the local news.
Speaker 5: Luzy Mvitabricado, dispar and now the disappearance of a woman
Speaker 5: from Monte Jacqueline le clerk thirty three years.
Speaker 4: Old will come at dich Chateau.
Speaker 9: This young woman has short, light brown hair and blue eyes,
Speaker 9: five feet three inches tall with a normal build. She
Speaker 9: is French speaking.
Speaker 2: According to her sister, Jacqueline was apprehensive about something in
Speaker 2: the time leading up to her disappearance, so much so
Speaker 2: that she felt the need to protect herself.
Speaker 4: One of the last time I saw her at Mom's
Speaker 4: house in early December, when I took her jacket from
Speaker 4: the coat rack, I felt something in one of her pockets.
Speaker 4: It was a big nail. She grubbed it and said, see,
Speaker 4: I have something to defend myself if someone comes after me.
Speaker 2: By all accounts, Jacqueline Leclaire was a kind and pleasant person.
Speaker 2: Why would this quiet mother of four feel the need
Speaker 2: to walk around with a big nail in her pocket
Speaker 2: for protection? Jacqueline was turning the page on a difficult
Speaker 2: time in her life. To fully understand her situation, we
Speaker 2: have to take a step back. Jacqueline and her older sister, Georgette,
Speaker 2: had a great relationship despite their seven years of separation.
Speaker 2: Growing up, Georgette always took care of her little sister
Speaker 2: and loved her dearly. They were raised in a middle
Speaker 2: class family unit with loving parents. Jacqueline always had a
Speaker 2: cool big sister who looked after her. In her early
Speaker 2: teenage years, however, tragedy befell the family. Her father fell
Speaker 2: ill with thrombosis and could no longer work. He couldn't
Speaker 2: stand the thought of not providing for his family and
Speaker 2: sank into a deep depression. When Jacqueline was only thirteen,
Speaker 2: her father committed suicide. This drastically changed the course of
Speaker 2: her life. Their family unit was broken. Her sister, Georgette,
Speaker 2: was twenty years old at the time. She had already
Speaker 2: moved out of the family home and started her life
Speaker 2: as a young adult, But as a young teen, Jacqueline
Speaker 2: was lost. Such an awful tragedy during these crucial formative
Speaker 2: years changed the course of her life.
Speaker 4: When our Fada died, Jacquelinette grew up quickly. She wanted
Speaker 4: to be independent. She married a guy named Angelo at
Speaker 4: a very young age. Mum wasn't in favor of the marriage.
Speaker 4: At first. It seems nice to me, but I changed
Speaker 4: my mind later. Angelo was dishonest and positive of Jacqueline.
Speaker 2: Jacqueline and Angelo had two children. While Jacqueline was still
Speaker 2: a teenager and then two more. In her early twenties,
Speaker 2: her life transitioned abruptly from a girl with loving parents
Speaker 2: to a young teenager with children and a dominating husband. Unsurprisingly,
Speaker 2: there was tension in the marriage.
Speaker 4: She loved her children very much, but she was overwhelmed
Speaker 4: by the events at marked her life. The situation quickly
Speaker 4: spiraled out of control, and she and Angelo separated. When
Speaker 4: she disappeared, they were in the process of divorcing and
Speaker 4: it wasn't going well. Angelo was greedy and he wouldn't
Speaker 4: let her go. When things didn't go his way he
Speaker 4: could become viable.
Speaker 2: I asked Morgan what he knows about the relationship between
Speaker 2: Jacqueline and her ex husband Angelo. At the time, the.
Speaker 8: Jacqueline quickly fell in love with Angelo, who was very dominating.
Speaker 8: They had children and she became a housewife. According to Sister,
Speaker 8: Angelo was violent with her. She was unhappy and living
Speaker 8: a dreadful life. She tried to leave him several times,
Speaker 8: but when he wanted to he could always get her back.
