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Speaker 2: In August nineteen ninety five, just two months after Julie
Speaker 2: LeJean and Melissa Rousseau went missing in the east of Belgium,
Speaker 2: a group of teenagers who were part of the Harlequin
Speaker 2: Amateur Theater group gathered at one of their houses to
Speaker 2: put the final touches on their summer beach trip plans.
Speaker 2: It was a big deal for most of the kids,
Speaker 2: who'd never been on a parent's free vacation before. The
Speaker 2: meeting took place at Paul and Betty Marshaw's house, who,
Speaker 2: after much hesitation, decided to let their seventeen year old
Speaker 2: daughter Anne join the trip. It was a nice group,
Speaker 2: responsible kids, so Paul and Betty went upstairs and let
Speaker 2: them plan their trip without helicoptering over them. Their daughter
Speaker 2: Anne was so excited that she thought of nothing else
Speaker 2: in the days prior to leading for the coast. The
Speaker 2: train ride from Hustle to their destination in west Inda
Speaker 2: on the Belgian coast was about two hundred kilometers. They'd
Speaker 2: rented a bungalow there where ten of them would stay
Speaker 2: for a week. Unfortunately, two of them would never return home.
Speaker 3: Psychopaths is somebody who understands emotions.
Speaker 4: And I told them it is very exceptional that somebody
Speaker 4: abducts two children at the same time.
Speaker 3: Would have been the end of it in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 3: but 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 Monstra. I'm your host, Matt Graves. It
Speaker 2: had been two months and the community of Liege and
Speaker 2: Belgium was still desperately searching for answers and the disappearance
Speaker 2: of eight year olds Julie Lejeanne and Melissa Russo. Their
Speaker 2: disappearances were presumed to be an isolated incident, but on
Speaker 2: August twenty third, nineteen ninety five, on the Belgian seaside,
Speaker 2: two more girls would vanish while on a beach trip,
Speaker 2: seventeen year old Anne Marschal and eighteen year old Effie Lambricks.
Speaker 2: Their disappearance would quickly make the local news.
Speaker 5: He said that these.
Speaker 2: Middle Anna, if you went missing, only about one hundred
Speaker 2: miles away from Liege, where Julian Melissa disappeared. But the
Speaker 2: two places are worlds apart. I'm originally from Texas, where
Speaker 2: you can drive for two straight days without much of
Speaker 2: a change in culture or scenery. Belgium is the opposite
Speaker 2: of that. You can drive less than one hundred miles
Speaker 2: and feel like you've been to three different countries. The
Speaker 2: first two girls disappeared from Liege, a French speaking region
Speaker 2: where rolling hills covered with thick pine forests cut through
Speaker 2: river valleys. It's where part of the Battle of the
Speaker 2: Bulge took place in World War II, as immortalized by
Speaker 2: the book and series Band of Brothers. The Belgian coastal
Speaker 2: province of West Flanders is quite the opposite. It's a
Speaker 2: Dutch speaking region and one of the flattest places I've
Speaker 2: ever seen. It's next to where the famous evacuation and
Speaker 2: subsequent World War II Battle of Dunkirk took place. It
Speaker 2: was there about twenty five miles up the beach from Dunkirk,
Speaker 2: where the group of teenagers including Anne Marschal and Effie
Speaker 2: Alambrichs had booked their beach trip. There was an excited
Speaker 2: atmosphere when the teens checked into their bungalow at the
Speaker 2: Marina Park resort in West Inda. It was about a
Speaker 2: fifteen minute walk to the beach and a short bike
Speaker 2: ride to the seaside town of Newport with its restaurants,
Speaker 2: cafes and attractions. On Monday, some of them took a
Speaker 2: one hour trip by tram to the larger town of
Speaker 2: Blunkenberga to see a hypnotist show at the local casino.
Speaker 2: It was a blast and two of them got free
Speaker 2: passes to the following night's show. Anne Marshall originally planned
Speaker 2: to check out the show with her friend Linda, but
Speaker 2: she had gotten delayed, so another girl, Alambrics, took her
Speaker 2: place so Anne didn't have to go alone. On Tuesday
Speaker 2: evening August twenty second, Ann and Ifia rode their bikes
Speaker 2: to the tram station in West India and boarded a
Speaker 2: tram for Blunkenberger.
