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Speaker 2: No sni.
Speaker 3: This is the voice of the priest who oversaw the
Speaker 3: funeral of Julian Melissa broadcasted on live television Le plus Feme.
Speaker 4: Don't you pok?
Speaker 3: The footage is harrowing. The priest is visibly outraged and
Speaker 3: flush with anger, shaking as he delivers the sermon.
Speaker 5: Psa di classio gid it to.
Speaker 4: Girl Evodi lupusa Pussi.
Speaker 3: He rails against the hypocrisy and pious declarations, attempting to
Speaker 3: smother the questions that are revolted. Hearts push us to
Speaker 3: ask ten thousand people thronged the streets along Saint Martin's
Speaker 3: Basilica of Liege to say their last goodbyes to Julian
Speaker 3: Melissa and support the grieving families who capture the hearts
Speaker 3: of a nation. In a powerful moment, Julie's grieving father
Speaker 3: is greeted upon arrival at the church by Paul and
Speaker 3: Betty Marshal, the parents of Anne Marshal, who was still missing.
Speaker 3: At this point, Julie's father pulled Paul and Betty into
Speaker 3: a powerful and lasting embrace as the surrounding crowd erupted
Speaker 3: in shouts of encouragement. By the time of the funeral,
Speaker 3: more information was coming in from various interrogations that linked
Speaker 3: a true to the disappearance of two other girls from
Speaker 3: the Belgian seaside, Anne Marchal and e Fie Alambraks. Once again,
Speaker 3: all of Belgium was hoping against hope for a positive outcome.
Speaker 6: Psychobats is somebody who understands emotions.
Speaker 7: And I told them it is very exceptional that somebody
Speaker 7: abducts two children at the same time.
Speaker 5: Should have been the end of it in nineteen six,
Speaker 5: but my god, it was just the beginning.
Speaker 4: I think Belgium was a paralyzed for perverts in those days.
Speaker 3: Welcome Tola Monstra, I'm your host, Matt Graves. The discovery
Speaker 3: of Julian Melissa's bodies elicited a wave of collective grief
Speaker 3: that reverberated throughout the nation. How could someone murdered these
Speaker 3: two little girls we'd seen time and time again on
Speaker 3: missing persons posters and news bulletins. The coroner determined their
Speaker 3: cause of death as quote deprivation of nourishment. In other words,
Speaker 3: they had starved to death. The coroner also confirmed that
Speaker 3: both girls had suffered sexual abuse. Words cannot express the horror.
Speaker 3: Shortly after Julian Melissa's bodies were discovered, the body of
Speaker 3: a white, middle aged man was also found at the
Speaker 3: property in Sars Laoisiere. On the same day of the
Speaker 3: gruesome discoveries, de True officially identified the bodies of Julian Melissa,
Speaker 3: and he also confirmed the identity of the third corpse.
Speaker 3: It was that of his former accomplice, forty four year
Speaker 3: old Bernard Weinstein. You recall that in the mid nineties,
Speaker 3: Weinstein was in Dtrue's criminal file as a possible accomplice.
Speaker 3: They had worked together on various criminal enterprises. Weinstein was
Speaker 3: a Frenchman with a long rap sheet. He'd previously been
Speaker 3: convicted of theft and armed robbery and had spent nine
Speaker 3: years in prison in France. He'd initially come to Belgium
Speaker 3: to get away from his past, but soon found himself
Speaker 3: back in the game again. Just before his death, there
Speaker 3: was a warren out for his arrest. De True was
Speaker 3: worried that if Weinstein were arrested, that he'd rat him
Speaker 3: out about a heist they'd done together. On the day
Speaker 3: Weinstein's body was discovered, the True admitted to murdering him.
Speaker 3: He said he'd killed him because Weinstein wanted to harm
Speaker 3: Julian Melissa. Now that Weinstein was dead, the True proceeded
Speaker 3: to conveniently blame him for almost everything, including the kidnapping
Speaker 3: of Julian Melissa. Here are extracts from de True's exact
Speaker 3: statement read by an interpreter.
