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Speaker 2: It was a cold day on December thirteenth, nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 2: Julie and Melissa had been missing for almost seven months.
Speaker 2: Inspector Rene Micheaux of the Gendarmerie, along with two colleagues
Speaker 2: and a locksmith, pulled up to de True's residence on
Speaker 2: one twenty eight Rue de philipp Fil and Marcinelles in
Speaker 2: the municipality of Charges. They had the house to themselves,
Speaker 2: as Dedru was in jail for stealing a truck and
Speaker 2: kidnapping his accomplices. The search was officially linked to the
Speaker 2: car theft scheme and should have been carried out by
Speaker 2: the municipal police, but the gendarmes. Michaud managed to unsurp
Speaker 2: the warrant and carry out the search with his own
Speaker 2: team of gendarmes. If you recall, the gendarmes were already
Speaker 2: secretly surveilling d Tru's house, as he was their main
Speaker 2: suspect in the disappearance of Julie LeJean and Melissa Rousso.
Speaker 2: Michaud sent his colleagues upstairs to see what they con
Speaker 2: find and headed down to the basement with the locksmith.
Speaker 2: The team upstairs found several suspicious items, including chloroform sedatives,
Speaker 2: vaginal ointment video cassettes, and a speculum used by gynecologists
Speaker 2: for vaginal examinations. While searching the basement, the locksmith thought
Speaker 2: that he'd heard voices of che children, and he said
Speaker 2: to Michaud, listen, I hear voices quick. Michaud also heard
Speaker 2: what he would later call quote whispers and abruptly shouted
Speaker 2: to his colleagues upstairs to shut up. After Michau yelled
Speaker 2: shut up to quiet his colleagues, the voices stopped. After
Speaker 2: a period of silence, Michaud said that it must have
Speaker 2: been voices playing in the street outside or something. When
Speaker 2: the locksmith insisted about what he'd heard, Michaud turned to
Speaker 2: him and said, who's the cop here? You or me
Speaker 2: sec rom After that, the search was over and the
Speaker 2: team left the house. Julie and Melissa were in that
Speaker 2: hidden dungeon and alive, literally a few feet away.
Speaker 3: Hums who understands emotions, And I told them it is
Speaker 3: a very exceptional that somebody abducts two children at the
Speaker 3: same time. Should have been the yen of it in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty six, but my god, it was just a beginning.
Speaker 4: I think Belgium was a paralyzed for perforts in those days.
Speaker 2: Welcome to la monstre. I'm your host, Matt Graves. The
Speaker 2: unsuccessful search of the Truce House where Julie and Melissa
Speaker 2: were suffering in silence, is a sickening tragedy. It's crazy
Speaker 2: when you think about it that the John Darmes have
Speaker 2: been surveilling his house for four months already with their
Speaker 2: secret Operation Othello. There were countless opportunities to get a
Speaker 2: search warrant during these four months, but the Gendarmerie kept
Speaker 2: it a secret and never informed the judge. Also, they
Speaker 2: didn't want anyone else to search the house. In fact,
Speaker 2: this failed search wasn't even supposed to be done by
Speaker 2: the Gendarmerie. The warrant was to look for clues related
Speaker 2: to the stolen car case, but the Gendarmes pulled some
Speaker 2: strings and got the green light to do the search themselves.
Speaker 2: You would think that this was a good outcome. Rather
Speaker 2: than stolen cars. They should have been focused on finding
Speaker 2: the girls. But the locksmith who accompanied me show downstairs
Speaker 2: had no idea that they were looking for kidnap victims.
Speaker 2: When later questioned under oath, this lockmuth said, I don't.
Speaker 5: Know a single person who would have left the basement
Speaker 5: after what they heard if they knew they were searching
Speaker 5: for your girls. I cannot conceive how they could stop
Speaker 5: searching after hearing such clear voices.
