September 20, 2022 • 27 mins
Arrested for his role in the kidnapping of Sabine Dardenne and Laëtitia Delhez, Marc Dutroux again cracks and admits to involvement in the kidnappings of Julie & Melissa. Carine Russo talks about the fourteen months of "scandalous silence" surrounding her daughter's disappearance.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
and do not represent those of iHeartMedia, Tenderfoot TV, or
their employees. This podcast also contains subject matter which may
not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
We saw two young girls walking along the street and
he said, do you want to earn one hundred and
fifty thousand Belgian francs? And I said sure, but how?
And then he said we had to kidnap the girls first,
and then he'd show me.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
These are the words of Claude Tirou describing a conversation
with Mark de True just after his release from prison.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
And I said, listen, I don't go around kidnapping young girls.
And he said, look, it's easy. You grab them from
behind the neck with one arm, cover their mouths. Then
you just throw them in the back of the van
and you can knock them out if you need to.
I said, no way, I'm not going to do that.
And after he dropped me off at home, I immediately called
(01:13):
the police and reported it. When I found out about
the disappearance of Sheli and Melissa, I suspected that Mark
was involved, and I went back to the police. It's
too bad they didn't listen to me.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Psychopaths is somebody who understands emotions, and.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
I told them it is a very exceptional that somebody
abducts two children at the same time.
Speaker 6 (01:55):
To have been the end of it in nineteen six,
but my god, it was just the beginning.
Speaker 7 (02:02):
I think Belgium was a paralyzed for perverts in those days.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Welcome to la monstre. I'm your host, Matt Graves. The
release of Mark da True after his first prison sentence
marked the beginning of a new wave of depravity that
would change this country forever. It began on the eighth
of April nineteen ninety two, the day de True was
(02:35):
released from prison for good behavior after serving less than
half his sentence for thirteen and a half years. His wife,
Michelle Martin, marked the day in bold in her journal
with just one word freedom. Despite having later claimed that
she was manipulated, Michel was certainly excited to jump back
into life with de True. She had meticulously planned his release,
(02:59):
and their first stop was to see a doctor who
granted them with disability status. This allowed them to claim
benefits of eighty thousand Belgian francs a month, above the
average salary in Belgium at the time. Always thinking ahead,
the True got the doctor to prescribe him powerful tranquilizers
haldol and rhydnol. Hydnol is roughly ten times stronger than
(03:22):
valuum and has come to be known as the date
rape drug, often referred to as rufees on the street.
So the state granted a psychopath convicted of raping children
with early release, a free salary and a steady supply
of rufees and sent him on his way.
Speaker 6 (03:43):
He was really a master manipulator. I mean, he is
a kibosh and known criminal who has been convicted of
raping and kidnapping children, and he somehow gets sort of
prison early and gets to stay to pay him a pension.
On top of that, they gave him the kind of
drugs used to rape people. It's crazy, I mean, what's
(04:05):
on earth the way they think you.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
As soon as November nineteen ninety two, eight months after
being released from prison, the police were called to an
ice skating rink where Da True was accused of molesting
a girl. Nothing came out of it, and De True
wasn't arrested. In September of ninety three, a mand True
had met while in prison reported that he tried to
convince him to help him abduct a young girl, but
(04:30):
this wasn't followed up either.
Speaker 8 (04:33):
Then.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
In nineteen ninety four, Datru and his wife welcomed an
eighteen year old girl from Slovakia who wanted to spend
the summer in Belgium. He slipped her some roofies and
then raped her at home. She didn't even know it
happened until it later turned up on a video cassette
seized at one of Datru's properties. Apart from his sexual crimes,
the True dove right back into stealing for a living
(04:56):
as well in nineteen ninety four. In ninety four, De
Truz started working with another criminal from France named Bernard Weinstein.
Weinstein had recently moved to Belgium from France, where he
had spent nine years in prison for theft and armed robbery.
He and De Drew worked together on various criminal enterprises,
mostly involving a vehicle theft ringd True's crimes with Weinstein
(05:20):
bring us to nineteen ninety five, where this series started.
Over the next fourteen months, de True in his accomplices,
would abduct six young girls whose names we should never forget,
Julie Lejeanne, Melissa Rousseau, Anne Marchal, Effi Alambrichs, Sabine Darden,
(05:41):
and Letitia DALs. Despite the warning signs his criminal passed
and reports that De True might be responsible for the abductions,
authorities failed to ever even question him. It wasn't until
August of nineteen ninety six, weeks after Letitia de Les
was abducted, that Detrit True would be arrested. A witness
(06:02):
came forward to identify the license plate of his van
seen near where Letitia had disappeared. Eventually, he would admit
to abducting Sabine and Letitia, and he led police to
his dungeon in Charlewai, where the girls were found alive.
