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Speaker 1: Previously on La monstre.
Speaker 3: So at around eight pm, I dropped her off in
Speaker 3: front of her apartment. She didn't seem scared. She got
Speaker 3: out of the car and opened her front door, and
Speaker 3: then she she waved at me and then went inside.
Speaker 1: What Georgette didn't know then was that this would be
Speaker 1: the last time she would ever see her sister.
Speaker 4: Jacqueline Lazy.
Speaker 5: Now the disappearance of a woman from Mont Jacqueline le Clerk,
Speaker 5: thirty three years old, Chateau.
Speaker 6: This young woman has short, light brown hair and blue eyes,
Speaker 6: five feet three inches tall with a normal build.
Speaker 7: Okay, we're arriving where the attempts to use her bank
Speaker 7: card happened at around one in the morning on the
Speaker 7: twenty third of December. It's in a dark area, out
Speaker 7: of view. There was a surveillance camera on the ATM machine,
Speaker 7: but it was out of order at the time, unfortunately,
Speaker 7: as it could have helped answer a number of questions.
Speaker 8: As a young reporter, I covered everything, but since I
Speaker 8: was from most as you know, I started following this
Speaker 8: story closely. At the time, violence against women did not
Speaker 8: attract the attention it does today, especially marginalized woman like
Speaker 8: Jacqueline Leclaire and Natalie Goudaar.
Speaker 1: Both women frequented several of the same cafes and bars
Speaker 1: near the train station, and specifically a small hotel and
Speaker 1: bar establishment called the Metropol.
Speaker 3: She had mentioned this meant to me. She found him
Speaker 3: rather nice, cultured and intelligent, a pleasure to speak with.
Speaker 3: After meeting him in the park, my sister ran into
Speaker 3: him a few more times. She felt that these encounters
Speaker 3: were orchestrated, maybe even calculated.
Speaker 8: The police never identified what this man was. It's not
Speaker 8: going to be easy, but we have to identify this man.
Speaker 1: It was a dull gray morning. On March twenty second,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, in the municipality of Kuem near Moss,
Speaker 1: Officer Olivier Mutt of the Royal Mounted Police prepared his
Speaker 1: horse and the stables for a routine mounted patrol. He
Speaker 1: was a regular uniformed officer but greatly enjoyed the perk
Speaker 1: of being part of the Royal Mounted Brigade and doing
Speaker 1: patrols on horseback.
Speaker 9: It was late morning. I was on my horse, calmly
Speaker 9: heading toward months. As I approached the railway bridge, my
Speaker 9: attention was attracted towards something in the ditch. I noticed
Speaker 9: what seemed like a cat about fifteen meters below, playing
Speaker 9: with something. A pedestrian wouldn't have been able to see it.
Speaker 9: The cat had something white in its mouth. At first
Speaker 9: I thought it was a toy, but something seemed off,
Speaker 9: so I turned back.
Speaker 1: The cat that Officer Mutt saw was down on a
Speaker 1: ditch along the side of the road. It was a
Speaker 1: place where unscrupulous people tended to dump their trash if
Speaker 1: they missed a regular garbage pick up. A normal passerby
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been able to see down into the ditch,
Speaker 1: but his mounted viewpoint gave him a clear view of
Speaker 1: the shameful dumping ground. At first, he thought the cat
Speaker 1: was chewing on a discarded glove, but something seemed off,
Speaker 1: so he dismounted his horse and descended into the ditch
Speaker 1: to inspect. To his horror, Officer Mutt realized it was
Speaker 1: a human hand. It appeared to have been sawed off
Speaker 1: the arm of a body relatively recently. It was the
Speaker 1: public beginning of a dark mystery that's still never been solved. Today,
Speaker 1: twenty eight years.
Speaker 4: Later, A can'tbly mysteriously couvert de mon.
Speaker 5: The history they disappearance of a woman from Mont Jacqueline.
Speaker 4: The condition of the victims was sickening.
Speaker 8: And the question remains, where is the killer?
Speaker 1: From Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts, I'm your host Matt
Speaker 1: Graves and this is La manstre season two, The Butcher
Speaker 1: of Moss. So I am now standing on the side
Speaker 1: of the road where Officer Mutt would have made his
Speaker 1: gruesome discovery. It's basically a kind of a semi busy road,
Speaker 1: I would call it. That's the first time I this
Speaker 1: exact spot is ground zero for The Butcher of Moss case.