Speaker 6: I'll get us off Blanket back again.
Speaker 2: They made their way to the Blunkenberger Casino and used
Speaker 2: their free tickets to get into the Rosty Rostelli hypnotist show.
Speaker 2: The Rosty Rostelli show was a mix of magic and
Speaker 2: group hypnosis. Rosti himself was a born entertainer, complete with
Speaker 2: wavy black hair and a flair for live stage performance,
Speaker 2: so who's going to be During the act, he would
Speaker 2: get about eighty volunteers up on the stage, where he
Speaker 2: would take them through a group hypnosis and then reselect
Speaker 2: about fifteen of them who appeared to be responding well
Speaker 2: to his spell. We know that Anne and Efia made
Speaker 2: the cut that night because they were filmed on stage.
Speaker 2: In the video, you can see Rosti on stage dressed
Speaker 2: in black. First, you can see Efia smiling and giggling
Speaker 2: until Rosti gives her a light tap on the back
Speaker 2: of the head, and then she slumps forward in what
Speaker 2: looks like a state of hypnosis. Next, you can see
Speaker 2: Anne facing Rosti as he tickles a small doll that
Speaker 2: seems to trigger her to start scratching her face. She
Speaker 2: appears to be visibly annoyed and seems to tell him
Speaker 2: to stop. After the show, both Anne and Effia were
Speaker 2: captured on security cameras walking towards the exit of the
Speaker 2: casino before midnight. They were supposed to catch the tram
Speaker 2: at eleven forty five that would take them all the
Speaker 2: way back to West ind but they didn't get on
Speaker 2: that tram. Instead, they took the last tram at twelve
Speaker 2: forty four am, which terminated at the station in Ostenda,
Speaker 2: about halfway to their destination. The tram driver confirmed that
Speaker 2: Anne and Effie were on this tram when it stopped
Speaker 2: for end of service at one eighteen am and Ostenda.
Speaker 2: Another employee recalled seeing them at around one twenty am
Speaker 2: at the station, and finally, the last person to see
Speaker 2: them was a taxi driver parked outside who reported seeing
Speaker 2: them exit the station just after one twenty am. The
Speaker 2: girls never made it back to the bungalow that morning.
Speaker 2: I spoke to the father of Anne, Paul Marshal. His
Speaker 2: memories of the disappearance are so painful that he didn't
Speaker 2: want to have to go through a recorded interview. I
Speaker 2: can only imagine the heartache that Paul, his wife Betty,
Speaker 2: and their whole family must feel. Their lives were turned
Speaker 2: upside down that summer, and still now twenty five years later,
Speaker 2: the memories and the pain are still vivid. Paul agreed
Speaker 2: to have his words read by an interpreter. What you'll
Speaker 2: hear now, this.
Speaker 7: Was Anne's first time on holiday without any parents. My
Speaker 7: wife Betty and I were initially hesitant about the idea.
Speaker 7: I remember Anne said, Dad, I'm almost eighteen, and after
Speaker 7: thinking on it, we decided to let her take the trip.
Speaker 7: Anne was very responsible and she was so excited about
Speaker 7: this trip with her friends. On the day she left,
Speaker 7: I dropped her off at the train station with her bike.
Speaker 6: And huge backpack. She was so happy.
Speaker 7: I'll never forget the pure joy radiating from her face
Speaker 7: that day. A few days later, I got all around
Speaker 7: nine forty five at night from one of her friends.
Speaker 7: The friend explained that Anne and another girl, Afia, hadn't
Speaker 7: returned home after attending a show the previous evening. All
Speaker 7: of the kids were worried sick because it wasn't like
Speaker 7: Anne or Afia to just decide to stay out all
Speaker 7: night and the next day. They had tried to report
Speaker 7: it to the police in west Enda, but they weren't
Speaker 7: taken seriously, so finally they decided to call the parents.
Speaker 7: I was really calm and lucid at the time. It
Speaker 7: surprised me. I called the mother of the other missing
Speaker 7: girl and we reported the disappearance to the local police
Speaker 7: in our town. After filling out the report, we drove
Speaker 7: to the coast, leaving it around three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 7: I think we arrived at the bungalow around five am.