You'll recall from episode four that I interviewed a police
officer named Michel du Moulin, who got to True to
(06:23):
admit to the kidnapping of Letitia d LEAs and took
him to the secret dungeon from where Letitia and Sabine
d'arden were rescued. After discovering the scale of d Truz's activities.
Police strongly started to suspect his involvement with a disappearance
of Julian Melissa in nineteen ninety five. De Moulain continued
to interrogate to True about this after the discovery of
(06:45):
Letitia and Sabine. Here is words from an interview read
by an interpreter.
Speaker 8 (06:51):
Mark de dru said that he kidnapped Leticia because Sabine
wanted a friend. She wanted me to bring her Julie
le Jeanne, and I thought, wait a minute, Julie la jean.
I was convinced he made a Freudian slip. Julie le
jean had gone missing way before Sabine was kidnapped. I
knew at this point that we were onto something, so
(07:12):
then I really started to squeeze him about Julian and Melissa.
After a lot of back and forth, he admitted that
Julie and Melissa had been in the dungeon, but that
someone else had brought them there.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Two days after taking police to where Sabine and Letitia
had been locked away, the True cracked again. On August seventeenth,
nineteen ninety six. He said that his friends Bernard Weinstein
and Michel Lievre had kidnapped Julian Melissa and brought them
to him. He said that they were at one of
(07:46):
his properties in a town called sarce La Boussier, and
agreed again to take police there. The excitement of finding
Sabine and Letitia two days earlier had given the families
of Julian Melissa hope. After fourteen months of the worst
kind of fear and anxiety, they learned that the true
may have been involved with the disappearances of their beloved girls.
(08:07):
The fathers of Julian Melissa wasted no time in heading
the Charlela to speak with locals and distribute flyers. In
interviews with the news media at the time, you could
feel a sense of hope in their voices. This is
the voice of Gino Rousseau, the father of Melissa.
Speaker 9 (08:25):
Knowing that Sabine and Letitia were fond, I came to
deliver a three thousand flyers.
Speaker 7 (08:32):
We've never lost hope.
Speaker 9 (08:33):
But everything we've said since the disappearance of Julian Melissa,
and by that I mean the hypothesis of pedophilia and
sexual kidnapping, if I can say that way, I ended
up being true. So we still have hope, but we
are frustrated because it's been fourteen months. But in a way,
(08:57):
we're happy to see that everything we've done for Julian
Melissa has held other children.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
And this is Jean de ni Le Jeanne, the father
of Julie from the same interview.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
It's wonderful for the two families to be able to
get their children back. It's a feeling we'd like to
be able to taste as well. We couldn't sleep last
night because we're thinking that if the true says something
that could help us find Julia Melissa, we don't want
to miss anything. Do you think there could be a
connection between these two cases.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
We think so.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
In any case, we hope so because it could be
the end of the thread we've been looking for fourteen months.
And if we could find the end of that threat,
even if the girls aren't in Charlotte, Wah but somewhere else,
if they came through here, it would at least be
a trace.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
It's what we hope.
Speaker 5 (09:48):
In any case.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
It's hard to imagine actually hoping that your child was
in the clutches of a man who was just arrested
for kidnapping girls and locking them away in a dungeon.
Such was the desperation of these families, it could mean
their girls were alive, certainly damaged, but at least alive.
(10:14):
The entire nation had gotten to know these families through
their relentless campaign to find their missing girls. Most all
of us living in Belgium at the time were familiar
with the faces of these two cute little girls, Julian Melissa.
Everyone was on edge as news spread about the search
happening in the town of Sarcee la Buisiere. Douglas d'
konigo we heard from in episode two is an investigative
(10:37):
journalist who covered this case closely from the start. He
described what it was like to be caught up in
the whirlwind news cycle from the time that da True
was arrested and Sabinea and Letitia were rescued to win
the search for Julian Melissa in sarsh Labuisier started.
Speaker 7 (10:52):
So here we were the fifteenth of August nineteen ninety six.
I just came back from holiday with my colleague. I
was doing the news chief on this Thursday. So on
Wednesday evening, I remember I got a phone call from
my colleague Walter at the book, but he said something
might happen with this Lititicia case in Vertrie. She had
(11:15):
vanished a few days before, and they just gave me
the hints be alert for something happening with this Slatiticia case.
