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Speaker 2: It must have been May or June nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 2: I had been in Belgium for about a year and
Speaker 2: was engaging in one of my favorite pastimes in my
Speaker 2: new host country, grocery shopping in the del Hayes supermarket.
Speaker 2: Still to this day, twenty five years later, I love
Speaker 2: Delaya's stores. You can always tell a lot about a
Speaker 2: country by their supermarkets, and Belgium certainly lives up to
Speaker 2: its reputation as a paradise for good food and drink.
Speaker 2: I was meandering through the beer ale when I heard
Speaker 2: a disturbance few aisles.
Speaker 1: Over, ju Yet.
Speaker 3: Juet.
Speaker 2: A woman was searching for.
Speaker 4: Her daughter.
Speaker 5: Juette.
Speaker 2: The tone of her voice ran borderline hysterical, Juliette as
Speaker 2: she ran from aisle to aisle, yelling out.
Speaker 3: For her daughter, Juliette, Suette, Jaunette Dame.
Speaker 2: Other shoppers joined in and soon half of the supermarket
Speaker 2: was searching for Juliette.
Speaker 6: Sauyette.
Speaker 2: We found her in the cereal aisle and her mother
Speaker 2: hugged her into an embrace as if she'd almost lost
Speaker 2: Juliet forever. I remember thinking, hmmm, I guess losing your
Speaker 2: kid in a supermarket is a big deal here. It
Speaker 2: wasn't until I was leaving and saw the message board
Speaker 2: near the exit that it hit me. Penned onto the
Speaker 2: board were two slightly faded flers with the faces of Julian, Melissa,
Speaker 2: and Anne and Eva, the four girls who had gone
Speaker 2: missing in two separate incidences the previous summer. Next to
Speaker 2: them was a brand new one. Yet another girl, twelve
Speaker 2: year old Sabindarden, had vanished in broad daylight. Five girls
Speaker 2: had now gone missing without a trace. The country was
Speaker 2: waking up to the frightening fact that all five disappearances
Speaker 2: were strikingly similar and possibly connected. The terror I just
Speaker 2: witness and Juliette's mother and the immediate action from a
Speaker 2: group of strangers were testament to the fact that fear
Speaker 2: was beginning to grip the country.
Speaker 1: Up.
Speaker 7: Psychopaths is somebody who understands emotions.
Speaker 3: And I told them it is very exceptional that somebody
Speaker 3: abducts two children at the same time, so they have
Speaker 3: been the yen of it in nineteen eighty six, But
Speaker 3: my god, it was just a beginning.
Speaker 5: I think Belgium was a paralyzed for perverts in those days.
Speaker 2: Welcome to la monstre, I'm your host, Matt Graves. The
Speaker 2: families of Julian, Melissa, and Anne and Effia had endured
Speaker 2: a long and cold winter without any meaningful leads. Spring
Speaker 2: it arrived in Belgium. But while most people were enjoying
Speaker 2: the warmer weather and lengthening days, the families of these
Speaker 2: missing girls were still in the dark, with little to
Speaker 2: no light shed on the whereabouts or fate of their children.
Speaker 2: Now yet another girl had simply vanished without a trace.
Speaker 2: The latest disappearance was in a French speaking region near
Speaker 2: the town of Tournay, about six month miles from the
Speaker 2: French border in the west of Belgium. It was a
Speaker 2: crisp spring morning in May nineteen ninety six when twelve
Speaker 2: year old Sabine Darden hopped on her bike at around
Speaker 2: seven twenty five for the roughly mile and a half
Speaker 2: ride to school. She was wearing jeans, a red sweater,
Speaker 2: a blue raincoat, and a small backpack. It was a
Speaker 2: swimming day, so she had her little red swimming bag
Speaker 2: attached to the port baggage of her dunlop bicycle. She
Speaker 2: sometimes met up with a friend who lived on the
Speaker 2: route to school and then they'd ride together, But when
Speaker 2: the friend wasn't there that morning, Sabine didn't find it unusual,
Speaker 2: so she rode on by herself. Riding on her own,
Speaker 2: she turned into a quiet street behind the local stadium
Speaker 2: that was still covered in shadow at that early hour.