Speaker 8: But at one point he found a new woman who
Speaker 8: was quite similar to Jacqueline, and so he left her
Speaker 8: and she found herself alone, and at that point she
Speaker 8: really lost her footing. She spent some time in psychiatric
Speaker 8: care because she was devastated, but at the time she disappeared,
Speaker 8: she was just starting to get her life back under control.
Speaker 2: Georgette and many others, including some in law enforcement, suspected
Speaker 2: that Angelo could have been behind Jacqueline's disappearance. The difficult
Speaker 2: end to their rocky relationship had left its marks, and
Speaker 2: according to her sister, Jacqueline felt threatened by Angelo after
Speaker 2: the separation. He was never arrested or charged with any involvement,
Speaker 2: and to this day he refuses to talk about the case.
Speaker 2: So I don't really have much to go on now
Speaker 2: that both of her parents and only sibling have passed away.
Speaker 2: I have a short video of Jacqueline that was taken
Speaker 2: not long before her disappearance. She's looking into the camera
Speaker 2: and smiling shyly. She's very pretty, with beautiful skin and
Speaker 2: delicate features. Her eyes are friendly but cautious, and she
Speaker 2: seems slightly uncomfortable to be filmed, but at the same
Speaker 2: time flattered to be the focus of the camera. Morgan
Speaker 2: showed me other pictures of Jacqueline that her sister shared
Speaker 2: with him. She's often dressed down with a tomboy look.
Speaker 2: Her sister explained that she tended to hide her beauty
Speaker 2: to avoid unwanted advances. As I look at these pictures
Speaker 2: in this video, I find myself asking what did those
Speaker 2: kind eyes staring back at me see that no one's
Speaker 2: been able to figure out. As the investigation continued, police
Speaker 2: got access to Jacqueline's bank information, and they discovered a
Speaker 2: troubling detail. There had been two failed attempts to use
Speaker 2: her debit card at the ATM located near her apartment,
Speaker 2: at approximately one am the next morning. When her sister
Speaker 2: learned about this, it jogged her memory and she recalled
Speaker 2: that during the drive back to Jacqueline's apartment that night,
Speaker 2: she'd mentioned that she wanted to go check the state
Speaker 2: of her accounts at the ATM, but her sister convinced
Speaker 2: her to wait until the next morning because it was
Speaker 2: already dark, and Jacqueline agreed and went directly into her apartment.
Speaker 2: On the one hand, it made sense that Jacqueline could
Speaker 2: have visited the ATM as she mentioned it to her
Speaker 2: sister on the way home that night. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: it makes no sense at all that she would have
Speaker 2: forgotten her pen code, leading to the failed transactions. In fact,
Speaker 2: it would seem to indicate that her disappearance could be
Speaker 2: linked to some sort of robbery. Hey, don't expect the contact.
Speaker 2: We're back in the center of Mons with Morgan van
Speaker 2: Laerberg in front of the apartment where Jacqueline was last seen.
Speaker 2: I want to understand the location of this atm where
Speaker 2: we have the last potential sign of life from Jacqueline.
Speaker 2: So now we're going to time the.
Speaker 7: Walk from Jacqueline's house to her atm, where she might
Speaker 7: have forgotten cash, but where.
Speaker 2: Her bank card was used apparently two times or refused
Speaker 2: two times that night. So we're going to do the timing,
Speaker 2: don't uh. The walk from Jacqueline's apart to the ATM
Speaker 2: in question cuts across several apartment blocks mixed with commercial buildings.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a rough neighborhood, and I'm told that
Speaker 2: it was rougher than it is today back in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six, especially at night. I try to imagine myself
Speaker 2: in Jacqueline's shoes making this trip at one o'clock in
Speaker 2: the morning on a cold and dark December night. Honestly speaking,
Speaker 2: I just don't see it. Her sister said she was
Speaker 2: tired that night, she'd already eaten and taken a bath
Speaker 2: and gotten back to her apartment. It was freezing cold
Speaker 2: and dark, and it's a dangerous route. After about a
Speaker 2: six minute walk, we arrive at the spot where the
Speaker 2: ATM was located in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 8: Okay, we're arriving where the attempts to use her bank
Speaker 8: card happened at around one in the morning on the
Speaker 8: twenty third of December. The particularity is that it's not
Speaker 8: well situated. It's in a dark area, out of view.