You had no idea where to start, where to be,
where to begin. I just remember this Thursday evening, must
have been around eight o'clock. There was a news wire
on bellgaide the agency saying Letitia and being found a
(11:39):
live press conference in Charlaha within an hour or so.
This was the calmest day at work you could ever imagine,
turned into the most crazy one ever. Be immediately sent
a reporter to Charleaa. We started doing phone calls to
the police. You have to change the car of the newspaper.
(12:03):
It was crazy, crazy evening, and we've been working up
long past midnight, I guess. And then came the next day.
It was Friday, when Belgium woke up with images of
Sabina and Lititzia getting out of this cage, welcomed by
hundreds of people. I remember the bonfire in Bertrid because
(12:26):
they had been copies of a four but a face only.
They had thousands, tens of thousands. The whole region was
full of these papers. They decided to recollect all these
photos of Lititzia missing to put them on a big bonfire,
and that was the biggest party they ever had Pertrie.
So for us journalists, we on this Friday, we still
(12:49):
were in a very small team. We started getting information
about Mark True. We started getting innovation information by Michelle Martin.
We think we made a special edition of twenty pages.
We've been working like like hell this very first day
of the True affair, and we ended up in a
pizzeria around I think eight or nine in the evening
(13:11):
with some colleagues. We just found that we deserved a
good meal and a few bottles of good wine. Was
really we thought it was the end of a joyful
moment in our careers, witnessing deliberation of these two girls,
seeing people dancing in the streets. Yeah, and I think
(13:33):
just before the pizza arrived, there was the first mobile
phone ringing and then the second. And in those days
you had these beepers, and every journalist hurt the beep
and just a few words saying digging in Salabrizie. And
I think from the very first seconds were digging. We
(13:53):
knew that Mark the True had a second house in Salabrize.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (13:58):
From that moment on the the story being so joyful
turned into a real nightmare. So we didn't finish our pizza.
I think some eight pizzas in their cars. We all
drove to Sleavisia, very difficult to find, but there was
no GPS in those days. I just remember standing there
(14:19):
in front of the little church of the very Salabia.
It is really the smallest village you can imagine, and
this whole village was one. Yeah, I was filled with
all these big cars, trucks, police cars of course were there.
I think we were like fifteen twenty journalists. We all
(14:42):
knew exactly what was happening, but who is going to
say it? And I remember this great friend and reporter
of the Flemish radio station was there really trembling, and
he said, I have to do a comment in the
midnight news and the radio. Am I going to say
that they are looking here for Julia Melissa? Can I
(15:03):
be the first to pronounce these words.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Douglas and his colleague spent a long night in Sarche
Le Buissiere, and by the next morning more media had
flooded the scene around the search site, and everyone waited
in hope and fear. This is a news report from
that day.
Speaker 10 (15:23):
We're here just a few meters from Detro's house. Since
early this morning. There's a certain effervescence here. The gender
Marie has sealed off the perimeter by a few hundred
meters to keep back onlookers. We can't imagine the worst.
We don't dare to pronounce the names of the girls
who've been missing for several months. The gendarmes are quite
(15:45):
calm and they're not letting any information filter out. Everyone's waiting,
waiting for a sign or a gesture that could announce
the fatality or the climax of one or the other cases.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
The entire nation was glued to their television sets, hoping
for the miracle rescue of Sabine and Letitia to repeat
itself for Julian Melissa. At one point, everything at the
search site stopped and search and excavation teams halted their activities.
(16:25):
At six point thirty pm on August seventeenth, nineteen ninety six,
the bodies of Julian Melissa were discovered at the Truce
property in Sarch Labuisiere. They were found very deep in
the ground with their bodies tightly tied up. It was
(16:48):
the most horrific outcome imaginable and the cruelest conclusion of
fourteen months of pain and suffering for the families.
Speaker 11 (17:00):
The accusations against Mark de Trux include kidnap, rape, and murder.
His victims were children. At one of da True's homes,
police found him digging out his basement but thought nothing
of it. By his own later admission, he was building
a prison to keep kidnapped children. By the time the
police found out, it was too late, the girls were
(17:22):
already dead. Patricia Kelly, CNN, Brussels.
Speaker 12 (17:42):
Well, I'm driving down the E forty towards Liege from Brussels,
and I'm on my way to meet with Karin Rousseau,
who is the mother of one of the victims, Melissa Rousseau,
who was abducted along with Julu Lejeanne in nineteen ninety five.