Speaker 2: Little did she know that predators were lurking in those shadows.
Speaker 2: She heard the rumble of a vehicle approaching from behind,
Speaker 2: so she instinctively swerved to the side to let it pass.
Speaker 2: When it pulled up beside her, she only had a
Speaker 2: split second to see a man behind the wheel of
Speaker 2: a dirty van before another man, who was perched next
Speaker 2: to the open side door, swooped out and grabbed her
Speaker 2: right off of her bicycle. It all happened in a flash.
Speaker 2: Sabine was ripped off of her bike and thrown into
Speaker 2: the back of a van in seconds. The man who
Speaker 2: grabbed her yelled at the driver to stop. They needed
Speaker 2: to get the bike and swimming bags strewn out on
Speaker 2: the road. We know a lot about Sabine's experiences based
Speaker 2: on letters and a journal found where she was held
Speaker 2: after being kidnapped. Before Sabine knew it, they were moving again,
Speaker 2: and her aggressor was trying to force small pills into
Speaker 2: her mouth. The van was filthy, with windows covered by
Speaker 2: stickers and ugly brown and yellow checkered curtains. The back
Speaker 2: seats had been ripped out and replaced with a dirty mattress.
Speaker 2: Sabine's aggressor wrapped her up in a filthy blanket and
Speaker 2: held her down so she couldn't see where they were going.
Speaker 2: When she struggled and yelled, he pinned her down and
Speaker 2: covered up her mouth with his hand. His face was
Speaker 2: inches from hers. His menacing black eyes were terrifying, and
Speaker 2: she realized that trying to fight back was futile. I
Speaker 2: think back to my experience in the supermarket. No doubt
Speaker 2: people were starting to worry about all these disappearances, but
Speaker 2: they had no idea how bad it really was. I
Speaker 2: spoke with an investigative journalist about what the atmosphere was
Speaker 2: like in the mid nineties in Belgium, Douglas de cunning
Speaker 2: probably knows more about this case than anyone. He covered
Speaker 2: it from the beginning for one of the country's most
Speaker 2: respected newspapers, De Morgan. Everywhere I looked to find out
Speaker 2: more about these disappearances, I constantly run into Douglas's work.
Speaker 2: When I finally tracked him down, he was deep in
Speaker 2: the throes of investigating what he called quote Belgium's version
Speaker 2: of the George Floyd case. Needless to say, he's a
Speaker 2: busy man, and I'm fortunate that he agreed to help
Speaker 2: me with his project.
Speaker 5: A colleague of mine, Fred van Nambussa, and all the journalists,
Speaker 5: he published a book in those days. The title was
Speaker 5: young Girls Don't Disappear just like that, and it was
Speaker 5: a perfect way of expressing what we all felt because
Speaker 5: every summer there were young girls getting killed or disappeared, right,
Speaker 5: and there was a very strange indifference among the people,
Speaker 5: but among the police as well. I remember several policemen
Speaker 5: afterwards saying that in every police department you have a
Speaker 5: murder section, you have a burglary section. He also had
Speaker 5: a section that had to deal with child abduction, and
Speaker 5: if you were at a child abduction section. That meant
Speaker 5: that your career was really a disaster that puts them
Speaker 5: the most stupid policemen there because that wasn't considered as
Speaker 5: being a real form of crime.
Speaker 2: So it was really something that they almost swept under
Speaker 2: the rug. It sounds like when it comes to.
Speaker 5: I think Belgium was a paradise for perverts in those days.
Speaker 2: I'm certainly not pointing the finger at Belgium with this project. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: the world is full of places where children disappear without
Speaker 2: proper follow up. In my home state of Texas, a
Speaker 2: monster named Dean Coral abducted and murdered at least twenty
Speaker 2: eight teenage boys under the noses of police in Houston.
Speaker 2: Child abduction and murder is far from a Belgian problem.
Speaker 2: If anything, it's a problem that pretty reliably transcends most borders.