Speaker 7: I remember feeling like an intruder, but the other kids
Speaker 7: were happy to see us. They were all really worried.
Speaker 7: There wasn't really much to say. Anne and Afia had
Speaker 7: left to go see a show and simply didn't return.
Speaker 7: I took a break to lie down on Anne's bed
Speaker 7: in the bungalow to gather my thoughts. I found Anne's
Speaker 7: cherished little stuff Snoopy on the pillow. She'd had it
Speaker 7: since she was a little girl and still brought it
Speaker 7: with her everywhere. The little ribbon around Snoopy's neck was
Speaker 7: still there. It had a note attached in her handwriting,
Speaker 7: offering a reward of one hundred francs for Snoopy's safe
Speaker 7: return in casey went missing. It was at that moment
Speaker 7: that it really hit me. Something terrible must have happened
Speaker 7: to Anne. That evening, we visited the casino where the
Speaker 7: girls went to the show. Security cameras had captured images
Speaker 7: of the girls after the show in the casino lobby.
Speaker 7: It was very hard to look. At these last images,
Speaker 7: Anne looked really vacant and she was holding her hands strangely.
Speaker 7: It didn't make sense for them to be in the
Speaker 7: lobby at this point. Most people use a different exit
Speaker 7: when shows are over, and the direction that they were
Speaker 7: walking in was the opposite direction of the trend that
Speaker 7: they were supposed to catch. The actual show itself was
Speaker 7: also filmed, and later I watched the whole thing. It
Speaker 7: was very upsetting Anne. And if you are on stage
Speaker 7: and they appear to be hypnotized, at one point they're
Speaker 7: eating lemons that they've been told were peaches. I realized
Speaker 7: this must have been why Anne was holding her hands
Speaker 7: strangely in the security camera video, as if she were
Speaker 7: holding the lemon from the show. In the last images
Speaker 7: of Anne during the show, you can see her reacting
Speaker 7: to the magician tickling a little doll. She was rubbing
Speaker 7: her face and yelled stop.
Speaker 2: She looked confused and upset.
Speaker 7: I couldn't help but think that the hypnosis had messed
Speaker 7: them up somehow, or maybe they weren't properly woken up
Speaker 7: from their hypnotic state.
Speaker 2: Imagine the confusion the parents must have been going through.
Speaker 2: Suddenly they get a call that their daughters have been
Speaker 2: missing for more than twenty four hours. The last images
Speaker 2: they see are of their daughters being hypnotized and then
Speaker 2: meandering around a casino lobby near midnight, looking confused. Paul
Speaker 2: wondered if their disappearance was related to the hypnosis. That
Speaker 2: they weren't properly woken up from their hypnotic state, but
Speaker 2: is that possible. I spoke to one of the world's
Speaker 2: leading experts in hypnosis, Doctor David Spiegel, studied medicine at
Speaker 2: Harvard and as a professor and chair at the Stanford
Speaker 2: University School of Medicine. He also actively practices psychiatry at
Speaker 2: Stanford Healthcare. Andy created a digital hypnosis program and app
Speaker 2: called Reverie Health.
Speaker 8: Hypnosis is just a state of highly focused attention. It's
Speaker 8: something like getting so caught up in a good movie
Speaker 8: or a play that you forget you're watching the movie
Speaker 8: or the play, and you enter the imagined world. It's
Speaker 8: been called believed in imagination. And we know from functional
Speaker 8: magnetic resonance imaging studies that when people go into a
Speaker 8: state of hypnosis, they turn down activity in a part
Speaker 8: of the brain that is called the salience network. That
Speaker 8: part of the brain that causes you to worry should
Speaker 8: I be thinking about this rather than that? And instead
Speaker 8: you allow yourself to just immerse yourself in whatever it
Speaker 8: is you're focusing on.
Speaker 2: If you're in that state of hypnosis, as you just explained,
Speaker 2: are you aware of yourself or are you not aware
Speaker 2: of yourself?
Speaker 8: Usually, well, that's an interesting question, Matt. We found also
Speaker 8: that the part of the brain that is thinking and
Speaker 8: planning is relatively disconnected from the part of the brain
Speaker 8: that is self aware. We call that dissociation. So you're
Speaker 8: doing it, but you're not necessarily aware of yourself doing it.