Speaker 2: As mentioned, the gendarmes found several video cassettes and collected
Speaker 2: them as evidence. One of the tapes was a recording
Speaker 2: of a television show dedicated to the disappearance of Julie
Speaker 2: and Melissa. Another one was footage of de True himself
Speaker 2: building the dungeon in that very house. If you're looking
Speaker 2: for Julian Melissa and you have reports of girls being
Speaker 2: seen in the house, these two tapes alone are a
Speaker 2: clear indication that you're on the right track. But the
Speaker 2: incompetence of the gendarmerie can't be underestimated. One of the
Speaker 2: gendarmes searching upstairs would later claim that he didn't even
Speaker 2: know they were looking for little girls. To make matters worse,
Speaker 2: several of the tapes included pornographic material, including one of
Speaker 2: the True raping a miner. The contents of these tapes
Speaker 2: supposedly weren't discovered until nineteen ninety nine because no one
Speaker 2: bothered to properly analyze them. In fact, some of the
Speaker 2: tapes simply went missing, and several of them were actually
Speaker 2: returned to the True after he got out of jail
Speaker 2: for car theft in March nineteen ninety six, including the
Speaker 2: one featuring him raping a miner. Is this level of
Speaker 2: incompetence even possible or with something else going on on
Speaker 2: that day, December sixteenth, nineteen ninety five. Had the gendarmes
Speaker 2: done their job, Julian Melissa would have been rescued and
Speaker 2: reunited with their parents, leading to the possible rescue of
Speaker 2: Anne and Effia. The True and his accomplices would have
Speaker 2: been stopped before Sabine and Letitia were ever even abducted.
Speaker 2: It's heartbreaking to know how close these parents were to
Speaker 2: avoiding such a horrible tragedy. Nothing about the Operation Othello
Speaker 2: or the bungled search had come out to the public
Speaker 2: until after the Parliamentary Commission prided out of a Gendarmes
Speaker 2: under oath on live television, a camera was filming the
Speaker 2: faces of the parents as they listened to Inspector Micheau
Speaker 2: squirm on the hot seat. You can see the wary
Speaker 2: face of Julie's father, Jean de ni Le Jeanne, as
Speaker 2: he digests what he was hearing. He's a stoic man,
Speaker 2: still loved by millions of people in this country, a
Speaker 2: working class man of the people who labored in a factory,
Speaker 2: paid his taxes and raised a modest family. He maintained
Speaker 2: his composure, but couldn't hold back the tears from streaming
Speaker 2: down his face. To add insult to injury, the parents
Speaker 2: learned that Inspector Micheaux even returned to d Tru's house
Speaker 2: for a second search of the property again on December nineteenth.
Speaker 2: He was just steps away from Julia and Melissa for
Speaker 2: a second time and still found nothing. When the Parliamentary
Speaker 2: Commission started, none of the parents knew anything about the
Speaker 2: fact that the true had been the gendarmes number one suspect.
Speaker 2: Shortly after their girls actually disappeared.
Speaker 6: The girls disappeared the twenty fourth of June and from
Speaker 6: the seventh of July they had marked the two as
Speaker 6: their top suspect.
Speaker 2: I spoke to Karine Russeau, the mother of Melissa.
Speaker 6: They were all aware of Operational Othello, and that they
Speaker 6: were supposed to surveil the activities of Dureux. And it
Speaker 6: dragged on and on, and the fiasco of Operation Othello
Speaker 6: was never understood by us nor by the Parliamentary Commission.
Speaker 2: I asked her if she thought that Inspector Micheaux was
Speaker 2: just stupid or was it something else, because his level
Speaker 2: of incoonfidence was just so unbelievable.
Speaker 6: It's complicated because his incompetence is incomprehensible. When I saw
Speaker 6: him at the Commission, I had the impression I was
Speaker 6: in front of a man who was afraid. The gendarmes
Speaker 6: seemed like okay, guys who wanted to find the girls,
Speaker 6: but at the same time they seemed like they were
Speaker 6: afraid of everything.
Speaker 2: The failure of the Gendarmerie to question the true and
Speaker 2: to properly search his property, it's really hard to square.
Speaker 2: The Parliamentary Commission did a good job of exposing the
Speaker 2: incompetence of the Gendarmeriy, no matter how hard they tried
Speaker 2: to hide it. The official conclusion of this commission is
Speaker 2: that what the gendarmes did and failed to do was
Speaker 2: indeed a fiasco, but that nothing concrete could be found
Speaker 2: to prove that the true was somehow protected. I have
Speaker 2: a strong distaste for conspiracy theories, but as I study
Speaker 2: the facts, I'm starting to have doubts about the official line.