Speaker 2: Belgium simply is an immune from it. It's unbearable to
Speaker 2: imagine the fear and confusion that must have consumed Sabine
Speaker 2: Darden's mind that terrifying morning, only twelve years old. In
Speaker 2: one minute, she's riding her bike on a peaceful spring morning,
Speaker 2: and the next she's wrenched into a filthy van, hurtling
Speaker 2: down the highway. After bumping along what felt like a
Speaker 2: country road for a while, the van pulled into a
Speaker 2: smoother road and accelerated. Sabine spit out the first few pills,
Speaker 2: but the man covered her face with a moist cloth
Speaker 2: that had a chemical smell that made her feel woozy,
Speaker 2: and then he forced her to swallow the pills. Remember
Speaker 2: the attempted abduction in episode one. The perpetrator also purportedly
Speaker 2: had a moist cloth, most likely with chloroform or another
Speaker 2: chemical sedative. Still awake and gripped with fear, Sabine pretended
Speaker 2: to be asleep as the trip continued for what felt
Speaker 2: like an eternity. When the van finally stopped, the man
Speaker 2: pointed to a metal tool chest and told her to
Speaker 2: get inside. After she refused, the man and the driver
Speaker 2: pushed her into the chest and shut the lid. They
Speaker 2: carried her inside the chest, and a few minutes later,
Speaker 2: when they opened it, she found herself inside a dingy house.
Speaker 2: They took her upstairs to a room on the second
Speaker 2: floor with windows covered so that she couldn't see out.
Speaker 2: There were bunk beds and a dinosaur poster on the wall.
Speaker 2: It felt like a child's room. One of the men
Speaker 2: then chained her to the bed by her neck and
Speaker 2: left the room. Back at her hometown of Tournay, it
Speaker 2: wasn't until the late afternoon, when she hadn't come home
Speaker 2: from school, that Sabine's parents realized she was missing. Now
Speaker 2: yet another set of parents was living through the nightmare
Speaker 2: of their child vanishing without a trace. Thanks to the
Speaker 2: tireless work of Julian Melissa and Anne and ephis families,
Speaker 2: the disappearance of Sabine wasn't just swept under the rug.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't let the population or the police forget that
Speaker 2: it wasn't normal for kids to just disappear. Their posters
Speaker 2: were everywhere, and they continued their relentless campaign through a
Speaker 2: constant drumbeat of press appearances and even their own investigations.
Speaker 2: The first journalist to have contact with Julian Melissa's family
Speaker 2: was a reporter from a major national magazine named Michelle Bouffieux.
Speaker 2: Michelle currently works as a journalist at the famous French
Speaker 2: magazine Paris Match. He agreed to an interview and I
Speaker 2: asked him when he first had contact with the families
Speaker 2: of Julian Melissa.
Speaker 6: No, actually It was Julian his family who called me
Speaker 6: a few weeks after the disappearances. They called me because
Speaker 6: of a book I co wrote in ninety three about
Speaker 6: human trafficking networks and pedophilia in Belgium. They wanted to
Speaker 6: discuss the situation and see if I had any thoughts
Speaker 6: or hypothesis about the disappearance of their girls, and their
Speaker 6: conviction was clear from the beginning that the children were
Speaker 6: alive and that in the absence of finding them somewhere
Speaker 6: alive or dead, investigators should be urgently focused on finding them.
Speaker 6: Of course, there's a big difference in urgency when looking
Speaker 6: for someone alive versus looking for bodies. So we published
Speaker 6: a first interview in which they expressed frustration at the
Speaker 6: total lack of information from investigators and judicial authorities. Authorities
Speaker 6: wouldn't share any information at all, none. They wouldn't even
Speaker 6: tell them how many investigators were working on the case.
Speaker 6: When they ask investigators questions like well, what are your
Speaker 6: hypothesis at the moment, they were getting frustrating answers like
Speaker 6: quote anything as possible.
Speaker 2: Two. I asked them what the parents' principal criticisms were
Speaker 2: of police at the time.
Speaker 7: For example, July's father, Jo Willishan said quote, we can't help,
Speaker 7: but I feel that investigators aren't up to the task
Speaker 7: and that they're not the specialists in missing persons that
Speaker 7: wou'd expect to work with on a case like this.