And I'm actually quite nervous about this. Karine Rousseau is
(18:07):
an incredible woman. She doesn't really like to talk to
journalists anymore. But after about a year of trying, I
finally somehow got her to agree to meet with me,
and I don't blame her. I mean, for the last
twenty six years, her life has been very difficult. Not
(18:29):
only did she lose her child, but she was lied
to by the police and mistreated by the judiciary, and
then of course the whole media circus that followed and
to a certain extent still follows her today. Anyway, I
don't want to just drag her through all of the
painful memories. I really want to ask her about some
(18:52):
of the loose ends, and of course I won't be
the first to look into that, but some questions that
still really need to be answered. Here, okay, Here I
am pulling off.
Speaker 13 (19:13):
The bridge, arriving in goas a new liege, and I'm
driving by this god forsaken bridge where the girls disappeared.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Twenty five, almost twenty six years ago.
Speaker 7 (19:36):
I guess.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Kareine and Gino Rousseau are now two of the most
recognized faces in Belgium. They never wanted it to be
this way. Belgium is actually quite a separated country. The
Flemish speaking region in the north called Flanders and the
French speaking region in the south called Wallonia are very
different on speaking. They don't always get along very well.
(20:03):
The families of Anne and Effia from Flanders and Julian
Melissa from Moolonia had created a bond that resonated with
the entire country. Their very public struggle capture the hearts
and minds of normal Belgians in a way that's hard
to explain. The moment that Julian and Melissa's bodies were
discovered is far from the end of this story. What
(20:24):
follows strains the limits of believability. I wanted to meet
with Karin Hussou and ask her about some things that
still don't sit right with me to this day. She
welcomed me warmly into her house. It was an unseasonably
hot day and Gino was mowing the lawn, which you
(20:46):
can hear in the background. Luckily he finished up before
I sat down with Karin to talk. You will, however,
hear a lot of background noise as we sat outside,
and that infamous bridge over the highway is not very
far off in the distance. Karine looked great. It was
(21:09):
heartening to see her smile. You have to remember that
we all got to know her on television in the
middle of the worst circumstances imaginable. The footage of her
in the hastily organized press conference after the discovery of
Julie and Melissa's body. Is the purest physical embodiment of
suffering I think I've ever seen. She speaks extremely well,
(21:30):
with a distinguishable twang of Liege accent, which she says
she doesn't like, but I find charming. I'm relieved that
the atmosphere is comfortable and that she seems relaxed. I'd
like to share something from an incredible book she published
in twenty sixteen called Fourteen Months. It's a collection of
diary entry she made during the fourteen months between when
(21:53):
Melissa disappeared and her body was found. I asked Karine
if she might be willing to read a powerful passage
from this book, and she agreed. She wrote it on
December twenty seventh, nineteen ninety five, eight months before learning
of the death of her beautiful child, Melissa.
Speaker 14 (22:11):
Melissa, Mimi, Mimi, my little girl. I call you in
the empty house, just to hear my voice resonate with
your name like before, and a hope for a tenth
of a second that you'll answer. But alas I only
hit a wall of silence, the silence that is driving
(22:33):
me crazy. That wraps me up in thickens. The silence
that is drowning me, silence of your absence, silence of
your disappearance, silence of the legal system, silence of the powerful,
scandalous silence, accomplice of crime and misfortune. I could never
stand the silences, the things unsaid. Do you remember? I
(22:56):
could never stand to let any silence come between us,
between your father and me, between your brother and you,
between any of you and me. I've always been a
breaker of silence, no matter what the price, even if
it hurt for me. Silence is the beginning of the end,
a harbinger of death, the opposite of life. Never could
(23:20):
I stand silence.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
This was written on a cold December night, six months
after the disappearance of Melissa. The silence Karin wrote about
then was not only about missing a rambunctious little girl
running around the house. It was about the intolerable silence
of police and the judiciary. Was this silence just a
normal course of action for a case that had gone cold,
(23:51):
or could it be something much more sinister. It's hard
to imagine that police might have had an idea of
who kidnapped Julian Melissa, but never for a warrant or
made any effort to make an arrest. But if they
did know and did nothing, why who are they trying
to protect? It sounds like a conspiracy theory born from
(24:11):
the frustration of embittered parents and a community fed up
with law enforcement's lack of progress, and many people today
insist that's exactly what it is, nothing more than baseless accusations.
But sometimes conspiracies are more than theory and need to
be put to the test. Meanwhile, back at the crime
(24:34):
scene and sarch Labuisiere, where Julian Melissa's bodies were found,
police made another shocking discovery. Approximately two hours after finding
the girl's bodies, the excavation team found another body. The
corpse was that of a middle aged white male showing
signs of torture, and autopsy confirmed that this man had
(24:55):
been drugged and tortured, but the final cause of death
was asphyxiated after having been buried alive. What they didn't
know at the time was that there was a link
between this corpse and the two teenage girls, Anne Martial
and Effie Alambricks, who had gone missing over a year
earlier from the Belgian seaside. Next time, on La Montre.