Speaker 2: While reading cariin Rousseau's memoirs, I stumbled across an odd
Speaker 2: anecdote about something that happened in December nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: around the same timeframe of the failed search of Dtru's house.
Speaker 2: She wrote about a visit they received at the time
Speaker 2: from a gendarme named Valert Martin. According to Karine's account,
Speaker 2: he came to their house in early December claiming that
Speaker 2: one of the girls had been located. After having read
Speaker 2: almost everything on this case, this was detail I'd never
Speaker 2: heard about. The true affair is full of rabbit holes,
Speaker 2: and when I read this, I thought this must have
Speaker 2: just been something that was misinterpreted or perhaps overplayed. I
Speaker 2: had to hear it straight from Karin directly and really
Speaker 2: understand how it played out, because if true, it flies
Speaker 2: in the face of the conclusions of the Parliamentary Commission,
Speaker 2: the Trial of the Truth and the majority of the
Speaker 2: Belgian press. Today.
Speaker 6: It was the Gendarmes Valle Martin, a field officer working
Speaker 6: on the investigation of the disappearance of Julian and Melissa.
Speaker 6: It was with him that we had the most contact.
Speaker 6: He was the investigator that came not every day, but
Speaker 6: at least every week. He stayed in contact with us
Speaker 6: to see if we had any news on our side,
Speaker 6: and we asked him for news, but he never had any.
Speaker 6: So he came by at the beginning of December, but
Speaker 6: I can't remember the exact date, and at that time
Speaker 6: he told us that there was an operation under way
Speaker 6: and that we might be able to open Champagne by
Speaker 6: Christmas because we might have the girls back by then.
Speaker 6: He said we had to keep it on the down
Speaker 6: low and sit tight, but there was hope, and he
Speaker 6: said the problem was that they couldn't do anything for
Speaker 6: the moment because they had located one of the girls
Speaker 6: but not both of them, and if they undertook an
Speaker 6: operation for just one of the girls, because they knew
Speaker 6: where she was, they could put the other girl at risk.
Speaker 6: So they had located one of the girls, but they
Speaker 6: needed to wait to know where the other one was
Speaker 6: before making a move. That's what he said. That was
Speaker 6: what he explained to us at that time.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to offend Kareem, but this is a
Speaker 2: huge statement with serious implications. I had to ask her
Speaker 2: if there were others who had witnessed this conversation.
Speaker 6: At the time. Jean Denis and Luisa Lege and my
Speaker 6: husband and I were here. They were almost always here
Speaker 6: at the house, and also my brother and sister in
Speaker 6: law were here at the time. They were practically living
Speaker 6: here to help us with everything. And we asked him
Speaker 6: which of the girls it was, and he didn't want
Speaker 6: to answer because it was too hard, and we understood
Speaker 6: in a way, we didn't even want to know which
Speaker 6: of the girls it was, because imagine if we had learned,
Speaker 6: for example, that they found Melissa but they couldn't save
Speaker 6: her because they hadn't found Julie, or the other way around.
Speaker 6: It's really hard. I think we didn't even want to know.
Speaker 6: But my brother took him aside and asked which girl
Speaker 6: it was, and the gendarmes told him that the girl
Speaker 6: they had located was Melissa, and he told me afterwards.
Speaker 2: This moment was a tipping point for me. There I
Speaker 2: was sitting with Karine Rousseau on her back porch, less
Speaker 2: than a mile from where this whole tragedy started. I
Speaker 2: had assumed that this story was some sort of rumor,
Speaker 2: but she was absolutely adamant. And it wasn't just her
Speaker 2: who'd witnessed this event, but her husband, brother and sister
Speaker 2: in law, and the mother and father of Julie Lejeanne.
Speaker 6: But I don't know, because there was never any follow
Speaker 6: up on this because after this we never saw the
Speaker 6: gendarme again. From the beginning of January, they told us
Speaker 6: that the investigators couldn't contact us anymore, and that we
Speaker 6: couldn't have contact with the Gendarme Marie any longer.