Speaker 6: And indeed, there were other things their phoned bizarre, for
Speaker 6: example that after two months of investigation, they had even
Speaker 6: finished confessing the neighborhood, and it wasn't until after fifteen
Speaker 6: days that the girls went missing that they even interviewed
Speaker 6: their fathers about they wereabouts. At the time of their disappearances.
Speaker 6: They had the impression that the case wasn't being handled
Speaker 6: correctly and with a sufficient degree of urgency.
Speaker 2: I also spoke to a famous radio and television journalist
Speaker 2: at the time named Jose Dessar about his work to
Speaker 2: help give parents a voice in the media. Jose's program,
Speaker 2: called Fey de Vere was somewhat like a Belgian equivalent
Speaker 2: of Dateline NBC in the United States. I asked him
Speaker 2: about the show on which he invited Julian Melissa's parents.
Speaker 4: City real Need. I brought together the parents and the
Speaker 4: authorities who did been criticizing face to face. The parents
Speaker 4: had a sense of conviction and urgency that clashed with
Speaker 4: a slowness of judicial authorities. You have to note that
Speaker 4: the judge appointed to oversee the investigation left for a
Speaker 4: five week vacation a few days after being appointed, and
Speaker 4: then five alternate judges juggle the case in her absence
Speaker 4: without much efficiency. And so the first reaction of the
Speaker 4: parents was that the case wasn't being probably followed and
Speaker 4: that there wasn't a coherent investigations. Indeed, they were interviewed
Speaker 4: by local police and then federal police came and asked
Speaker 4: the same questions. They realized there wasn't proper coordination between juridictions,
Speaker 4: and on the show they were asking the Attorney General
Speaker 4: directly to start sharing information with them. Two and a
Speaker 4: half months after the disappearance, they were pleading for access
Speaker 4: to the case file and direct corporation with authorities. There
Speaker 4: were two moments in the debates that stuck with me.
Speaker 4: The first was when Melissa's father looked at an Attorney
Speaker 4: general in the eye and said, you don't want us
Speaker 4: to have access to the file, but these are our girls.
Speaker 4: They're not wards of the state. In Another moment was
Speaker 4: when Melissa's mother said, during all these discussions all of
Speaker 4: this back and forth. Our girls are suffering, So there
Speaker 4: was a sense of urgency from the parents in the
Speaker 4: face of a sort of lackness and efficiency of the
Speaker 4: judicial system. It was flagrant.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, the summer of nineteen ninety six dragged on without progress.
Speaker 2: Sabine's disappearance was a complete mystery. There were no leads, sightings,
Speaker 2: or anything at all to go on. And then on
Speaker 2: August ninth, another girl disappeared. It was the height of
Speaker 2: summer in the beautiful Ardennes region in the south of Belgium.
Speaker 2: At that time of the year, the Ardennes was full
Speaker 2: of campers, cyclists, and outdoor enthusiasts enjoying nature. In the
Speaker 2: quaint village of Berthrie, fourteen year old Letitia Dalles spent
Speaker 2: the day of August ninth helping her mother with clean
Speaker 2: and shopping. At around seven thirty pm, Letitia and her
Speaker 2: sister walked to the local pool and playground, where they'd
Speaker 2: frequently hang out with local friends on lazy summer evenings.
Speaker 2: Despite its clement weather, Belgium is at about the same
Speaker 2: latitude as Winnipeg and Canada, so the sun doesn't set
Speaker 2: until around nine thirty pm. In early August, Letitia hung
Speaker 2: out with some friends until around eight forty five pm
Speaker 2: and then left for the short walk back home. She
Speaker 2: was wearing a blue and white flowered blouse and tennis shoes.
Speaker 2: When she didn't show up at home a bit later,
Speaker 2: her sister and mother walked all around town looking for her.