Speaker 8: There was a surveillance camera on the ATM machine, but
Speaker 8: it was out of order at the time, unfortunately, as
Speaker 8: it could have helped answer a number of questions.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly frustrating that the surveillance camera of the ATM
Speaker 2: wasn't working that night. That footage would have given us
Speaker 2: concrete information about those transactions. Without it, were left to
Speaker 2: speculate on if they played a part in her disappearance
Speaker 2: or not. The ATM no longer exists. As we stood there,
Speaker 2: soaked to the bone in the freezing rain, me with
Speaker 2: my headphones and several other guys staring at a brick wall,
Speaker 2: we definitely got some funny looks from passers by. The
Speaker 2: street next to the ATM had a number of abandoned
Speaker 2: buildings that had been inhabited by squatters and probably drug dealers.
Speaker 2: Back in ninety six. Apparently there was another serious crime
Speaker 2: involving this ATM, where two men burglarized and murdered a
Speaker 2: person in their apartment nearby and used the victim's debit
Speaker 2: card to withdraw cash.
Speaker 5: Here.
Speaker 2: This underscores how dangerous this area was at the time.
Speaker 2: As you heard at the top of the episode, this
Speaker 2: case is still unsolved. I wouldn't be trapsing around this
Speaker 2: rough neighborhood soaked of the bone in the freezing rain
Speaker 2: of late November if it wasn't important. I'm convinced the
Speaker 2: disappearance of Jacqueline Leclaire holds the keys to the entire
Speaker 2: story which will follow. After the two failed attempts at
Speaker 2: the ATM, around one am on December twenty third, Jacqueline's
Speaker 2: timeline goes cold. She didn't show up her work on
Speaker 2: the following day. From the very beginning, Georgette became convinced
Speaker 2: that someone abducted her sister. She constantly retraced her steps.
Speaker 2: The night she dropped Jacqueline off recalled conversations and racked
Speaker 2: her brain to search for any details that might serve
Speaker 2: as cloes.
Speaker 4: During the police search of my sister's apartment, I was
Speaker 4: present as a witness. There is one detail that disturbed me,
Speaker 4: not at the time, but later. I remember a pack
Speaker 4: of cigarettes, dark in color from a brain I didn't recognize,
Speaker 4: laced near the window where she would smoke when the
Speaker 4: weather allowed it. I'm certain that my sister didn't smoke
Speaker 4: that Bran and I remember there were cigarettes bats in
Speaker 4: the ash tree, a lot of them. Jacqueline was in
Speaker 4: the habit of leaving them lying around in her apartment.
Speaker 4: She didn't like the smell of stale tobacco. If Jacqueline
Speaker 4: had someone over that evening, they could have been the
Speaker 4: perpetrator's cigarettes.
Speaker 2: At the time, the police were merely investigating the disappearance
Speaker 2: of an adult woman, one of over thirty thousand estimated
Speaker 2: missing persons in Belgium in the mid nineties. They didn't
Speaker 2: consider testing the cigarette butts left behind, even if they had.
Speaker 2: DNA testing in Belgium was still in its infancy at
Speaker 2: the time. Another missed opportunity with the benefit of hindsight,
Speaker 2: the author Morgan von Laerberg followed up extensively with Jacqueline's
Speaker 2: sister about this pack of cigarettes. She was one hundred
Speaker 2: percent sure that they couldn't have been Jacqueline's. If not,
Speaker 2: then whose were they. Jacqueline was extremely private and didn't
Speaker 2: regularly have people over to her apartment. If we assume
Speaker 2: they belonged to the person responsible for her disappearance, it
Speaker 2: would mean that she must have known the perpetrator. In
Speaker 2: terms of possible suspects, this would tighten the profile considerably
Speaker 2: and lower the probability that this was a crime of opportunity.