Speaker 6: I broke Weinstein to my house to prevent him from
Speaker 6: continuing to do stupid things. I had crushed up some
Speaker 6: raban and addeded to his soundwitch. He fell asleep, and
Speaker 6: I took him down to the cellar and explained to
Speaker 6: U Gulie and many said that Wenstein wanted to kill him.
Speaker 6: I then took the girls upstairs and told them that
Speaker 6: they would be sleeping in the bedroom for a while.
Speaker 6: So I put Wenstein on the bed in the cell
Speaker 6: and twisted the chain around his neck secute with a
Speaker 6: bad luck, and attached it to a ring on the wall.
Speaker 6: I left it long enough for him to reach the
Speaker 6: toilet bucket in the cell. I then gave him a
Speaker 6: big doze and took him to his grave. He was
Speaker 6: still breathing when I buried him.
Speaker 3: So the true claiming to be the Great Savior, said
Speaker 3: he murdered Weinstein to protect Julie and Melissa. But if
Speaker 3: that was the case, why would he go through the
Speaker 3: trouble of imprisoning him for several days before killing him.
Speaker 3: Police questioned the tru's wife, Michelle Martin, about this. These
Speaker 3: are her words, not her voice.
Speaker 7: Mark asked me to prepare sandwiches to put Bernard Weinstein
Speaker 7: to sleep. He wanted to steal five hundred thousand francs
Speaker 7: that Bernard had received from his mother to buy her house. Afterwards,
Speaker 7: Mark told me that to make Weinstein confess to where
Speaker 7: he had hidden his money, he had to finally use torture.
Speaker 7: He used clams placed around his testicles, and Weinstein finally
Speaker 7: confessed where his money was.
Speaker 3: These first hand insights in the Dutruze character paint a
Speaker 3: chilling portrait of a manipulative psychopath. He took out Weinstein
Speaker 3: to eliminate a thread, but made sure to rob him first,
Speaker 3: he was constantly scheming to maximize advantage. Now he was
Speaker 3: again trying to leverage the whole affair to blame Weinstein
Speaker 3: for the kidnappings and to justify murdering him out of
Speaker 3: concern for Julian Melissa's well being. As this was playing out,
Speaker 3: authorities were interrogating one of d'true's accomplices, michel Lelievre. He
Speaker 3: admitted to involvement with a separate kidnapping of seventeen year
Speaker 3: old and martial an eighteen year old Effia Lambres from
Speaker 3: the Belgian seaside. A Doc Martin's shoe matching the size
Speaker 3: and description of the shoes Anne Marschall was wearing at
Speaker 3: the time of her disappearance, was found in Detru's house
Speaker 3: in Marcinelle. Once again, de True was cornered. There was
Speaker 3: evidence directly linking him to Anne in Effie's disappearance. Sod
Speaker 3: True admitted to seeing the girls, but claimed they'd left
Speaker 3: with his associate. Surprise surprise, Bernard Weinstein.
Speaker 8: Anne Marshal, and Effia Lambreks were last seen at a
Speaker 8: Belgian seaside resort, and in spite of the latest discoveries,
Speaker 8: police say they have not lost hope of finding them alive.
Speaker 3: After clearly linking the True to Anne in Effie's disappearance
Speaker 3: and then hearing his claims that they had been with
Speaker 3: Bernard Wants Einstein. A search was immediately undertaken at Weinstein's
Speaker 3: residence in the town of Jumee. The True actually owned
Speaker 3: the property and was renting the place to Weinstein at
Speaker 3: the time. For the second time in less than a month,
Speaker 3: the entire country was watching as police and work crews
Speaker 3: searched a property. This time, expectations of finding the girls
Speaker 3: alive were low. The families of Anne and Efia held
Speaker 3: out hope until the very last minute. This is an
Speaker 3: interview with a Flemish TV reporter talking to Jean Lambrecks.