Speaker 2: They didn't find Letitia, and they were immediately worried and
Speaker 2: went to the police. Unlike past disappearances, the police and
Speaker 2: judicial system jumped into action right away. Police started interview
Speaker 2: viewing locals and Bertrie immediately to try to piece together
Speaker 2: a timeline and find witnesses of anything suspicious leading up
Speaker 2: to the disappearance. The provincial King's Prosecutor, Michel Bourlat, traveled
Speaker 2: to Bertrie in person the next morning and immediately started
Speaker 2: coordinating with local and national police. Michel Bourlat is probably
Speaker 2: the most well known prosecutor in the history of Belgium.
Speaker 2: If you live through these times here, you certainly know
Speaker 2: who he is and remember seeing him on television a lot.
Speaker 2: Through a bit of luck and a lot of persistence,
Speaker 2: I convinced him to speak with me for this project.
Speaker 2: My co producer Thomas and I traveled down to the
Speaker 2: south of Belgium to meet with him at his home.
Speaker 2: It was a warm day in mid June and we
Speaker 2: settled down on his back porch, overlooking a plentiful garden
Speaker 2: backed up by rolling hills in thick pine forest. In
Speaker 2: true Belgian style, he started off by offering me a
Speaker 2: cold beer and got one for himself as well. It
Speaker 2: was a great start to affact needing interview.
Speaker 8: It was a Saturday morning and I was here at
Speaker 8: home getting ready to do some gardening, and around nine
Speaker 8: am the phone rang and Captain Ballar informed me that
Speaker 8: a fourteen year old girl went missing the previous evening
Speaker 8: in the village of bare Tree, Abertrie Lave. The girl
Speaker 8: had left the swimming pool at nine pm and hadn't
Speaker 8: come home afterwards immediate. The way from the pool to
Speaker 8: her house was about a ten to fifteen minute walk
Speaker 8: through the village and the town square. Her mother reported
Speaker 8: it to the police, who started investigating right away. They
Speaker 8: searched the route she would have taken in the area
Speaker 8: around it. They didn't find anything.
Speaker 5: Sending a thief done.
Speaker 8: Captain Ballar considered the disap appearance is worrying, okay, I said,
Speaker 8: I'm on my way.
Speaker 5: You need to see.
Speaker 8: Bertrie is ten minutes away, so I showed up right away.
Speaker 8: Captain ball Ar explained the search they'd made, and then
Speaker 8: mister Delouz arrived.
Speaker 1: Dulouze Mister.
Speaker 8: Mister Deluze is a man who had lost his daughter
Speaker 8: four years earlier.
Speaker 2: Philip Dulouze was the father of a sixteen year old
Speaker 2: girl named Lawrence Matthews, who disappeared and was then found
Speaker 2: dead in nineteen ninety two. When she was found, her
Speaker 2: body was identified as that of a drug addict who
Speaker 2: had gone missing, only to reappear the day before her
Speaker 2: own funeral. Sadly, mister Deluze learned that the misidentified body
Speaker 2: was that of his daughter. He spent over twenty years
Speaker 2: trying to identify her killer, and was even accused of
Speaker 2: the murder himself. He was at the scene in Bertrie
Speaker 2: with an organization called the Mark and Korean Association dedicated
Speaker 2: to finding missing children. This association was also active at
Speaker 2: the time in the search for Julian, Melissa and Anne
Speaker 2: and Effia, who had recently gone missing. Mister de Luz's
Speaker 2: first reaction was that of surprise to see a king's
Speaker 2: prosecutor on site so shortly after this new disappearance. It
Speaker 2: was very uncommon for high level magistrates to roll up
Speaker 2: their sleeves and jump into action so quickly on a
Speaker 2: missing person's case. But if there's one thing I learned
Speaker 2: during my meeting with Michelle Boulet is that he's anything
Speaker 2: but common. He exhibits a rare combination of humility, compassion,
Speaker 2: and the gruff determination of a steely prosecutor. King's prosecutor
Speaker 2: Michelle Boulet.
Speaker 8: Deluze had come to get a photo of Letitia as
Speaker 8: part of his work with the Mark and Krinn Association,
Speaker 8: started by the parents of other missing or murdered children.