Speaker 1: I came here alone to visualize how the mounted police
Speaker 1: officer would have stumbled onto the initial discovery. I'm looking
Speaker 1: down into a ditch, and I can see how if
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have been on his horse, he wouldn't have
Speaker 1: seen anything because the ditch is really deep, so if
Speaker 1: you're just walking and you look down, you can't even
Speaker 1: see the bottom of where the ditch is. This is
Speaker 1: where the discovery was made and where it sort of
Speaker 1: it all really started. The dismembered hand that Officer Mutt
Speaker 1: had discovered was poking out of a gray trash bag.
Speaker 1: There seemed to be more than one trash bag of
Speaker 1: the same kind, and they appeared to contain more body parts.
Speaker 1: He quickly called an in and the crime scene was secured.
Speaker 1: An investigating judge and prosecutor attended the scene in person,
Speaker 1: along with other specialized forces and forensics teams. In total,
Speaker 1: eight different bags containing dismembered body parts were found in
Speaker 1: the ditch that The contents of the bags were carefully
Speaker 1: examined on sight before being transported to a forensic laboratory.
Speaker 1: It was quickly determined that all of the body parts
Speaker 1: were female. Although disturbing, it's important to understand the contents
Speaker 1: of these bags as you'll hear in future episodes, listener
Speaker 1: discretion is advised. Bag one two feet and two legs.
Speaker 1: Bag two, two hands, including the wrists and two thighs.
Speaker 1: Bag three, two arms and one shoulder. Bag four, one shoulder,
Speaker 1: Bag five, one foot and one leg including the knee.
Speaker 1: Bags six and seven were ripped open but had included
Speaker 1: a left arm as well as the left hand that
Speaker 1: Officer Mutt had spotted from the bridge, and Bag eight
Speaker 1: contained various undetermined body parts. Forensics experts quickly determined that
Speaker 1: the body parts belonged to three different females. It didn't
Speaker 1: take long for the media to catch wind of the
Speaker 1: major crime scene and started reporting on the gruesome discovery.
Speaker 5: By gab Mysterious Nikouvitt, there was a macabre and mysterious
Speaker 5: discovery of body parts, apparently dismembered with a saw. According
Speaker 5: to investigators, partial remains of three women were found in
Speaker 5: trash bags in quem near. Mon's searches have continued without
Speaker 5: break since yesterday to try to find the torsos and heads,
Speaker 5: which are still missing, making the identification of the cadavers difficult.
Speaker 1: The initial breaking news brought up public fear. Unlike anything
Speaker 1: mass had ever experienced, and raised more questions than answers.
Speaker 1: Who were these women? How long ago had they been murdered?
Speaker 1: Was the killer still out there? The public's thirst for
Speaker 1: more and became overwhelming, and the King's prosecutor himself provided
Speaker 1: more details than a press conference.
Speaker 10: I can confirm that there are three series of cadavers
Speaker 10: at three different stages of putrefaction. The first could be
Speaker 10: dated to more than one year, given the state of
Speaker 10: decomposition of the flesh, and the last could be as
Speaker 10: recent as two days ago, which only raises concerns about
Speaker 10: the behavior of the individual responsible for this. We know
Speaker 10: that the cadavers were dismembered with remarkable precision, and many
Speaker 10: more apparently with the use of a saw. I can
Speaker 10: confirm as well that on the left forearm of one
Speaker 10: of the victims there was removal of roughly five centimeters
Speaker 10: of flesh. Was there a tattoo or was there something else?
Speaker 10: We do not know at this stage.
Speaker 1: The surreal press conference shocked the entire nation. The news
Speaker 1: that some of the body parts could have been dismembered
Speaker 1: within the last forty eight hours was horrifying. It reinforced
Speaker 1: public fears that a killer of women was active and
Speaker 1: likely searching for his next victim. On the following day,
Speaker 1: another trash bag with human remains was found at the
Speaker 1: same site. Bag nine also contained various undetermined body parts,
Speaker 1: and on the day after that, another trash bag was
Speaker 1: found in a different location. Bag ten contained an entire
Speaker 1: female torso, and it was dumped on the side of
Speaker 1: a road aptually named the Path of Worry.
Speaker 4: I play teribri dicuvel descend.
Speaker 5: After the terrible discoveries of Saturday, investigators made a new
Speaker 5: discovery yesterday afternoon of the torso of a fourth woman.
Speaker 5: Ten trash bags have been discovered. So far, investigators believe
Speaker 5: it is the work of a serial killer. For the moment,
Speaker 5: none of the four victims have been identified.