(25:27):
As people begin to learn about Dtrue's previous crimes of
child abduction and rape in his early release from prison,
angers start shifting towards the judicial system.
Speaker 11 (25:37):
Public outrage at the catalog of atrocities attributed to this
man has escalated into nationwide anger at the system which
allowed the True and his accomplices to operate unchecked and
at will for years. Belgian justice is on trial.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
The country is on the brink of revolution. As citizens
take to the street protest.
Speaker 6 (26:01):
It brought to the surface all the frustration of the population.
Speaker 8 (26:08):
Now remember when I.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Walked into the streets and we did the marcha blanche.
So it was like a huge national gathering where everyone
and all the souls of Belgians, being from Brussels, or
being from Walloonya or from Flanders, even though we speak
different languages, were all in that together.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
The Monster is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio,
hosted and executive produced by me Matt Graves, produced by
Thomas Resumont of Bubble Sound. Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay
are executive producers on the behalf of Tenderfoot TV, with producer,
Makeup and Vanity. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive
(27:03):
producers on the behalf of iHeartRadio with producer Trevor Young.
Original music by Jay Ragsdale, Sound design by Cooper Skinner
and Thomas Resimont, mixed and mastered by Cooper Skinner. Cover
design by Trevor Eiler. La Monstra includes archival audio from Sonoma,
RTBF Archives and CNN Archives. Special thanks to back Media
(27:26):
and marketing Station sixteen, Jean Savigna, and the teams at
iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. Find us on social media at
Monster Underscore pod. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
and do not represent those of iHeartMedia, Tenderfoot TV, or
their employees. This podcast also contains subject matter which may
not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
We saw two young girls walking along the street and
he said, do you want to earn one hundred and
fifty thousand Belgian francs? And I said sure, but how?
And then he said we had to kidnap the girls first,
and then he'd show me.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
These are the words of Claude Tirou describing a conversation
with Mark de True just after his release from prison.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
And I said, listen, I don't go around kidnapping young girls.
And he said, look, it's easy. You grab them from
behind the neck with one arm, cover their mouths. Then
you just throw them in the back of the van
and you can knock them out if you need to.
I said, no way, I'm not going to do that.
And after he dropped me off at home, I immediately called
(01:13):
the police and reported it. When I found out about
the disappearance of Sheli and Melissa, I suspected that Mark
was involved, and I went back to the police. It's
too bad they didn't listen to me.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Psychopaths is somebody who understands emotions, and.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
I told them it is a very exceptional that somebody
abducts two children at the same time.
Speaker 6 (01:55):
To have been the end of it in nineteen six,
but my god, it was just the beginning.
Speaker 7 (02:02):
I think Belgium was a paralyzed for perverts in those days.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Welcome to la monstre. I'm your host, Matt Graves. The
release of Mark da True after his first prison sentence
marked the beginning of a new wave of depravity that
would change this country forever. It began on the eighth
of April nineteen ninety two, the day de True was
(02:35):
released from prison for good behavior after serving less than
half his sentence for thirteen and a half years. His wife,
Michelle Martin, marked the day in bold in her journal
with just one word freedom. Despite having later claimed that
she was manipulated, Michel was certainly excited to jump back
into life with de True. She had meticulously planned his release,
(02:59):
and their first stop was to see a doctor who
granted them with disability status. This allowed them to claim
benefits of eighty thousand Belgian francs a month, above the
average salary in Belgium at the time. Always thinking ahead,
the True got the doctor to prescribe him powerful tranquilizers
haldol and rhydnol. Hydnol is roughly ten times stronger than
(03:22):
valuum and has come to be known as the date
rape drug, often referred to as rufees on the street.
So the state granted a psychopath convicted of raping children
with early release, a free salary and a steady supply
of rufees and sent him on his way.
Speaker 6 (03:43):
He was really a master manipulator. I mean, he is
a kibosh and known criminal who has been convicted of
raping and kidnapping children, and he somehow gets sort of
prison early and gets to stay to pay him a pension.
On top of that, they gave him the kind of
drugs used to rape people. It's crazy, I mean, what's
(04:05):
on earth the way they think you.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
As soon as November nineteen ninety two, eight months after
being released from prison, the police were called to an
ice skating rink where Da True was accused of molesting
a girl. Nothing came out of it, and De True
wasn't arrested. In September of ninety three, a mand True
had met while in prison reported that he tried to
convince him to help him abduct a young girl, but
(04:30):
this wasn't followed up either.