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe what I was hearing and maybe overstep
Speaker 2: the boundaries of the interview by asking how they didn't
Speaker 2: just grab him by the neck and force the details
Speaker 2: out of him. What did he know? Did he really
Speaker 2: have something?
Speaker 6: We had confidence in them, We had so much hope,
Speaker 6: and what he was telling us was that the thread
Speaker 6: that we were holding on to. So we respected what
Speaker 6: they said and what they asked of us. They said,
Speaker 6: to stay discreete, don't do anything. Something's going to happen.
Speaker 6: So we were holding on so tightly to that thread
Speaker 6: of hope that we did whatever they asked of us.
Speaker 6: And after when we realized during the Parliamentary Commission, when
Speaker 6: we discovered Operation Othello and the search of Dutru's house
Speaker 6: and that he'd been arrested in December, etc. We realized
Speaker 6: that this happened exactly at the same time of the
Speaker 6: searches of Dutruz house in Marsinel by the gendarmes from Charlois,
Speaker 6: So it happened at that time. So was there at
Speaker 6: that time an operation planned to save the girls that failed.
Speaker 2: I asked her if she ever followed up with this
Speaker 2: gendarme after everything came out.
Speaker 6: After the girls were found, we went to see him
Speaker 6: at his house during the month of September nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 6: and we asked him for answers because he sent us
Speaker 6: a letter where he wrote, quote, I will never excuse
Speaker 6: those who prevented me from working. Yeah, And so we
Speaker 6: found him and said, now you're going to have to
Speaker 6: explain who were the people who prevented you from working?
Speaker 6: Who are they and what happened? And he was in tears,
Speaker 6: and his wife was in tears, and she was begging us, saying, no,
Speaker 6: don't try to find out. We're going to lose everything.
Speaker 6: You don't understand what it's like for gendarmes in the genre, Marie,
Speaker 6: you can't talk. She was explaining this and asking us
Speaker 6: to leave and saying that they'd lose everything. And I said, no,
Speaker 6: we lost everything. We lost our girl, and now your
Speaker 6: tears and your story aren't going to make me cry.
Speaker 6: But he never said anything. And when the Parliamentary Commission happened,
Speaker 6: a deputy relayed our question. He asked him about this
Speaker 6: very directly in public, and he said, quote, I don't remember.
Speaker 2: I tried to track down the former gendarmes Valerire Martin
Speaker 2: and even his wife, but they've both since passed away.
Speaker 2: I spoke to an ex colleague of his who's still
Speaker 2: an active duty police officer in Liege, but he wouldn't
Speaker 2: say a word about it. In fact, he said he'd
Speaker 2: never even heard of this story and was quote stunned
Speaker 2: by what I was telling him. But I know that's
Speaker 2: not true. As he was at the Parliamentary Commission When
Speaker 2: this question was asked directly to Valer Martin, so I
Speaker 2: decided it wasn't worth continuing the discussion. He clearly wasn't
Speaker 2: being frank with me. The practical consequence of this are significant.
Speaker 2: If the Gendarmerie had located one of the girls in
Speaker 2: December of nineteen ninety five, it changes everything. Simply put,
Speaker 2: it would mean that the explanation of the Gendarmery, confirmed
Speaker 2: by the Parliamentary Commission in nineteen ninety seven and the
Speaker 2: Court of Appeals in two thousand and four, is a lie.
Speaker 4: You shouldn't underestimate that the gen Armerie was a military structure,
Speaker 4: so they think strategically, they accept collateral damage. It was
Speaker 4: not a police force as you or me probably would
Speaker 4: think of a police force. It was a power mechanism.
Speaker 2: This is the voice of Jan Fermont, one of the
Speaker 2: lawyers who represented Letitia Dalles during the trial of the
Speaker 2: true in two thousand and four. Several notable journalists, as
Speaker 2: well as victim's family members, suggest that he could provide
Speaker 2: insight into various aspects of the case.