Speaker 4: This morning, Old Beeber's are seeing that an if you
Speaker 4: could be buried in Jumet, what's a knowable use? Are
Speaker 4: you thinking about this too?
Speaker 9: I don't want to believe in the possibility that they're there. Yeah,
Speaker 9: but yes, as long as I don't have confirmation that
Speaker 9: they're there, I don't believe it or I don't want
Speaker 9: to believe it.
Speaker 3: And here's the voice of Betty Marshall, the mother of Anne,
Speaker 3: which is still optimistic.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yes, absolutely, I have the impression that things are
Speaker 10: moving forward. Yeah, I'm keeping my hopes up.
Speaker 4: On Saturday evening you were pessimistic and reports on television.
Speaker 10: Yeah, when I heard about Chili and Melissa then.
Speaker 4: And also the discovery that Anne, if you were kidnapped
Speaker 4: by your psycho party.
Speaker 10: Yeah, but I'm holding on to the idea that the
Speaker 10: girls are older than the others. Maybe that has something
Speaker 10: to do with it. Maybe, to put it bluntly, they
Speaker 10: were so old. I don't know. But if that's the case,
Speaker 10: then maybe they're live and that gives us hope.
Speaker 3: It's tuning to imagine hoping that your daughter was sold
Speaker 3: into child prostitution. That being said, it was a better
Speaker 3: prospect than the outcome that had befallen Julian and Melissa
Speaker 3: Median work crews assailed the site in Juma where Anne
Speaker 3: and Effie were thought to be hidden or buried. Bad
Speaker 3: weather had hampered the search, but the eyes of Belgium
Speaker 3: and now the world were focused on this abandoned property
Speaker 3: in Jumae, near Charlewa. After several days of searching without results,
Speaker 3: the excavator hit a patch of unsettled earth. They knew
Speaker 3: the change in soil cover was a sign that something
Speaker 3: had been buried there. Once again, silence descended. Upon a
Speaker 3: search site in Belgium. On September third, nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 3: the bodies of Anne Marschal and Effie Lambrecks were found
Speaker 3: where Bernard Weinstein had been living in the town of Jumae.
Speaker 3: Their emaciated bodies showed signs of starvation. However, the cause
Speaker 3: of death was determined as suffocation after being buried alive.
Speaker 8: Horrifying beyond words, investigations into Dudru's background brought fresh hope
Speaker 8: to the families of two teenage girls, and Marshall and
Speaker 8: Effia Lambreks, who had also been missing for a year.
Speaker 8: Hope died when the police confirmed human bones they dug
Speaker 8: up at one of the houses owned by Mark de
Speaker 8: True were those of Anne and Efia.
Speaker 3: The failure of authorities to protect Julie, Melissa, Anne and
Speaker 3: Effia was now on display for the country to see.
Speaker 3: The victim's families had already been publicly critical of the
Speaker 3: lack of investigation. Now those criticisms intensified.
Speaker 8: At her funeral, Anne's father made it clear he believed
Speaker 8: his daughter would still be alive. If the authorities had
Speaker 8: acted quicker.
Speaker 3: Paul Martial, Anne's father said, quote, for a year, we
Speaker 3: were left out in the cold. If forces had been
Speaker 3: mobilized like now under Bourlais, we might not have been
Speaker 3: having this funeral today. Paul is referring to the King's prosecutor,
Speaker 3: Michel Boulet, who you heard from in episode four. Bourlet
Speaker 3: and investigating judge Jean Marc Conrad were the only two
Speaker 3: officials who were exempt from criticism because, unlike other jurisdictions,
Speaker 3: they jumped into action when the cases landed on their desk.
Speaker 3: Across Belgium, anger in the streets was beginning to spill over.
Speaker 3: Any time the True was transported, a huge police presence
Speaker 3: was required to keep keep the crowds at bay, who
Speaker 3: smashed barriers and tried to overwhelm police to get at him.