Speaker 8 (04:33):
Then.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
In nineteen ninety four, Datru and his wife welcomed an
eighteen year old girl from Slovakia who wanted to spend
the summer in Belgium. He slipped her some roofies and
then raped her at home. She didn't even know it
happened until it later turned up on a video cassette
seized at one of Datru's properties. Apart from his sexual crimes,
the True dove right back into stealing for a living
(04:56):
as well in nineteen ninety four. In ninety four, De
Truz started working with another criminal from France named Bernard Weinstein.
Weinstein had recently moved to Belgium from France, where he
had spent nine years in prison for theft and armed robbery.
He and De Drew worked together on various criminal enterprises,
mostly involving a vehicle theft ringd True's crimes with Weinstein
(05:20):
bring us to nineteen ninety five, where this series started.
Over the next fourteen months, de True in his accomplices,
would abduct six young girls whose names we should never forget,
Julie Lejeanne, Melissa Rousseau, Anne Marchal, Effi Alambrichs, Sabine Darden,
(05:41):
and Letitia DALs. Despite the warning signs his criminal passed
and reports that De True might be responsible for the abductions,
authorities failed to ever even question him. It wasn't until
August of nineteen ninety six, weeks after Letitia de Les
was abducted, that Detrit True would be arrested. A witness
(06:02):
came forward to identify the license plate of his van
seen near where Letitia had disappeared. Eventually, he would admit
to abducting Sabine and Letitia, and he led police to
his dungeon in Charlewai, where the girls were found alive.
You'll recall from episode four that I interviewed a police
officer named Michel du Moulin, who got to True to
(06:23):
admit to the kidnapping of Letitia d LEAs and took
him to the secret dungeon from where Letitia and Sabine
d'arden were rescued. After discovering the scale of d Truz's activities.
Police strongly started to suspect his involvement with a disappearance
of Julian Melissa in nineteen ninety five. De Moulain continued
to interrogate to True about this after the discovery of
(06:45):
Letitia and Sabine. Here is words from an interview read
by an interpreter.
Speaker 8 (06:51):
Mark de dru said that he kidnapped Leticia because Sabine
wanted a friend. She wanted me to bring her Julie
le Jeanne, and I thought, wait a minute, Julie la jean.
I was convinced he made a Freudian slip. Julie le
jean had gone missing way before Sabine was kidnapped. I
knew at this point that we were onto something, so
(07:12):
then I really started to squeeze him about Julian and Melissa.
After a lot of back and forth, he admitted that
Julie and Melissa had been in the dungeon, but that
someone else had brought them there.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Two days after taking police to where Sabine and Letitia
had been locked away, the True cracked again. On August seventeenth,
nineteen ninety six. He said that his friends Bernard Weinstein
and Michel Lievre had kidnapped Julian Melissa and brought them
to him. He said that they were at one of
(07:46):
his properties in a town called sarce La Boussier, and
agreed again to take police there. The excitement of finding
Sabine and Letitia two days earlier had given the families
of Julian Melissa hope. After fourteen months of the worst
kind of fear and anxiety, they learned that the true
may have been involved with the disappearances of their beloved girls.
(08:07):
The fathers of Julian Melissa wasted no time in heading
the Charlela to speak with locals and distribute flyers. In
interviews with the news media at the time, you could
feel a sense of hope in their voices. This is
the voice of Gino Rousseau, the father of Melissa.
Speaker 9 (08:25):
Knowing that Sabine and Letitia were fond, I came to
deliver a three thousand flyers.
Speaker 7 (08:32):
We've never lost hope.
Speaker 9 (08:33):
But everything we've said since the disappearance of Julian Melissa,
and by that I mean the hypothesis of pedophilia and
sexual kidnapping, if I can say that way, I ended
up being true. So we still have hope, but we
are frustrated because it's been fourteen months. But in a way,
(08:57):
we're happy to see that everything we've done for Julian
Melissa has held other children.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
And this is Jean de ni Le Jeanne, the father
of Julie from the same interview.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
It's wonderful for the two families to be able to
get their children back. It's a feeling we'd like to
be able to taste as well. We couldn't sleep last
night because we're thinking that if the true says something
that could help us find Julia Melissa, we don't want
to miss anything. Do you think there could be a
connection between these two cases.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
We think so.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
In any case, we hope so because it could be
the end of the thread we've been looking for fourteen months.