Speaker 4: The geen Armie had an internal system where there was
Speaker 4: an indication that the gendarme was involved in criminal activity
Speaker 4: was an internal ban on communication to the prosecutor. It
Speaker 4: had to go up the hierarchy first, and only with
Speaker 4: the authorization of the hierarchy it could go to the prosecution.
Speaker 4: So this was a culture and that has led, for
Speaker 4: example to the fact that the National Drug Bureau of
Speaker 4: the Belgian Gian dal Marie, who was working very closely
Speaker 4: together with the DEA at that time, actually became one
Speaker 4: of the main drug dealers on the Belgian market because
Speaker 4: and the gendarme who found out that actually the cocaine
Speaker 4: was his bosses. If he ran into that by chance,
Speaker 4: after going ten times up the hierarchy and saying we
Speaker 4: have a problem. There are kilos of cocaine passing and
Speaker 4: my bosses involved in that, he actually at some point
Speaker 4: said the law says that I should go to the prosecutor,
Speaker 4: went out of its own initiative to the prosecute, and
Speaker 4: the next day he was removed from the job. That
Speaker 4: guy ended up, after forty years of career as an
Speaker 4: investigator as a specialized investigator, ended up washing cars in
Speaker 4: the garage of the Jean Darmerie. And there are many,
Speaker 4: many actually incredible stories in which the Jean Armerie got
Speaker 4: involved in that period, members of the Jean Deremerie putting
Speaker 4: a bomb in the car of another member of the
Speaker 4: Geen Deremebrie which happened here in Brussels, trying to kill
Speaker 4: with the machine gun fire another member of the Geen Eremerie,
Speaker 4: which happened to Majere Vernaye. It's rather heavy stuff and
Speaker 4: all this is the eighties and the nineties. We are
Speaker 4: in the middle of a period where all kinds of
Speaker 4: stuff is happening in the Geen Armerie, which is outrageou,
Speaker 4: which is far beyond what any normal person would expect
Speaker 4: or would believe that it's all reality.
Speaker 2: I asked him about this gendarme named Valeris Martin, who
Speaker 2: at one point told Julie in Melissa's families that one
Speaker 2: of the girls had been located. And he told me
Speaker 2: an interesting story about a scene that played out at
Speaker 2: trial in two thousand and four. You'll hear him mention
Speaker 2: the name Lisage. Lossage was valers Martin's boss at the Gendarmerie.
Speaker 2: He was called to testify at the trial along with
Speaker 2: Valeris Martin and another gendarmes.
Speaker 4: So the next day, when we come into the courtroom.
Speaker 4: Somebody comes to me and says, do you know that
Speaker 4: Losage and his two other colleagues received a long briefing
Speaker 4: yesterday from their former superior in geen Armerie what they
Speaker 4: should say and what they shouldn't say. And this former
Speaker 4: Colonel de Geen Darmodi, drove them in his car here
Speaker 4: and will be present in the room.
Speaker 2: So the three gendarmes were subpoenaed at the core case. Strangely,
Speaker 2: their former boss, a high ranking officer in the Gendarmerie,
Speaker 2: spent the days before briefing them and then actually drove
Speaker 2: them to the hearings.
Speaker 4: You see this guy leaning against the door in the
Speaker 4: back with a leather jacket, and this is Colonel such
Speaker 4: and so. So there are, one by one the three
Speaker 4: called Lussage comes in before anything else. Lage is nothing
Speaker 4: to say. The President tells him, maybe please wait a second,
Speaker 4: because at least I want to ask you your name.
Speaker 4: Of course, after some time some questions are asked. And
Speaker 4: the other thing that I said, I'm nothing, I know
Speaker 4: nothing to say, which I think is an absolutely intolerable
Speaker 4: attitude because he is on the road. I mean, you're
Speaker 4: a policeman you're working with the money of the taxpayers
Speaker 4: to solve the case. And then when the court asks
Speaker 4: you to ask to respond to a question, you say,
Speaker 4: I don't want to talk to you. Nothing. The second
Speaker 4: member of the team comes in and plays a piece
Speaker 4: of theater. Yeah yeah, Julia, Melissa, Yeah, yeah, I remember. No,
Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't remember that. No, no, I
Speaker 4: I know I worked on this case, but no, no, no,
Speaker 4: it's a long time ago. Then the turtm and I
Speaker 4: think that was what I comes in and so he
Speaker 4: comes in. Instead of going to the witness stand, he
Speaker 4: comes to the bench where I say, I'm sitting next
Speaker 4: to jan. This policeman even doesn't greet the court. He
Speaker 4: immediately comes to gen I and he says, cause you come,
Speaker 4: prete Tooma. I understood everything.