Speaker 3: As people learned of the True's previous crimes of child
Speaker 3: abduction and rape in his early release from prison, the
Speaker 3: anger started shifting towards the judicial system.
Speaker 8: Public outrage at the catalog of atrocities attributed to this
Speaker 8: man has escalated into nationwide anger at the system which
Speaker 8: allowed the True and his accomplices to operate unchecked and
Speaker 8: at will for years Belgium justice is on trial.
Speaker 3: The King's prosecutor Michel Bourlat and investigating judge Jean Marc
Speaker 3: Conrad became the lone symbols of hope for Belgium justice
Speaker 3: with support from the victim's families. Also came support from
Speaker 3: the public. The two took on the case with zeal
Speaker 3: and began to put the pieces together, investigating the True
Speaker 3: and his accomplices not only for the six missing girls,
Speaker 3: but for their possible involvement in a much larger child
Speaker 3: trafficking network. They quickly started focusing on a corrupt businessman
Speaker 3: with political connections named Michel Nihoul, who had close contact
Speaker 3: with the True in his accomplice Michel Lelievre around the
Speaker 3: time of the last abduction of Letitia Dalles. Michel Leoul
Speaker 3: was often referred to as Jean Michel. In the days
Speaker 3: leading up to Letitia's disappearance, there were no less than
Speaker 3: thirty three phone calls between Nihoul, de True and his
Speaker 3: accomplice Michel Lelievre. Furthermore, on the day after Letitia's disappearance,
Speaker 3: Nihoule gave the True and Le Lievre a thousand ecstasy
Speaker 3: pills with a market value of around fifteen thousand dollars
Speaker 3: at the time. In early police interviews, Michel Le Lievre
Speaker 3: said that the True and Nihoul were trying to get
Speaker 3: him involved in a human trafficking scheme with them, but
Speaker 3: he claimed he didn't want anything to do with it. Finally,
Speaker 3: Letitia de Les testified that one of her first memories
Speaker 3: after waking up into True's house after being kidnapped was
Speaker 3: overhearing a telephone conversation between De True and a certain
Speaker 3: quote Jean Michel, where De True had gleefully exclaimed that
Speaker 3: it all worked out. Nioull was arrested and his mugshot
Speaker 3: was plastered all over the media. I remember this picture
Speaker 3: as looking like the embodiment of sleaziness, his pudgy face,
Speaker 3: unshaven after hours of interrogation, and his shark eyes peering
Speaker 3: into the camera with scorn. Nioul's face became the symbol
Speaker 3: of high level connected corruption in Belgium. Not long after
Speaker 3: the rescue of Sabine and Letitia, the prosecutor Boulet and
Speaker 3: investigating Judge Conrad were invited to a potluck spaghetti dinner
Speaker 3: thrown by Letitia's family and community members to celebrate their rescue.
Speaker 3: When a photo of this dinner was published in a newspaper,
Speaker 3: De True, whose newly appointed attorneys, protested that Conrad's presence
Speaker 3: at this dinner was a violation of the principle of
Speaker 3: objectivity that governs investigating judges. It wasn't a problem that
Speaker 3: Bourlai was there, as he was a prosecutor. However, Conrad
Speaker 3: was an investigating judge whose neutrality was sacricynct. When the
Speaker 3: High Court of Appeal was called to deliberate on this matter,
Speaker 3: the public was immediately skeptical. Many people felt that this
Speaker 3: was a pretext to take out an investigating judge who
Speaker 3: was getting too close to the elite powerbrokers with links
Speaker 3: to a child trafficking ring. Their skepticism grew into anger
Speaker 3: when the decision to suspend Conrad was rendered.
Speaker 8: Belgium's Supreme Court agreed, with lawyers acting for Mark de True,
Speaker 8: that the judge had lost his objectivity. A week of
Speaker 8: wildcat strikes and demonstrations all over the country followed the
Speaker 8: dismissal of Conrad, whose investigations into the pedophile gang made
Speaker 8: him a nutal hero. Sirens sounding firemen turned hoses on
Speaker 8: the law courts, the nation's bikers and Hell's Angels, three
Speaker 8: thousand of them drove through the capital in protest.