Speaker 8: They were there to help authorities by printing and distributing
Speaker 8: missing children posters lap At that time, I was conscious
Speaker 8: of the Julian Melissa case and all the problems the
Speaker 8: parents had had with judicial authorities. I didn't want to
Speaker 8: fall into all those shortcomings I had perceived and which
Speaker 8: Julian Melissa's parents had talked about in the media, the
Speaker 8: distrust and lack of empathy and information. So I was
Speaker 8: also there to meet directly with Letitious parents. I wasn't
Speaker 8: in my ivory tower or off playing golf somewhere. I
Speaker 8: was there to show them that we were concerned and
Speaker 8: that we were there to help them. In the evening,
Speaker 8: I stopped by the station again for an update. A
Speaker 8: volunteer who had come from far away said he thought
Speaker 8: he'd seen Letitia coming from Blancherie, so on my way
Speaker 8: home I made a detour to Blancherie and searched for
Speaker 8: about half an hour.
Speaker 2: I'm really starting to like Michelle Bourlet. It's rare for
Speaker 2: a King's prosecutor to visit the side of a disappearance,
Speaker 2: and even rarer for him to jump in his car
Speaker 2: and start searching himself. Unlike in previous disappearances, this investigation
Speaker 2: got the attention it deserved. Within a day, both local
Speaker 2: and federal police were all over it. Boulet quickly enlisted
Speaker 2: an investigating judge to oversee the case. Police and local
Speaker 2: authorities were getting support from local volunteers and the Mark
Speaker 2: and Karna Association, who were printing and distributing missing Persons flyers.
Speaker 2: While canvassing the area, they spoke to a nun named
Speaker 2: sister Etienne, who claimed to have seen a suspicious looking
Speaker 2: van near the swimming pool on Friday evening. In her statement,
Speaker 2: she said the van was parked near the pool and
Speaker 2: she noticed it because it was clunky and loud, with
Speaker 2: a bunch of stickers in the lateral rear window. Police
Speaker 2: were also interviewing all family members and friends. Letitia's sister
Speaker 2: said that one of her friends named Virginie, thought she
Speaker 2: had seen Letitia before the disappearance with a group of
Speaker 2: young people, including a girl she knew named Kathy. They
Speaker 2: spoke with Visionie, who confirmed that she thought that she'd
Speaker 2: seen Kathy with Letitia that evening, but when they tracked
Speaker 2: down Kathy, she said that she hadn't seen Leticia at
Speaker 2: all that evening. However, Kathy did mention that she saw
Speaker 2: a man that she didn't recognize enter the pool complex
Speaker 2: to use the restrooms that evening. She said her boyfriend
Speaker 2: also saw this man, so police then interviewed Kathy's boyfriend,
Speaker 2: Ben Waugh. He said he recalled seeing the man but
Speaker 2: couldn't remember anything about his appearance. After thinking about it,
Speaker 2: ben wa said that he did see a beat up
Speaker 2: looking van that evening, parked on the sidewalk facing the pool.
Speaker 2: It was white with stickers covering up the back lateral windows. Again,
Speaker 2: King's prosecutor, Michel Boulet Ressoir.
Speaker 8: That evening, when I went back to the station in
Speaker 8: bear Tree, Major Giessar told me that they had something
Speaker 8: new and so then he told me about sister Etienne's testimony,
Speaker 8: which I knew about, and then about a new testimony.
Speaker 8: As luck would have it, the young man who had
Speaker 8: given us information on Monday, I thought he remembered part
Speaker 8: of a license plate number. He gave us the make
Speaker 8: of the car, the model of the car, and the
Speaker 8: beginning of a license plate number.
Speaker 2: The young man Ben Wi Tino, actually remembered the make, model,
Speaker 2: and first three letters of the license plate of the
Speaker 2: van he'd seen three days prior. He said he'd memorize
Speaker 2: the license plate because he was worried the occupants of
Speaker 2: this junkie van might steal his bicycle. As luck would
Speaker 2: have it, Ben waugh all So was a car buff
Speaker 2: and he remembered that it was a Renault Traffique model.