Speaker 8: You're not monitoring yourself. You're just experiencing it, and that
Speaker 8: allows you to experience it more thoroughly. That's what good
Speaker 8: actors and actresses do, is that they lose themselves in
Speaker 8: the part. They become the other person and set aside
Speaker 8: their own personal identity.
Speaker 6: Can hypnosis be dangerous?
Speaker 8: Well, you know, anything that has the power to help
Speaker 8: has the power to hurt. It can help people take
Speaker 8: on a new point of view, give up old ideas.
Speaker 8: The fact that you're setting aside your salience, your view
Speaker 8: of what might be a problem or dangerous means, and
Speaker 8: in a sense in hypnosis, you're more gullible, You're more
Speaker 8: willing to take on the instruction of someone who is
Speaker 8: conducting the hypnosis if they are, and less likely to
Speaker 8: judge and evaluate it. So if somebody is doing something
Speaker 8: that is irresponsible or even dangerous, you're more likely to
Speaker 8: go along with it.
Speaker 2: What about group hypnosis or hypnosis shows where you have
Speaker 2: a hypnotist to claims or attempts to hypnotize a large
Speaker 2: group audience at the same time. What do you think
Speaker 2: about that? In general?
Speaker 8: I'm not a big fan of hypnosis shows. I think
Speaker 8: it can be used dangerously. I've known of situations where
Speaker 8: people were left in a hypnotic state and were somewhat
Speaker 8: confused or upset. And there's one trick that all of
Speaker 8: the stage hypnotists use that the people don't realize. They'll
Speaker 8: start out running a series of people through the initial steps,
Speaker 8: and what they're doing is screening for the fifteen to
Speaker 8: twenty percent of the population who are extremely hypnotizable, and
Speaker 8: those are the ones they keep up on the stage
Speaker 8: for all the fancy tricks, and they excuse the other
Speaker 8: people who are less hypnotizable. I don't want people to
Speaker 8: think that by and large, hypnosis is dangerous and you
Speaker 8: get stuck in a hypnotic state and never come out.
Speaker 8: I've never lost a patient in a state of self hypnosis,
Speaker 8: and I've used it about seven thousand people in my career. However,
Speaker 8: there are situations, especially for highly hypnotizable people, if they
Speaker 8: are not helped to exit the state, and if they're
Speaker 8: not familiar with it, they may wind up in a
Speaker 8: hypnotic like state for some period of time, normally till
Speaker 8: they go to bed and go to sleep, and in
Speaker 8: that state they may be less critical, less likely to evaluate,
Speaker 8: for example, evaluate the potential of danger than they would ordinarily.
Speaker 2: So Anne and Ifia were certainly in the highly hypnotizable
Speaker 2: category he describes, because we know that they were selected
Speaker 2: in the smaller group of people to be part of
Speaker 2: the main act. According to doctor Spiegel, it is possible
Speaker 2: that Anne and Efia could have been in a more
Speaker 2: vulnerable state than normal after the show. It might help
Speaker 2: to explain their erratic movements between when the show ended
Speaker 2: at eleven fifteen pm and when they were last seen
Speaker 2: more than two hours later, around one thirty am. We'll
Speaker 2: get into this in a moment but first let's hear
Speaker 2: from the family of the other girl who went me,
Speaker 2: Effia Lambres. Jean Lombrex is Efia's father. His partner, Else
Speaker 2: Schures agreed to speak with me about what John was
Speaker 2: going through around the time of the disappearance. Else is
Speaker 2: an impressive woman who speaks four languages and carries herself
Speaker 2: with class and dignity. I asked her about Jean Lambres
Speaker 2: at the time his daughter Efia went missing.
Speaker 9: You see, at that time, jeh was forty seven years
Speaker 9: old on the twenty third, So the day after, Jean
Speaker 9: received a phone call from If his mother. You need
Speaker 9: to know that John and If his mother, they had
Speaker 9: divorced seven years prior to this event. So If his
Speaker 9: mother called Jean and she told him that if you
Speaker 9: had not returned to the bungalow the day before after
Speaker 9: having visited a show in Blankenberge. Now that was a
Speaker 9: very strange message, and obviously Jean I immediately knew that
Speaker 9: something was very very wrong. He knew his daughter If
Speaker 9: he had a very good understanding with both of her parents.