Speaker 7: Now says yeah, but please go to the witness stand
Speaker 7: and tell the court, because if you know anything, please
Speaker 7: take the stand and say what you know.
Speaker 4: And then nothing. So I got a little bit angry
Speaker 4: because you can't ask directly questions. So as a civil party,
Speaker 4: you have to go through the court. Say please, mister president,
Speaker 4: could you ask the witness such and such information. Then
Speaker 4: the president decides whether yes, or no you'll ask question.
Speaker 4: So I said, could you please ask the last witness
Speaker 4: why he is crying? Why he is doing this? No answer?
Speaker 4: Could you ask the witness if maybe he is scared
Speaker 4: of somebody? Is he maybe scared of this gentleman standing
Speaker 4: against leaning against the door? Who is Colonel such and
Speaker 4: so from the gean armerie who brought these three people
Speaker 4: yesterday in his personal car to this place, who gave
Speaker 4: them a briefing the day before yesterday about what they
Speaker 4: could say, what they could not say? Is he maybe
Speaker 4: afraid of making statement because this gentleman is watching what
Speaker 4: he is saying? Nothing, I'd answer to the presentic is
Speaker 4: really impossibly. And then the President of the court turned
Speaker 4: to me and said, I understand your frustration. I understand
Speaker 4: we are all frustrated. But what do you want me
Speaker 4: to do? Torture is not allowed, and that's approximately the
Speaker 4: only thing I see what I can do to make
Speaker 4: them speak. He was right, he comes forced them to speak.
Speaker 4: The attitude of keeping the information to themselves, not sharing it,
Speaker 4: trying to keep as many people out of the discussion
Speaker 4: as they could actually went even on during the trial,
Speaker 4: and they organized it. Obviously the three of them playing
Speaker 4: some kind of game, not to get involved in real questioning.
Speaker 4: It was an organized thing.
Speaker 8: I mean, I think it's an indication of how keen
Speaker 8: they were, or how worried the were about being transparent
Speaker 8: and open about what actually happens.
Speaker 2: The month of December nineteen ninety five was a pivotal
Speaker 2: time in this affair. On the sixth of December, the
Speaker 2: true was detained for car theft and kidnapping of adults.
Speaker 2: On the thirteenth and nineteenth of December, Inspector Micheaud of
Speaker 2: the Gendarmeriy executed searches of the house where Julian Melissa
Speaker 2: were hidden without finding them, And right around this same time,
Speaker 2: a gendarmes told the families of Julian Melissa that one
Speaker 2: of the girls had been located and that they were
Speaker 2: waiting to locate both of the girls before making any moves.
Speaker 2: When the parents never heard back from Valerer Martin, they
Speaker 2: of course agitated with the Gendarmerie to get more information.
Speaker 2: Valer Martin was censured by his superiors after word got
Speaker 2: out about what he'd said. I've seen a copy of
Speaker 2: this century which is in the case file, and it
Speaker 2: ends with the following sentence quote, I remind you that
Speaker 2: no details of any kind, including new information, verifications carried out,
Speaker 2: or any information about the investigation, can be communicated to
Speaker 2: the parents, even for reasons of humanity unquote. The hopeful
Speaker 2: news about locating the girls was followed by a wall
Speaker 2: of silence, the silence that Karen wrote about in her
Speaker 2: journal entry on December twenty seventh, nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 6: The silence of your disappearance, silence of the legal system,
Speaker 6: silence of the powerful, scandalous silence, accomplice of crime and misfortunes.