Speaker 2: It shows the importance of thoroughly following every lead and
Speaker 2: speaking to every possible witness. If you think about it,
Speaker 2: it's a coincidence that they even spoke to Benoit. Remember
Speaker 2: that they interviewed him because a friend of a friend
Speaker 2: of Letitia's sister had noticed a man in the pool restrooms,
Speaker 2: and she said that Benois might also remember him, and
Speaker 2: the van came up randomly. At the end of the interview.
Speaker 2: Investigators perked up at Benois's description of the suspicious van
Speaker 2: because it was similar to what the nun sister at
Speaker 2: Tienne had seen. A lot has happened since the start
Speaker 2: of this episode, so let's summarize the facts at this point.
Speaker 2: In May nineteen ninety six, Sabine Darden went missing near
Speaker 2: Tournay in the west of Belgium. There were no witnesses
Speaker 2: or clues about what happened to her. Three months later,
Speaker 2: yet another girl, Letitia da Les, disappeared from Bertier, about
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty miles east from where Sabine went missing.
Speaker 2: Investigating this latest disappearance, police uncovered an interesting tip, corroborated
Speaker 2: by two separate witnesses, about a suspicious looking van spotted
Speaker 2: near where Letitia was last seen. By chance, one of
Speaker 2: the witnesses who saw the van was able to recall
Speaker 2: the make, model, and first three letters of the license plate.
Speaker 2: The first three letters of the license plate he remembered
Speaker 2: were fr R. Police quickly ran a search of all
Speaker 2: Renault vehicles in Belgium with a license plate starting with
Speaker 2: fr R. The query gave them seventy seven hits. Finally,
Speaker 2: police had something concrete in serious cases in Belgium, and
Speaker 2: investigating judge is brought in to carry out pre trial investigations.
Speaker 2: Boulet wasted no time in soliciting an investigating judge, Jean
Speaker 2: Marc Conrad, who jumped straight into the case with Gusto.
Speaker 2: It had been four days since the disappearance of Letitia Michelle.
Speaker 2: Boulet in his investigating judge Jean Mark Conrad knew the
Speaker 2: time was of the essence. They knew it was now
Speaker 2: or never. Next time on La Montre.
Speaker 8: Monsieur, the agent van Rillard ran a search in his
Speaker 8: computer and several names come back, one of which was
Speaker 8: a certain to true. I asked, who's this guy? He
Speaker 8: was someone very interesting and had been under surveillance for
Speaker 8: a year then by the Gendarmerie of Chalarroois.
Speaker 3: If you read the report of doctor Denesse, he said,
Speaker 3: I've done in my career. He was already at the
Speaker 3: end of his career at the time that he was
Speaker 3: coming to testify in court about the report that he
Speaker 3: made on margin, and I said, I've done about four
Speaker 3: thousands of these expertises, you know, in investigations towards the
Speaker 3: personality of somebody else, that I never met anybody so
Speaker 3: close to one hundred percent psychopath. He says, if I
Speaker 3: have to put something or another, I think he must
Speaker 3: be about ninety seven percent right. But the strange thing
Speaker 3: is that it is exactly the one thing of feelings
Speaker 3: that he had left that became his downfall, and that
Speaker 3: is that Pride.
Speaker 2: The Monster is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio,
Speaker 2: hosted and executive produced by me Matt Graves, produced by
Speaker 2: Thomas Resimont. A Bubble sound, Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay
Speaker 2: are executive producers on the behalf of Tenderfoot TV with
Speaker 2: producer Makeup and Vanity Said. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams
Speaker 2: are execut kit producers on the behalf of iHeartRadio with
Speaker 2: producer Trevor Young. Original music by Jay Ragsdale, Sound design
Speaker 2: by Cooper Skinner and Thomas Resimont, mixed and mastered by
Speaker 2: Cooper Skinner. Cover design by Trevor Eiler. La Monstra includes
Speaker 2: archival audio from SONYMA RTBF Archives and CNN Archives. Special
Speaker 2: thanks to back Media and marketing Station sixteen, Jean Savigna,
Speaker 2: and the teams at iHeartRadio and tenderfoot TV. Find us
Speaker 2: on social media at Monster Underscore pod. For more podcasts
Speaker 2: from iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.