Speaker 3: All hell was breaking loose in the streets of Belgium.
Speaker 3: To understand the context, you have to consider that since
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighties, there were a slew of unresolved affairs
Speaker 3: in Belgium where police and government officials were suspected of
Speaker 3: cover ups. This affair was different. The public had adopted
Speaker 3: the victims and their families into their hearts. We were
Speaker 3: talking about children here who were brutally abused and murdered.
Speaker 3: First there was shock at the discovery and what had
Speaker 3: happened to these girls. Then there was anger at a
Speaker 3: judicial system that allowed a man like the True out
Speaker 3: of prison. Now there was rage against the entire institution
Speaker 3: of the Belgian state. Remember that Mark the True had
Speaker 3: already been convicted of kidnapping and raping girls in the
Speaker 3: eighties and only served a few years of a relatively
Speaker 3: light sentence. People were beginning to believe that there was
Speaker 3: a high level cover to hide the states in competence,
Speaker 3: or even worse, to protect powerful people. As you heard
Speaker 3: in the CNN cliff, Hell's Angels descended upon Brussels, and
Speaker 3: fire departments turned their hoses against court houses. Imagine the
Speaker 3: scene of entire fire department brigades pulling up to the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court and giving it a good hosing down. The
Speaker 3: symbolism was powerful. The firemen were rebelling against the judicial
Speaker 3: system that they saw as dirty and corrupt and in
Speaker 3: need of cleaning up. This was a pivotal moment in
Speaker 3: the history of this country. If one of the parents
Speaker 3: would have grabbed a megaphone and called for the people
Speaker 3: to burn the city down, I'm convinced it would have happened. Instead,
Speaker 3: they called for citizens to join them in a peaceful protest.
Speaker 3: They called La mache blanche or White March, symbolizing peace
Speaker 3: and innocence.
Speaker 8: The Pies de resistance the White March. Three hundred and
Speaker 8: twenty five thousand people, more than three percent of the
Speaker 8: population rallied to the call to march on Brussels. Led
Speaker 8: by the parents of Dutru's victims and families of children
Speaker 8: still missing, the country is calling for change. Among them
Speaker 8: a fourteen year old girl whose rescue from the clutches
Speaker 8: of Mark de True and his gang led to their arrest.
Speaker 3: Official estimates of protesters were revised upwards after that report.
Speaker 3: It's now thought that up to four hundred thousand people
Speaker 3: took part, over three percent of the population at the time,
Speaker 3: making it the largest protest in the history of Belgium.
Speaker 3: For comparison, this would be the equivalent of ten million
Speaker 3: U S citizens protesting in the streets. It was a
Speaker 3: moment of national solidarity across all strand hands of Belgian society.
Speaker 3: This is Bruno Denis, a Belgian citizen who shared with
Speaker 3: me what it was like to be part of the
Speaker 3: Marche blanche or white March. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 4: It was a crazy time.
Speaker 5: I mean we it was a shock for all of us.
Speaker 5: I mean I had small daughters at that time, myself
Speaker 5: pretty much the same age as the as the victim.
Speaker 5: So I was very, very shocked. And every Belgian was
Speaker 5: revolted by the police that was so disorganized, and and
Speaker 5: the fact that people were not communicating to each other.
Speaker 5: We still had two different police departments, Jean Darmerie and
Speaker 5: local police, so it was it's it brought to the
Speaker 5: surface all the frustration of the population. Now remember when
Speaker 5: I walked into the streets and we did the marchial blanche.
Speaker 5: So it was like a huge national gathering where everyone
Speaker 5: and all the souls of Belgians, being from Brussels or
Speaker 5: being from Wallunia or from Flanders, even though we speak
Speaker 5: different languages, were all in that together. You know that
Speaker 5: the families of the victims were like typical Belgian families,
Speaker 5: like one family was from the Flemish side, the other
Speaker 5: one from the Walloon sides, but pretty much people that
Speaker 5: are paying their tax, going every day, working in normal jobs.