Speaker 9: They trusted one another, that was no problem. He was
Speaker 9: overwhelmed actually with grief, but also with fear because you
Speaker 9: need to know that several years prior to this, he
Speaker 9: also lost a baby's son, a two year old son
Speaker 9: who died from a disease.
Speaker 2: I wasn't aware that John Lombricks had also lost a
Speaker 2: son when I started this project. We all encounter a
Speaker 2: misfortune in life, but some people really get more than
Speaker 2: their fair share of tragedy. A friend of mine lost
Speaker 2: his child at a young age and then went through
Speaker 2: a divorce. He was never the same and eventually ended
Speaker 2: up taking his own life. Most of us will, thankfully
Speaker 2: never understand what it's like to lose al. To lose
Speaker 2: a second child is an especially cruel twist of fate.
Speaker 2: Jean has gone through some incredibly dark tunnels in his life.
Speaker 2: I'm happy that he's met such a great and positive
Speaker 2: person else. She's really helped me to explore some of
Speaker 2: the darker edges of this case. I asked her if
Speaker 2: she thought there were aspects of the disappearance that weren't
Speaker 2: completely followed up.
Speaker 9: Yes, in my opinions, certainly there are leads that would
Speaker 9: have needed more investigation. For instance, a few days before
Speaker 9: she disappeared, it was early morning hours of Sunday, A
Speaker 9: group of the friends went to Newport, a little town
Speaker 9: a bit further. They went there by bicycle. They had
Speaker 9: a few drinks at a terrace, and then the bar
Speaker 9: owner of that terrace suggested they'd go out and have
Speaker 9: some more drinks other bars.
Speaker 2: The minimum drinking age in Belgium is only sixteen, so
Speaker 2: it wasn't unusual for a group of teenagers to hit
Speaker 2: the bars.
Speaker 9: Okay, if he and two of her friends joined this adult,
Speaker 9: this bar owner and a friend of his, and they
Speaker 9: visited a few more bars, had some drinks, and afterwards
Speaker 9: the bar owner took the girls in his jeep. He
Speaker 9: took them back to their bungalow. Okay, he put them
Speaker 9: back home, and when they said goodbye, he even gave
Speaker 9: them a few bottles of I don't remember what it was,
Speaker 9: a liqua anyway, alcoholic drinks.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 9: Then Sunday nothing happened. But on Monday night, if you
Speaker 9: went for a walk with a friend, and they walked
Speaker 9: through the dunes, and then again, all of a sudden,
Speaker 9: she saw this man that she had met in Newport,
Speaker 9: and I was she felt very strange about it. This man,
Speaker 9: again in his jeep, had drinks. He offered them drinks
Speaker 9: to Afia to her friend, and actually he wanted if
Speaker 9: his friend to drink a lot of alcohol, okay, and
Speaker 9: if he was very, very upset about what was happening.
Speaker 9: In the end, he agreed to drive them back to
Speaker 9: their bungalow again on Monday night. But if he told
Speaker 9: her friends that she was not confident. She was upset.
Speaker 9: She was actually scared of this man who acted weirdly.
Speaker 9: He was trying to impose himself on her. He was
Speaker 9: harassing between brackets her and she did not at all
Speaker 9: feel comfortable about it.
Speaker 6: Was this man a grown man or was he.
Speaker 9: A Yes, certainly he was a grown man. He was
Speaker 9: the tenant of this bar in Newport where they had
Speaker 9: their first drinks, okay. And then actually the police investigated
Speaker 9: this Newport guy. They questioned him, they even observed him,
Speaker 9: but they came to the conclusion that there was a
Speaker 9: mistake and that he was not the man that Avia
Speaker 9: and her friend had met on Monday night in the
Speaker 9: dunes during their walk. So that was it. The investigation
Speaker 9: stopped there.
Speaker 2: And what about the friends that uh were there and
Speaker 2: heard if you talk about this man were what did
Speaker 2: they think? Did they believe that the police were wrong
Speaker 2: about that and that this had to be the guy.
Speaker 9: Or of course, I mean when she returned to the bungalow,
Speaker 9: if you had told her friends, many of her friends,
Speaker 9: what had happened, and that she was upset about it,
Speaker 9: so the friends could come to no other conclusion that
Speaker 9: she really had met this Newport guy in the Junes. Again, Yeah,
Speaker 9: that's right.