Speaker 2: Christmas had come and gone, and there is no Champagne
Speaker 2: celebration of finding the girls as promised. The desperation of
Speaker 2: Karine's journal entries at this time is excruciating. At one point,
Speaker 2: her despair drove her to run out of the house
Speaker 2: at night into the dark, windswept field next to where
Speaker 2: Julian Melissa disappeared and screamed helplessly into oblivion. Pourquois or
Speaker 2: why hoo goa woo whi. While the true was imprisoned
Speaker 2: for auto theft and adult kidnapping, his wife and partner
Speaker 2: in crime, Michel Martin, was living at their house in
Speaker 2: Sarcee Labuisiere, and Julian and Melissa were alone in the
Speaker 2: dungeon in Marcinelle. Michel Martin later testified that she went
Speaker 2: to the house in Marcinelle every few days to feed
Speaker 2: their two German shepherds, but that she was afraid to
Speaker 2: go into the basement. She fed the dogs, but not
Speaker 2: the two eight year old girls. Again, according to their
Speaker 2: own testimony, the true ordered his wife to enter the
Speaker 2: dungeon to give the girls provisions and empty the buckets
Speaker 2: he'd placed there for the girls to use the toilet.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until mid January that she claimed to have
Speaker 2: gone down to the basement. The house was cold and dark,
Speaker 2: and it stank from neglect. As the hungry dogs were barking.
Speaker 2: The two police searchers had left the unkept dump into
Speaker 2: more disarray than usual. Michel Martin later explained to the
Speaker 2: court what happened. These are her words, not her voice.
Speaker 9: I went down the basement and I was shaking like
Speaker 9: a leaf. When I reached the door to the dungeon,
Speaker 9: I was faced with the dilemma. I wanted to open it,
Speaker 9: but at the same time I refused to do it.
Speaker 9: I was afraid of those children. In my mind, there
Speaker 9: was an image of lions of ferocious animals that would
Speaker 9: attack me.
Speaker 2: Nonetheless, she stated that she overcame her fear of these
Speaker 2: ferocious eight year old girls and shoved some provisions through
Speaker 2: the door and then quickly closed it. From then on,
Speaker 2: she returned every few days to feed the dogs, but
Speaker 2: never went down to the basement again. On March twentieth,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, the true was finally released from jail,
Speaker 2: just after four months of being charged for car theft
Speaker 2: and adult kidnapping.
Speaker 6: He had been condemned for other kidnappings years earlier. Then
Speaker 6: he was paroled, then he kidnapped our girls. Then he
Speaker 6: was arrested for car theft and kidnapping, and he was
Speaker 6: already on parole for kidnapping, and then after four months
Speaker 6: he's released. A guy who's on parole keeps kidnapping people
Speaker 6: gets released from his current sentence for kidnapping. And the
Speaker 6: reason I swear to you this is documented in the
Speaker 6: file humanitarian reasons. That's the way it's written for humanitarian reasons.
Speaker 6: Because the heat was off at his wife, Madame Martine's house,
Speaker 6: and she needed him to repair the heating. He's freed
Speaker 6: because his old lady is cold. It's what's written. We thought,
Speaker 6: how could this be possible. If someone told you, you'd
Speaker 6: say no, it can't be like that, But when you
Speaker 6: see it, it's what's written.
Speaker 2: The world is full of stories of nutjobs getting out
Speaker 2: of prison too early, but this one is particularly egregious.
Speaker 2: Remember De True was still on parole from his previous
Speaker 2: early release for kidnapping and raping five girls when he
Speaker 2: again got busted for theft and kidnapping, but they still
Speaker 2: released him without baild True later claimed that when he
Speaker 2: got back to the house in March, Julie wasn't responding
Speaker 2: and Melissa was alive but struggling. He said that he
Speaker 2: tried to nurse them back to health, but that it
Speaker 2: was too late, and that both of them died in March.
Speaker 2: One thing we know for sure about Mark de True
Speaker 2: is that he's a liar. Careine Rousseau, her husband, and
Speaker 2: the parents of Julie don't believe his story about the
Speaker 2: end of Julie in Melissa's life.
Speaker 6: The condition of the girls for three and a half
Speaker 6: months locked in a dungeon like that to survive by
Speaker 6: themselves is completely improbable. You can't survive in conditions like
Speaker 6: that for three and a half months. It's physically impossible.