Speaker 2: As the new year arrived and winter's icy grip began
Speaker 2: to fall, Jeorgette refused to give up on her sister.
Speaker 2: She took matters into her own hands, creating missing Persons
Speaker 2: posters and tirelessly plastering them throughout the neighborhood and in
Speaker 2: places where Jacqueline was known to frequent. One of these
Speaker 2: places was Jacqueline's favorite spot for a quick bite to eat,
Speaker 2: a small fast food restaurant near the central train station
Speaker 2: of Moss, the same station where Xavier and I arrived
Speaker 2: this morning. After visiting Jacqueline's apartment and the atm where
Speaker 2: a card was refused. We've now come full circle back
Speaker 2: to the central station. We're standing in front of a
Speaker 2: small fast food restaurant that Jacqueline was known to frequent.
Speaker 2: It's about a ten minute walk from her apartment. I
Speaker 2: can imagine thirty years ago Georgette canvassing this area, missing
Speaker 2: person's posters in hand, desperate to find answers. It's quite
Speaker 2: possible that at that time she crossed paths with Jacqueline's
Speaker 2: abductor or his next victim. On March sixteenth, nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 2: just under three months after Jacqueline's disappearance, another young woman vanished,
Speaker 2: this time from right outside of this very same restaurant.
Speaker 2: She was standing on this sidewalk waiting for her friends
Speaker 2: who were inside ordering food to go. I wonder if
Speaker 2: she saw one of Jacqueline's faded missing person's posters plastered
Speaker 2: in the window moments before she too vanished without a trace.
Speaker 2: The fragile sense of safety and mass would forever be changed,
Speaker 2: replaced by a frenzy of panic and feart.
Speaker 6: There was a macabore and mysterious discovery of body parts,
Speaker 6: apparently dismembered with a saw. According to investigators, partial remains
Speaker 6: of three women were found in trash bags in Quem
Speaker 6: near Mons.
Speaker 5: It was really a crazy time in Belgium. I mean
Speaker 5: stories were breaking every day.
Speaker 9: Good afternoon. In Havrey, near Monts, two garbage bags containing
Speaker 9: human remains were discovered. The body parts are currently at
Speaker 9: the Forensics Institute in Liege for examination. The similarities with
Speaker 9: the three cadavers discovered in Quem fifteen days ago are flagrant.
Speaker 9: Investigators believe it is the same perpetrator, Peter.
Speaker 5: There had never been a serial killer like this in Belgium,
Speaker 5: much less in Monts, and now we had the most
Speaker 5: grotesque story ever.
Speaker 3: We felt like we were in the presence of someone
Speaker 3: who was going to the grave with with nightmarish secrets.
Speaker 2: Le Monstre is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts. Hosted, written,
Speaker 2: and executive produced by me Matt Graves, Donald Albright and
Speaker 2: Payne Lindsay are executive producers on the behalf of Tenderfoot TV,
Speaker 2: with producer Makeup and Vanity Said. Matt Frederick and Trevor
Speaker 2: Young are executive producers on the behalf of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: Original music by Jay Ragsdale, Sound design and master by
Speaker 2: Cooper Skinner. Cover design by Byron McCoy and Trevor Eiler.
Speaker 2: Lea Monstre includes archival audio from SONYMA RTBF Archives. Special
Speaker 2: thanks to Arin Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, the
Speaker 2: Nord Group, and our active investigation team Morgen van Leerberg,
Speaker 2: Frederic lare Xervi de Com and Anna Gardon, as well
Speaker 2: as the teams at iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. Find
Speaker 2: us on social media at Monster Underscore pod. For more
Speaker 2: podcasts like Lea Monstre, search Tenderfoot TV in your podcast
Speaker 2: app or visit Tenderfoot TV. Ready to keep listening, remember
Speaker 2: you can binge the rest of the season right now
Speaker 2: with an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription available exclusively on
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