Speaker 2: And of course she was out with him quite a
Speaker 2: long time the previous night, so it's hard to believe
Speaker 2: that she could mistaken this person for a whole nother person.
Speaker 2: It seems strange to me.
Speaker 9: I think. I think it is absolutely impossible that she
Speaker 9: was mistaken. There's one more element. She was very much
Speaker 9: interested in cars. If so, she described the car, and
Speaker 9: she would never ever have been wrong in describing a
Speaker 9: car because she was very interested in cars. She knew
Speaker 9: everything about it, so that was apart from the person
Speaker 9: that she ad met. She also described the car mentioned
Speaker 9: it to her friends. So in my humble opinion, there
Speaker 9: can be no doubt about the fact that if you
Speaker 9: had met this Newport guy in the.
Speaker 2: Tunes, it does seem very suspicious that just before disappearing,
Speaker 2: if you got bad vibes from a man who was
Speaker 2: hanging out with these younger kids and trying to get
Speaker 2: them drunk. Else continues, she tells me about another lead.
Speaker 2: It may sound similar, but this lead involves another bar
Speaker 2: and man who's a hotel owner in Blunkenberg.
Speaker 9: There is another very very worrying connection, and that is
Speaker 9: the fact that the girls were seen on the night
Speaker 9: of their disappearance. They were seen very close to and
Speaker 9: even in front of a so called Hotel Brazil in Blankenberger.
Speaker 9: They had just assisted a show in the casino, they
Speaker 9: left the casino and then they were seen by several
Speaker 9: witnesses in front of this hotel, so called Hotel Brazil,
Speaker 9: which in fact was not a hotel, a regular hotel.
Speaker 9: It was actually a bar, some kind of a brothel.
Speaker 9: And the owner of this bar was known to the police.
Speaker 9: He was known for human trafficking, he was known for prostitution,
Speaker 9: he was known for keeping illegal arms, so he was
Speaker 9: very much into criminal affairs. Okay, now, what happened. We're
Speaker 9: talking about the twenty second of August. But as you know,
Speaker 9: two months prior to that, two little girls disappeared in
Speaker 9: Grassologne in the Liege area, and one witness in this
Speaker 9: case wrote a letter to the police saying that he
Speaker 9: had seen at the spot where the girls presumably were
Speaker 9: taken a red car, and he also mentioned the license plate. Now,
Speaker 9: the fact is that this license plate belonged to a
Speaker 9: friend of this bar owner in Blankenberger, the owner of
Speaker 9: Hotel Brazil. But moreover, this friend of his with a
Speaker 9: license plate that was seen in Grasslona also stayed at
Speaker 9: the Hotel Brazil during the summer of nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 9: So eventually this bar owner he was questioned by the police.
Speaker 9: He was questioned the first time on the first of
Speaker 9: October nineteen ninety six, and then one time or a
Speaker 9: second time on the sixteenth of October. But after that
Speaker 9: he actually vanished from the earth. So he left. He
Speaker 9: left Blankemberger. He announced to the local authorities that he
Speaker 9: would go to Germany, but in Germany there was no
Speaker 9: trace of him left. So in Belgium the detectives could
Speaker 9: take no further action. He was not involved in the
Speaker 9: investigation anymore.
Speaker 2: Remember that mysterious red car in episode one. Could it
Speaker 2: be a coincidence that the license plate number reported by
Speaker 2: the doctor and liege after the disappearance of Julian Melissa
Speaker 2: is almost an exact match to a license plate that
Speaker 2: leads right to one of the last places Anne and
Speaker 2: Efia were seen alive. It's a bit confusing, so let's
Speaker 2: summarize the facts.
Speaker 6: At this point.