Speaker 5: And it's also created this sense of gosh, there is
Speaker 5: something wrong in this country the way it's organized, Like
Speaker 5: there is us as normal people, let's say, and there's
Speaker 5: those politicians organizing a system which is failing. And that
Speaker 5: created a huge support for those families because I think
Speaker 5: everyone was very yeah, we felt like them actually, and
Speaker 5: that's why so much people supported them at empathy for them,
Speaker 5: and we all went through this this White March and
Speaker 5: Marche Blanche. So there's been a very very emotional and
Speaker 5: at the same time defining moment for Belgium as a
Speaker 5: national state.
Speaker 6: I would say.
Speaker 2: Nothing would surprise those still morning the dead. They gather
Speaker 2: outside mark the Truz shabby wooden house in the village
Speaker 2: of Jumae, where the bodies of two teenage girls were unearthed.
Speaker 2: We never doubted powerful people were involved, said one man.
Speaker 11: This woman a greed. Everyone has their price, she said.
Speaker 11: Revulsion at the crimes committed in the houses used by
Speaker 11: Marca true has now been compounded by deepening suspicions of
Speaker 11: political scandal and cover up. With police officers under arrest
Speaker 11: and the search for bodies continuing. It seems the revelations
Speaker 11: in this horrific case have only just begun. Timu at
Speaker 11: News ten at Jumei in southern Belgium.
Speaker 3: It's easy to beat up on police investigations with twenty
Speaker 3: twenty hindsight, but what I've learned about this case goes
Speaker 3: way beyond armchair criticism of a botched investigation. To understand it,
Speaker 3: we need to rewind back to the summer of nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety five, just after the first two victims, Julie and Melissa,
Speaker 3: were kidnapped.
Speaker 7: Me vis unvouve.
Speaker 12: This is a message to the kidnappers. We are still
Speaker 12: without any news of our girls, Julie and Melissa for
Speaker 12: two weeks now. We've been waiting in inside. We can
Speaker 12: no longer take this situation.
Speaker 3: On the seventh of July nineteen ninety five. Just two
Speaker 3: weeks after the abduction, the Gendarmerie of Charlerois, where Mark
Speaker 3: d Trux was living at the time, sent a fax
Speaker 3: to their office in Grasselonne, where the girls disappeared. In
Speaker 3: this facts they called attention to Mark da True as
Speaker 3: a possible suspect and pointed out as prior record and
Speaker 3: conviction for kidnapping and rape of miners. After a month
Speaker 3: of back and forth within the Gendarmerie, they asked their
Speaker 3: central intelligence arm to build a case against a True,
Speaker 3: and on August ninth, nineteen ninety five, they held an
Speaker 3: internal meeting with other regional offices to discuss it. During
Speaker 3: the same week, they received two separate tips from informants
Speaker 3: claiming that the True might have been involved with the
Speaker 3: disappearance of Julian Melissa. This came on top of previous
Speaker 3: informant statements that d True was building prison cells in
Speaker 3: his basement to hide future kidnapping victims. This was the
Speaker 3: moment it all should have ended. Any investigating judge in
Speaker 3: Belgium would have granted a warrant to search d Tru's
Speaker 3: property based on this information. Think about it. De True
Speaker 3: was a known sex offender, previously convicted for kidnapping and
Speaker 3: raping five girls. Since his release in nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 3: he had been arrested for molesting a miner at an
Speaker 3: ice skating rink, and police informants had testified that he
Speaker 3: was building prison cells in his basements to hide away
Speaker 3: kidnapped girls. In August of nineteen ninety five, roughly a
Speaker 3: month after the disappearance of Julian Melissa, two separate informants
Speaker 3: came forward with suspicions that De True might have been
Speaker 3: involved with a disappearance. One of them stated that de
Speaker 3: True told him in June that he had a big
Speaker 3: opportunity in the pipeline, and the other said that de
Speaker 3: True recently tried to convince him to help him kidnap children.