Speaker 1: News of this new gruesome discovery confirm the public's worst
Speaker 1: fears a twisted and sadistic serial killer was active in
Speaker 1: lurking among them. Gripped by fear and anxiety, the public
Speaker 1: was once again clamoring for more information, and the King's
Speaker 1: prosecutor held another press conference.
Speaker 10: What I can tell you about this torso is that
Speaker 10: the dismemberment is identical to the remains previously found in Queens.
Speaker 10: It is therefore likely the work of the same perpetrator.
Speaker 10: What we can say about this latest macab discovery is
Speaker 10: that it must have been deposited between Saturday and Sunday.
Speaker 1: The pace of events was overwhelming, with the latest dumping
Speaker 1: of a dismembered torso having taken place after the first
Speaker 1: discoveries and within the past twenty four hours. Police helicopters
Speaker 1: scoured disguise of moss, and emergency services were deployed to
Speaker 1: any sighting of a suspicious trash bag. The peaceful veneer
Speaker 1: of moss was shattered.
Speaker 3: I was watching TV that day and I knew it
Speaker 3: was my sister.
Speaker 1: From the moment of the first press conference about the
Speaker 1: initial Gruesome discoveries, the sister of Jacqueline Leclaire got a
Speaker 1: sinking feeling that her sister was among the unidentified victims.
Speaker 1: When the King's prosecutor shared a small detail towards the
Speaker 1: end of.
Speaker 10: Us briefing, I can confirm as well that on the
Speaker 10: left forearm of one of the victims there was removal
Speaker 10: of roughly five centimeters of flesh. Was there a tattoo
Speaker 10: or was there something else? We do not know At
Speaker 10: this stage.
Speaker 3: I feared that the garbage bags contain my sister's body.
Speaker 3: Jacqueline add a tattoo of her hex husband Angelo on
Speaker 3: a left fore arm.
Speaker 1: Authorities would confirm that one of the victims discovered was
Speaker 1: Jacqueline Leclaire, but before they officially communicated this tragic news
Speaker 1: to the family, reporters broke the story on live television
Speaker 1: while her sister and mother were watching.
Speaker 3: It's not through the justice system or the police that
Speaker 3: we learned Jaqueline was among the victims. We learned about
Speaker 3: it on television with a picture writer on the screen.
Speaker 3: It was a terrible shot. We heard that my little
Speaker 3: sister was cut into pieces. Can you imagine what happens
Speaker 3: in your heads when you hear dad, It's horrible. It's horrible.
Speaker 1: Jacqueline Leclaire, thirty three years old, sister, daughter, and mother
Speaker 1: of four children, was identified as the victim of a
Speaker 1: brutal serial killer. Her mother and sister, who had never
Speaker 1: given up searching for her, were devastated. They thought she
Speaker 1: may have no longer been alive, but nothing could have
Speaker 1: prepared them for this. To this day, her head and
Speaker 1: several other body parts have still never been found. I'm
Speaker 1: back in with Xavier Morgan van Leaerberg and another man
Speaker 1: who will remain unnamed. We're in a car driving away
Speaker 1: from the train station in the direction of the spot
Speaker 1: where the first grusome discovery was made.
Speaker 7: So now we've left the area around the train station
Speaker 7: to drive to the principal deposit site where they found
Speaker 7: the nine trash bags. And as you can see, we're
Speaker 7: almost there already, so it takes less than five minutes
Speaker 7: to get from the station area to the Rue van
Speaker 7: der Velda.
Speaker 1: I wanted to get a clear understanding of how the
Speaker 1: perpetrator must have deposited the original nine trash bags full
Speaker 1: of body parts on the side of a relatively busy
Speaker 1: road near the center of Mons. The first thing that
Speaker 1: appears clear to me right away is that he needed
Speaker 1: a vehicle to do this. It's really quite surprising that
Speaker 1: he was would have chosen this site. It's a somewhat
Speaker 1: busy two way road that passes over train tracks and
Speaker 1: into the neighboring commune of quem.
Speaker 7: So you can see that there is housing on both sides.
Speaker 7: And now we're arriving in the only zone where there's
Speaker 7: nature and no housing.
Speaker 1: The car behind us hanks as we pull over to
Speaker 1: the side of the road, just as a killer would
Speaker 1: have done. There's really not much room to pull over here.