Speaker 2: More than one witness claims to have seen Anne and
Speaker 2: Effia after the hypnotist show in front of the Hotel
Speaker 2: Brazil or nearby in the same street in Blankenbega. The
Speaker 2: owner of this hotel and bar had previously been charged
Speaker 2: with engaging in prostitution and human trafficking. A friend of
Speaker 2: the hotel and bar owner, who is staying at the
Speaker 2: Hotel Brazil when Anne and Efi went missing, owns a
Speaker 2: car with a license plate that's almost in a exact
Speaker 2: match to a license plate identified by a witness of
Speaker 2: a suspicious car in Grasselogna under the bridge where Julian
Speaker 2: Melissa disappeared. After the owner of the Hotel Brazil was
Speaker 2: questioned by police, he disappeared from Belgium and was never
Speaker 2: seen again, despite police searches in Belgium and Germany, where
Speaker 2: he said he was relocating. To this day, there are
Speaker 2: still questions about this man's potential involvement. One of the
Speaker 2: witnesses who claimed to have seen Anne an Effia in
Speaker 2: front of the Hotel Brazil. Was a butcher named Eric
Speaker 2: van Dam who had his shop and home right next
Speaker 2: to the hotel. I wanted to speak with him, but
Speaker 2: unfortunately he passed away since but I was actually able
Speaker 2: to track down his son, Dirk van Dam, who agreed
Speaker 2: to speak with me. This is the first time he's
Speaker 2: ever been recorded speaking about this. Dirk is a jovial
Speaker 2: man in his early fifties. He has red hair and
Speaker 2: a sturdy build and speaks with the sort of earnest
Speaker 2: directness that you often find in the Dutch speaking region
Speaker 2: of Flanders. He had a lot to say about the
Speaker 2: Hotel Brazil and its owner. At this point, I don't
Speaker 2: want to accuse or implicate anyone without deeper investigation, so
Speaker 2: I've bleeped out the name of the man he's talking about.
Speaker 3: It's somebody who left a very deep psychological imprint to
Speaker 3: me in my life. As you know, or my father
Speaker 3: was a butcher at his own butcher shop in Blankenberg
Speaker 3: at the time of the disappearing of an an Athia.
Speaker 3: My father thought that he had seen on an Athia
Speaker 3: at the Hotel Brazil, which was next door the butcher
Speaker 3: shop and the house where my father lived. The hotel
Speaker 3: Brazil at the time was owned by and my father
Speaker 3: came in conflicts with this person us At a certain time,
Speaker 3: he found a young woman outside of his front door,
Speaker 3: because the two entrances of the houses were next to
Speaker 3: each other, literally next to each other, and he found
Speaker 3: outside the front door of his house, he found a
Speaker 3: young woman, a Brazilian woman, crying and who had been beaten,
Speaker 3: and my father took the woman inside, and it turned
Speaker 3: out that this woman had been fetched from Brazil by
Speaker 3: whose wife I recall I think was Brazilian, and she
Speaker 3: had been brought to Belgium with the expectation that she
Speaker 3: would have work, but in reality it was meant for prostitution,
Speaker 3: and mister had taken all documents, passport so that he
Speaker 3: controlled this woman. My father then contacted the police and
Speaker 3: the police went inside the house, found another woman and
Speaker 3: also found weapons in the house, and as a result
Speaker 3: of that was put to jail for a certain time. Afterwards,
Speaker 3: we had a lot of problems with the man. If
Speaker 3: we went outside, if we showed our faces at each time,
Speaker 3: we were stocked. Everybody came to our house was stocked
Speaker 3: because of that was the situation with the Brazilian woman.
Speaker 6: What can you tell me about him as a person?
Speaker 3: For me, it was a psychopaths. I think that's the
Speaker 3: correct description of the man, because a psychopath is somebody
Speaker 3: who understands emotions, who manipulates. So it's very good at
Speaker 3: manipulating people. But it's really inside is a old hearted man.
Speaker 3: And I think that's the best way to describe this man,
Speaker 3: because he could be friendly to people and at the
Speaker 3: same time, or in a split second, be very aggressive
Speaker 3: to me or to somebody else, enjoying the fear that
Speaker 3: he spreads when he did those things.
Speaker 2: Did he actually you talk about stalking? Did he ever
Speaker 2: attack you or your father?
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, yes, yes yes.
Speaker 3: For instance, we had a garage at the other side
Speaker 3: of the street where we parked the car. It was
Speaker 3: very simple. I only had to go to the garage,
Speaker 3: and he often came across the street with somebody else
Speaker 3: to physically attack me.
Speaker 6: So he attacked you physically more than one time?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes all the time.