Speaker 3: The True was clearly the gendarmeries number one suspect at
Speaker 3: this point, So why didn't they ask for a warrant immediately? Well,
Speaker 3: to do that, they'd have to request a warrant from
Speaker 3: the judge and inform the regular police force in liege
Speaker 3: who had jurisdiction. So is this a case of one
Speaker 3: jurisdiction not sharing information and trying to outdo the other.
Speaker 3: It wouldn't be the first time we've seen this in
Speaker 3: Belgium or many other countries for that matter. But we're
Speaker 3: talking about two eight year old girls. Surely you drop
Speaker 3: everything and stop the bickering when young, innocent lives are
Speaker 3: at stake, But they didn't do that. Instead, they held
Speaker 3: their internal meeting on August ninth to create a plan
Speaker 3: to undermine the investigating judge and police in Liege. Any
Speaker 3: such meeting required official notes to be taken for the record,
Speaker 3: but the minutes of this meeting were either not recorded
Speaker 3: or were destroyed afterwards. Meanwhile, Julian and Melissa were alive
Speaker 3: and languishing in d True's sordid dungeon. Their parents were
Speaker 3: talking to the gendarmes every day and even chasing futile
Speaker 3: leads themselves. This is the point that you'd expect the
Speaker 3: gendarmes to roll in like knights in shining armor to
Speaker 3: vanquish evil and save the girls. A perfect opportunity to
Speaker 3: show up their rivals in the judicial police, but that
Speaker 3: didn't happen. It was written in the sky that Dtru's
Speaker 3: property should have been searched right then and there in
Speaker 3: the beginning of August. What happened next was astounding. They
Speaker 3: launched a secret surveillance operation baptized as Operation Othello. It
Speaker 3: consisted of filming and observing Datru's residence, but only during
Speaker 3: daylight hours. The judge and police and liege in charge
Speaker 3: of Julian Melissa's case were kept in the dark. It
Speaker 3: got up and running on August twenty eighth, after Anne
Speaker 3: and if You were kidnapped and likely brought to the house.
Speaker 3: It wouldn't have mattered anyway, as it's belief that Anne
Speaker 3: and Ifja were transported to Marsinell under the cover of
Speaker 3: darkness when the gendarmes weren't filming. In his own words,
Speaker 3: da True later described the situation as saying, quote, I
Speaker 3: had the little girls Julie and Melissa downstairs in the cellar,
Speaker 3: and the older girls upstairs. I didn't want them to
Speaker 3: know about each other. I took them separately to the
Speaker 3: dining room to eat with me. All of this organization
Speaker 3: barely left me any free time. Unquote. What d True
Speaker 3: described was all happening while his house was being surveilled.
Speaker 3: A few weeks after the operations started, d True's mother
Speaker 3: again contacted authorities. On September fourth, nineteen ninety five. She
Speaker 3: said that she'd heard from neighbors complaining that young girls
Speaker 3: were being brought in and out of one of his
Speaker 3: houses at night. The case establishing probable cause is overwhelming
Speaker 3: at this point. Once again, you have to ask the question,
Speaker 3: why didn't they put their egos aside and seek a warrant.
Speaker 3: The official line, still to this day, is that no
Speaker 3: one believed that the girls could have still been alive
Speaker 3: at that time. But this line doesn't hold up against
Speaker 3: official statements and tips. We had one informant saying, quote,
Speaker 3: de True told me he was building cellars to hold
Speaker 3: girls before exporting them outside of the country unquote. And
Speaker 3: on top of that, we have D'tru's own mother signaling
Speaker 3: complaints about young girls being brought in and out of
Speaker 3: one of his houses. How could that not lead one
Speaker 3: to believe that there was a chance the girls could
Speaker 3: be alive, or that other girls might be in the
Speaker 3: house in danger of being exported out of the country
Speaker 3: at any time. Nonetheless, Operation Othello dragged on and on
Speaker 3: for months. August September November. We know, based on autopsy
Speaker 3: reports and evidence, that Julie and Melissa were alive and
Speaker 3: in that cellar literally under the noses of the gendarmerie.