And if we could find the end of that threat,
even if the girls aren't in Charlotte, Wah but somewhere else,
if they came through here, it would at least be
a trace.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
It's what we hope.
Speaker 5 (09:48):
In any case.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
It's hard to imagine actually hoping that your child was
in the clutches of a man who was just arrested
for kidnapping girls and locking them away in a dungeon.
Such was the desperation of these families, it could mean
their girls were alive, certainly damaged, but at least alive.
(10:14):
The entire nation had gotten to know these families through
their relentless campaign to find their missing girls. Most all
of us living in Belgium at the time were familiar
with the faces of these two cute little girls, Julian Melissa.
Everyone was on edge as news spread about the search
happening in the town of Sarcee la Buisiere. Douglas d'
konigo we heard from in episode two is an investigative
(10:37):
journalist who covered this case closely from the start. He
described what it was like to be caught up in
the whirlwind news cycle from the time that da True
was arrested and Sabinea and Letitia were rescued to win
the search for Julian Melissa in sarsh Labuisier started.
Speaker 7 (10:52):
So here we were the fifteenth of August nineteen ninety six.
I just came back from holiday with my colleague. I
was doing the news chief on this Thursday. So on
Wednesday evening, I remember I got a phone call from
my colleague Walter at the book, but he said something
might happen with this Lititicia case in Vertrie. She had
(11:15):
vanished a few days before, and they just gave me
the hints be alert for something happening with this Slatiticia case.
You had no idea where to start, where to be,
where to begin. I just remember this Thursday evening, must
have been around eight o'clock. There was a news wire
on bellgaide the agency saying Letitia and being found a
(11:39):
live press conference in Charlaha within an hour or so.
This was the calmest day at work you could ever imagine,
turned into the most crazy one ever. Be immediately sent
a reporter to Charleaa. We started doing phone calls to
the police. You have to change the car of the newspaper.
(12:03):
It was crazy, crazy evening, and we've been working up
long past midnight, I guess. And then came the next day.
It was Friday, when Belgium woke up with images of
Sabina and Lititzia getting out of this cage, welcomed by
hundreds of people. I remember the bonfire in Bertrid because
(12:26):
they had been copies of a four but a face only.
They had thousands, tens of thousands. The whole region was
full of these papers. They decided to recollect all these
photos of Lititzia missing to put them on a big bonfire,
and that was the biggest party they ever had Pertrie.
So for us journalists, we on this Friday, we still
(12:49):
were in a very small team. We started getting information
about Mark True. We started getting innovation information by Michelle Martin.
We think we made a special edition of twenty pages.
We've been working like like hell this very first day
of the True affair, and we ended up in a
pizzeria around I think eight or nine in the evening
(13:11):
with some colleagues. We just found that we deserved a
good meal and a few bottles of good wine. Was
really we thought it was the end of a joyful
moment in our careers, witnessing deliberation of these two girls,
seeing people dancing in the streets. Yeah, and I think
(13:33):
just before the pizza arrived, there was the first mobile
phone ringing and then the second. And in those days
you had these beepers, and every journalist hurt the beep
and just a few words saying digging in Salabrizie. And
I think from the very first seconds were digging. We
(13:53):
knew that Mark the True had a second house in Salabrize.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (13:58):
From that moment on the the story being so joyful
turned into a real nightmare. So we didn't finish our pizza.
I think some eight pizzas in their cars. We all
drove to Sleavisia, very difficult to find, but there was
no GPS in those days. I just remember standing there
(14:19):
in front of the little church of the very Salabia.
It is really the smallest village you can imagine, and
this whole village was one. Yeah, I was filled with
all these big cars, trucks, police cars of course were there.
I think we were like fifteen twenty journalists. We all
(14:42):
knew exactly what was happening, but who is going to
say it? And I remember this great friend and reporter
of the Flemish radio station was there really trembling, and
he said, I have to do a comment in the
midnight news and the radio. Am I going to say
that they are looking here for Julia Melissa? Can I
(15:03):
be the first to pronounce these words.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Douglas and his colleague spent a long night in Sarche
Le Buissiere, and by the next morning more media had
flooded the scene around the search site, and everyone waited
in hope and fear. This is a news report from
that day.
Speaker 10 (15:23):
We're here just a few meters from Detro's house. Since
early this morning. There's a certain effervescence here. The gender
Marie has sealed off the perimeter by a few hundred
meters to keep back onlookers. We can't imagine the worst.