Speaker 1: Frankly speaking, it seems like a dangerous spot to dump
Speaker 1: a body. It's not very well hidden. At the same time,
Speaker 1: it's a place where people illegally discarded trash, so not
Speaker 1: completely suspect to see trash bags down in the ditch
Speaker 1: next to the road. In fact, the police officer on
Speaker 1: horseback who discovered the severed hand did so very much
Speaker 1: by chance. Coincidentally, the cat drew his attention from his
Speaker 1: mounted view. Had the officer been on foot, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have seen it, and it just so happened that one
Speaker 1: of the trash bags was ripped open, allowing the hand
Speaker 1: to be seen in the first place. In the early
Speaker 1: days of the investigation, after the first bodies were discovered,
Speaker 1: the medium mistakenly mentioned a fourth victim, but as the
Speaker 1: dust began to settle, it was determined that the fifteen
Speaker 1: bags were all from three female victims. Police and forensics
Speaker 1: experts were struggling to identify the two of these three victims.
Speaker 1: They had identified Jacqueline early because of the killer's clumsy
Speaker 1: attempt to remove an identifying tattoo, on her left forearm.
Speaker 1: Her sister Georgette had also been furiously looking for her,
Speaker 1: and her missing person's case was on the police radar.
Speaker 1: It didn't take long to connect the dots and make
Speaker 1: the identification. Her state of decomposition three months was also
Speaker 1: an identifying factor. Jacqueline disappeared exactly three months to the
Speaker 1: day of the first discovery. The other two victims, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, were a total mystery. Police were also
Speaker 1: able to estimate their times of death based on states
Speaker 1: of decomposition, the oldest dating from six months to a year,
Speaker 1: and the most recent, who was believed to have been
Speaker 1: murdered within days of the discovery. It was especially chilling
Speaker 1: to realize that the latest discovery of the female torso
Speaker 1: had been dumped after the initial discovery. It confirmed police's
Speaker 1: and the public's worst fears. This wasn't a case of
Speaker 1: just finding out what happened. It was happening in real time.
Speaker 1: I spoke to the investigative journalist Frederic Laure about those
Speaker 1: fateful three days of March twenty second, twenty third, and
Speaker 1: twenty fourth, nineteen ninety six in mass where every day
Speaker 1: brought a new terrifying discovery.
Speaker 8: I am originally from Moss and I was a young
Speaker 8: reporter at the time. It was just incredible. There had
Speaker 8: never been a serial killer like this in Belgium, much
Speaker 8: less in Monts, and now we had the most grotesque
Speaker 8: story ever. Police, magistrates and even journalists were overwhelmed think
Speaker 8: about it. On March twenty two, eight sacks containing shopped
Speaker 8: up female body parts are found. The next day they
Speaker 8: find the nine sack, and then the next day they
Speaker 8: find the female torso in a sack at another site,
Speaker 8: this time very close to the center of Monts, just
Speaker 8: behind the train station. I was dispatched to cover the
Speaker 8: case and people were really terrified. Information was coming so fast.
Speaker 8: Everyone had questions how many victims are there or where
Speaker 8: they killed? And the question remains, where is the killer.
Speaker 1: Investigators barely had time to catch their breath before another
Speaker 1: discovery was made. On April twelfth, nineteen ninety seven, approximately
Speaker 1: three weeks after the first discoveries, two more gruesome trash
Speaker 1: bags were found and yet another location.
Speaker 6: Good afternoon in Havrey, near Monts, two garbage bags containing
Speaker 6: human remains were discovered. The body parts are currently at
Speaker 6: the Forensics Institute in Liege for examination. The similarities with
Speaker 6: the three cadavers discovered in Quem fifteen days ago are flagrant.
Speaker 6: Investigators believe it is the same perpetrator.
Speaker 1: By now the entire country of Belgium was fixated on
Speaker 1: the investigation. Once again, the King's Prosecute held another macab
Speaker 1: press conference.
Speaker 10: The first bag contained a foot and a fore leg,
Speaker 10: meaning the part of the leg between the knee and
Speaker 10: the ankle. The second bag contained a head. It is
Speaker 10: a female head, but we are unable to identify this
Speaker 10: person because of the state of decomposition, and it doesn't
Speaker 10: appear to resemble any of the missing persons in our files.
Speaker 1: And only six days after that, yet another grisom discovery
Speaker 1: had a new.
Speaker 5: Location Simfurian streets in Havre. It's four pm. Police forces
Speaker 5: are holding back the press from where three new trash
Speaker 5: bags were just discovered containing human remains. The King's Prosecutor
Speaker 5: explains what seems more and more to resemble a sordid
Speaker 5: treasure hunt.
Speaker 10: Sak examination of these bags. There are three of them
Speaker 10: contained respectively, a hand with arm unsevered and a forearm.