Speaker 6: And with other people too, or yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah it happened with other people. It also happened one
Speaker 3: time that my father drove out of the garage, and
Speaker 3: my father wasn't a big man. He was one meter
Speaker 3: seventy that a very big man, a German Man opened
Speaker 3: the door, smiled and said he took my father by
Speaker 3: the just and said he shoffered us, I will do that,
Speaker 3: which showed the intention of harming my father a grave
Speaker 3: dangerous way. His whole being was. It was a really
Speaker 3: in deep and evil man.
Speaker 2: Really, what was this relationship with his Brazilian wife?
Speaker 3: Will I won't say this from who I know it,
Speaker 3: matt I will I will tell you in another time,
Speaker 3: but from good source that his wife was very scared
Speaker 3: of him, so that she feared him as well.
Speaker 2: And when you heard that he left the country very
Speaker 2: suddenly after all of this came out, did you think
Speaker 2: that he could be the kind of guy who would
Speaker 2: be involved and you know, abduct children or something like that.
Speaker 3: I have no doubt, no doubt at all that he
Speaker 3: might be involved, no doubts about that.
Speaker 2: So who is this mysterious man and what can we
Speaker 2: find out about him? Is he alive? If so, it
Speaker 2: doesn't appear he's in Belgium. Maybe he's in Germany or Brazil.
Speaker 2: If he is alive, it'd be interesting to find him
Speaker 2: and question him about his friend with the red car
Speaker 2: and the girl's disappearance. At the time, no one thought
Speaker 2: that the two disappearances in these vastly different regions of
Speaker 2: Belgium were related. One thing is for sure, even to
Speaker 2: this day, twenty five years later, the families of Anne
Speaker 2: and Effia would like to know what happened between the
Speaker 2: time the Hypnotist show ended and their girls were last seen.
Speaker 2: The show ended at around eleven to fifteen pm, so
Speaker 2: they would have had plenty of time catch the last
Speaker 2: tram at eleven forty four pm. Their friends who had
Speaker 2: previously attended the show specifically warned them not to miss
Speaker 2: this tram because it was the last one that went
Speaker 2: all the way back to Westenda where they were staying.
Speaker 2: Maybe they just missed it, but you'd have expected them
Speaker 2: to take the next tram leaving at twelve fourteen am.
Speaker 2: But they didn't take that one either. They took the
Speaker 2: last one, leaving at twelve forty four am that ended
Speaker 2: service at Ostenda at one eighteen am, where they were
Speaker 2: last seen by a taxi driver outside the station. What
Speaker 2: we're in in ef youa doing in the two hours
Speaker 2: between when the show ended and they were last seen
Speaker 2: and what happened to them in Ostenda before they vanished.
Speaker 2: Now there were four sets of parents desperately looking for
Speaker 2: their children in two very different parts of the country. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: more parents would soon join this list. Next time, on
Speaker 2: La Montre.
Speaker 10: The other at around nine am, the phone rang and
Speaker 10: Captain Ballar informed me that a fourteen year old girl
Speaker 10: went missing the previous evening in the village of Bear Tree.
Speaker 5: A colleague of mine, Fred vor 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 and difference among the people,
Speaker 5: but among the police as well.
Speaker 4: Really neat, I brought together the parents and the authorities
Speaker 4: who have been criticizing face to face. You have to
Speaker 4: note that the judge appointed you oversee the investigation left
Speaker 4: for a five week vacation a few days after being appointed,
Speaker 4: as luck.
Speaker 10: Would have it, by a young man who had given
Speaker 10: us information on Monday. I thought he remembered part of
Speaker 10: a license plate number.
Speaker 6: LEA.
Speaker 2: Monstra is a production of tenderfoot TV and iHeart Radio,
Speaker 2: hosted and executive produced by me Matt Graves, produced by
Speaker 2: Thomas Resimont of 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 Set. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams
Speaker 2: are executive producers on the behalf of iHeartRadio with producer
Speaker 2: Trevor Young. Original music by Jay Ragsdale, Sound design by
Speaker 2: Cooper Skinner and Thomas Resimont, mixed and mastered by Cooper Skinner.
Speaker 6: Cover design by Trevor La.
Speaker 2: Monstra includes archival audio from SONYMA, RTBF Archives and CNN Archives.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Backmedia 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.