Speaker 6: And a nutritionist who testified at the trial did a
Speaker 6: calculation of what they could have received in terms of water, etc.
Speaker 6: And she said that it didn't make any sense. So
Speaker 6: the nutritionist at the trial concluded that it wasn't possible.
Speaker 6: And nonetheless, they left the conclusion like that they died
Speaker 6: following their incarceration by Dutroux and Martin was unable to
Speaker 6: save them, and voila. And this is the legal truth
Speaker 6: that they gave us, whereas we're not convinced that they
Speaker 6: stayed there the whole time. We don't know, oh, if
Speaker 6: they were there for three and a half months, or
Speaker 6: if they were taken somewhere else and then brought back there.
Speaker 2: I've read the reports from the nutritionist who concluded that
Speaker 2: it was impossible for Julian Melissa to survive over three
Speaker 2: and a half months without expiring from dehydration. In the report,
Speaker 2: she wrote, survival for one hundred and three days would
Speaker 2: not be possible without at least one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: liters of water per child, the amount of water purported
Speaker 2: to have been supplied by Michelle Martin in the middle
Speaker 2: of January was not sufficient for survival for another seven weeks.
Speaker 2: Julian Melissa's parents believed that Marked a true wasn't acting
Speaker 2: alone and that he was receiving help from people who've
Speaker 2: never been identified, people with the power to pull strings.
Speaker 2: This brings us to the most crucial question of this
Speaker 2: entire affair. Was Marked a true and isolated predator who
Speaker 2: only got help from low level accomplices like his wife
Speaker 2: Michelle Martin, Lackey accomplice michel Lelievre, and known criminal Bernard Weinstein.
Speaker 2: Or were others like the corrupt businessman Michelle Lee, who
Speaker 2: involved in a more sophisticated, high level human sex trafficking ring.
Speaker 2: This question divides politicians, magistrates, journalists, and even victims in
Speaker 2: their families still to this day. We will explore this
Speaker 2: question further as witnesses come forward with accusations of conspiracy,
Speaker 2: abuse and murder on the next episode of La Monstre.
Speaker 2: Next time on La Monstre.
Speaker 9: I remember it like it's a film in my head.
Speaker 9: I can close my eyes and see every little details
Speaker 9: of that house where.
Speaker 7: She was murdering.
Speaker 10: The search with the forensic team to analyze all of
Speaker 10: the hairs in London and so on, so would have
Speaker 10: probably you found the DNA of Shile and Melissa Bloody
Speaker 10: and and I still affirm today that the reason they
Speaker 10: didn't grant me a warrant is that they were afraid
Speaker 10: to open the door to a possible wider network.
Speaker 11: For this lady is completely crazy.
Speaker 4: That was her first assessment.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 11: But all the things he is telling us this is
Speaker 11: not possible, cannot be true. And also the names he
Speaker 11: was quoting were people of of high society, politicians, heads
Speaker 11: of captains of industry, magistrates, police people.
Speaker 4: So this cannot be true. This is too much. Right,
Speaker 4: That was a bit of first feeling.
Speaker 2: I think, when did you start to believe? The Monster
Speaker 2: is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Radio, hosted
Speaker 2: and executive produced by me Matt Graves, produced by Thomas
Speaker 2: Resimont of Bubble Sound. Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay are
Speaker 2: executive producers on the behalf of Tenderfoot TV with producer
Speaker 2: Makeup and Vanity Set. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are
Speaker 2: executive producers on the behalf of iHeartRadio with producer Trevor Young.
Speaker 2: Original music by Jay Ragsdale. Sound design by Cooper Skinner
Speaker 2: and Thomas Resimo, mixed and mastered by Cooper Skinner. Cover
Speaker 2: design by Trevor Eiler. La Monstra includes archival audio from SONYMA,
Speaker 2: RTBF Archives and CNN Archives. Special thanks to Back Media
Speaker 2: and Marketing Station sixteen, Jean Savigna, and the teams at
Speaker 2: iHeart Radio and tenderfoot TV. Find us on social media
Speaker 2: at Monster Underscore pod. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio
Speaker 2: or Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 2: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 7: MHM