Speaker 1: In seven days, five new bags were discovered, a total
Speaker 1: of fifteen bag eleven a female head, bag twelve, a
Speaker 1: foot and a leg, bag thirteen, a thigh, bag fourteen,
Speaker 1: a thigh and bag fifteen, a hand, an arm and
Speaker 1: a forearm. The locations of the two new discoveries were
Speaker 1: again different, this time just outside of Monts about a
Speaker 1: ten minute drive from the train station. For the first time,
Speaker 1: police had the head of one of the victims. The
Speaker 1: chief of the police unit in charge of the investigation,
Speaker 1: Officer Ghill Marie Martin, explains.
Speaker 11: We discovered the head of a woman, but the head
Speaker 11: wasn't presentable for the p so I decided to ask
Speaker 11: the investigating judge to request the services of a police
Speaker 11: portrait artist who sketched the head and that drawing was
Speaker 11: distributed to the press. Afterward, I got a call in
Speaker 11: the afternoon from a woman who was completely terrified and
Speaker 11: in a state of shock, who said, it's my daughter,
Speaker 11: it's my daughter. And so I went to her house
Speaker 11: with another inspector and from the start she was sure
Speaker 11: it was her daughter in this case, Natalie Godart, Madame.
Speaker 11: And there was a little girl who was there, two
Speaker 11: years old or two and a half, and she took
Speaker 11: a newspaper off of a chair and came over and
Speaker 11: said that's mommy.
Speaker 1: That little girl who recognized her mother's composite picture in
Speaker 1: the newspaper was two year old Laura, the daughter of
Speaker 1: Natalie Godard, who went missing three months after Jacqueline Leclair.
Speaker 1: You'll recall that we heard from Laura in the previous
Speaker 1: episode where she described her mother's hardships as well as
Speaker 1: her own, having grown up in a dysfunctional family in
Speaker 1: the foster care system. With Natalie Godard now identified as
Speaker 1: one of the three victims, the investigative dots were beginning
Speaker 1: to connect. Natalie was the most recent victim, murdered just
Speaker 1: days before the first trash bags were discovered. Jacqueline was
Speaker 1: the second most recent victim, murdered three months before the discovery.
Speaker 1: Jacqueline and Natalie frequented the same bars and restaurants near
Speaker 1: the Mosse train station, which was now ground zero for investigators,
Speaker 1: but the third victim had not yet been identified. She
Speaker 1: was estimated to have been murdered six months to a
Speaker 1: year prior to the first discovery. Three victims body parts
Speaker 1: discarded in fifteen separate trash backs spread across four locations
Speaker 1: in and around the city of Moss. The horror of
Speaker 1: the previous month had set in and taken hold of
Speaker 1: the community. The only hope was that the worst was
Speaker 1: behind them. Was they didn't know at the time was
Speaker 1: that the story was far from over, and that the
Speaker 1: horror they'd witnessed in the previous month was only the beginning.
Speaker 1: Next time, on season two of La Monstre.
Speaker 6: It is now certain that the butcher of Mons has
Speaker 6: killed three victims. It's also certain that the trash bags
Speaker 6: recently discovered were deposited at different timestell.
Speaker 12: The police called me and said that they wanted to
Speaker 12: do a DNA tests chevu because a hair containing my
Speaker 12: DNA would have been found in one of the trash bags,
Speaker 12: and that the DNA led them to me.
Speaker 8: Are becoming clear about the connection between those three victims
Speaker 8: and the way they have been killed.
Speaker 1: Le Monstre is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts, hosted, written,
Speaker 1: and executive produced by Me. Matt Graves, Donald Albright, and
Speaker 1: Payne Lindsay are executive producers on the behalf of Tenderfoot TV,
Speaker 1: with producer Makeup and Vanity Set. Matt Frederick and Trevor
Speaker 1: Young are executive producers on the behalf of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Original music by Jay Ragsdale, Sound design and master by
Speaker 1: Cooper Skinner, Cover design by Byron McCoy and Trevor Eiler.
Speaker 1: Lea Monstre includes archival audio from SONYMA RTBF Archives. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Aren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, the
Speaker 1: Nord Group and are Active Investigation team Morgen van Leerberg,
Speaker 1: Fredrich lah, Jervie de Com and Annan Gardon, as well
Speaker 1: as the teams at iHeart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. Find
Speaker 1: us on social media at Monster Underscore pod. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts like Lea Monstre, search Tenderfoot TV in your podcast
Speaker 1: app or visit tenderfoot tv