Speaker 3: In November, the True was considered as a suspect in
Speaker 3: the sexual assault of a young woman in the nearby
Speaker 3: village of Obey. Her throat was slit and she was
Speaker 3: left for dead on a bridge. Given his history, in
Speaker 3: the fact that he had once lived very close to
Speaker 3: where the crime had happened, he was an obvious person
Speaker 3: of interest. Although he was later excluded by forensic evidence.
Speaker 3: Surely the suspicion alone could have been a pretext for
Speaker 3: a search of his home, another missed opportunity. Finally, the
Speaker 3: True got into even more trouble, stemming from a November
Speaker 3: incident where he and his buddy Bernard Weinstein, along with
Speaker 3: other accomplices, heisted a utility truck and hid it in
Speaker 3: a hangar. The plan was to break it down and
Speaker 3: sell off the parts. It's a complicated story, but the
Speaker 3: short version is that the stolen truck was then stolen
Speaker 3: from the thieves. Weinstein and de True suspected the other accomplices,
Speaker 3: so they kidnapped them and tried to torture the truth
Speaker 3: out of them, but got fingered when one of the
Speaker 3: captives escaped and alerted police. The theft case was followed
Speaker 3: up by the municipal police in Charlewaugh and not the Gendarmerie,
Speaker 3: so they did their job and arrested him, of course,
Speaker 3: and on December sixth, nineteen ninety five, de True was
Speaker 3: sent to jail for theft and kidnapping of adults. At
Speaker 3: this stage, Anne and Effie were no longer in the house,
Speaker 3: but Julian Melissa were still locked in the basement cellar.
Speaker 3: It's a chilling and upsetting image. Belgium is a cold
Speaker 3: and somber place. In December, Julian Melissa were alone in
Speaker 3: this unheeded house, locked away in a dark and day
Speaker 3: of dungeon. Next time, on La Monstra, Julian Melissa's last
Speaker 3: hope as the gendarmes searched the Truce home.
Speaker 4: I don't know a single person who would have left
Speaker 4: the basement after what they heard, if they knew they
Speaker 4: were searching for your girls. I cannot conceive how they
Speaker 4: could stop searching after hearing such clear voices.
Speaker 3: And Melissa Rousseau's mother Karin, speaks out about the Parliamentary Commission.
Speaker 13: It's complicated because his incompetence is irre incomprehensible. When I
Speaker 13: saw him at the commission, I had the impression I
Speaker 13: was in front of a man who was afraid. The
Speaker 13: gendarmes seemed like okay guys who wanted to find the girls,
Speaker 13: but at the same time they seemed like they were
Speaker 13: afraid of.
Speaker 3: Everythingle Monstra is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Radio,
Speaker 3: hosted and executive produced by me Matt Graves, produced by
Speaker 3: Thomas Resimont of Bubble Sound. Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay
Speaker 3: are executive producers on the behalf of Tenderfoot TV with
Speaker 3: producer Makeup and Vanity Set. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams
Speaker 3: are executive producers on the behalf of iHeartRadio with producer
Speaker 3: Trevor Young. Original music by Jay Ragsdale, Sound design by
Speaker 3: Cooper Skinner and Thomas Resimont, mixed and mastered by Cooper Skinner.
Speaker 3: Cover design by Trevor eilerl Monstra includes archival audio from SONYMA,
Speaker 3: RTBF Archives and CNN Archives. Special thanks to back Media
Speaker 3: and Marketing Station sixteen, Jean Savigna and the teams at
Speaker 3: iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. Find us on social media at
Speaker 3: Monster Underscore Pod. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV,
Speaker 3: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 3: to your favorite shows.