We don't dare to pronounce the names of the girls
who've been missing for several months. The gendarmes are quite
(15:45):
calm and they're not letting any information filter out. Everyone's waiting,
waiting for a sign or a gesture that could announce
the fatality or the climax of one or the other cases.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
The entire nation was glued to their television sets, hoping
for the miracle rescue of Sabine and Letitia to repeat
itself for Julian Melissa. At one point, everything at the
search site stopped and search and excavation teams halted their activities.
(16:25):
At six point thirty pm on August seventeenth, nineteen ninety six,
the bodies of Julian Melissa were discovered at the Truce
property in Sarch Labuisiere. They were found very deep in
the ground with their bodies tightly tied up. It was
(16:48):
the most horrific outcome imaginable and the cruelest conclusion of
fourteen months of pain and suffering for the families.
Speaker 11 (17:00):
The accusations against Mark de Trux include kidnap, rape, and murder.
His victims were children. At one of da True's homes,
police found him digging out his basement but thought nothing
of it. By his own later admission, he was building
a prison to keep kidnapped children. By the time the
police found out, it was too late, the girls were
(17:22):
already dead. Patricia Kelly, CNN, Brussels.
Speaker 12 (17:42):
Well, I'm driving down the E forty towards Liege from Brussels,
and I'm on my way to meet with Karin Rousseau,
who is the mother of one of the victims, Melissa Rousseau,
who was abducted along with Julu Lejeanne in nineteen ninety five.
And I'm actually quite nervous about this. Karine Rousseau is
(18:07):
an incredible woman. She doesn't really like to talk to
journalists anymore. But after about a year of trying, I
finally somehow got her to agree to meet with me,
and I don't blame her. I mean, for the last
twenty six years, her life has been very difficult. Not
(18:29):
only did she lose her child, but she was lied
to by the police and mistreated by the judiciary, and
then of course the whole media circus that followed and
to a certain extent still follows her today. Anyway, I
don't want to just drag her through all of the
painful memories. I really want to ask her about some
(18:52):
of the loose ends, and of course I won't be
the first to look into that, but some questions that
still really need to be answered. Here, okay, Here I
am pulling off.
Speaker 13 (19:13):
The bridge, arriving in goas a new liege, and I'm
driving by this god forsaken bridge where the girls disappeared.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Twenty five, almost twenty six years ago.
Speaker 7 (19:36):
I guess.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Kareine and Gino Rousseau are now two of the most
recognized faces in Belgium. They never wanted it to be
this way. Belgium is actually quite a separated country. The
Flemish speaking region in the north called Flanders and the
French speaking region in the south called Wallonia are very
different on speaking. They don't always get along very well.
(20:03):
The families of Anne and Effia from Flanders and Julian
Melissa from Moolonia had created a bond that resonated with
the entire country. Their very public struggle capture the hearts
and minds of normal Belgians in a way that's hard
to explain. The moment that Julian and Melissa's bodies were
discovered is far from the end of this story. What
(20:24):
follows strains the limits of believability. I wanted to meet
with Karin Hussou and ask her about some things that
still don't sit right with me to this day. She
welcomed me warmly into her house. It was an unseasonably
hot day and Gino was mowing the lawn, which you
(20:46):
can hear in the background. Luckily he finished up before
I sat down with Karin to talk. You will, however,
hear a lot of background noise as we sat outside,
and that infamous bridge over the highway is not very
far off in the distance. Karine looked great. It was
(21:09):
heartening to see her smile. You have to remember that
we all got to know her on television in the
middle of the worst circumstances imaginable. The footage of her
in the hastily organized press conference after the discovery of
Julie and Melissa's body. Is the purest physical embodiment of
suffering I think I've ever seen. She speaks extremely well,
(21:30):
with a distinguishable twang of Liege accent, which she says
she doesn't like, but I find charming. I'm relieved that
the atmosphere is comfortable and that she seems relaxed. I'd
like to share something from an incredible book she published
in twenty sixteen called Fourteen Months. It's a collection of
diary entry she made during the fourteen months between when
(21:53):
Melissa disappeared and her body was found. I asked Karine
if she might be willing to read a powerful passage
from this book, and she agreed. She wrote it on
December twenty seventh, nineteen ninety five, eight months before learning
of the death of her beautiful child, Melissa.
Speaker 14 (22:11):
Melissa, Mimi, Mimi, my little girl. I call you in
the empty house, just to hear my voice resonate with
your name like before, and a hope for a tenth
of a second that you'll answer. But alas I only
hit a wall of silence, the silence that is driving
(22:33):
me crazy. That wraps me up in thickens. The silence
that is drowning me, silence of your absence, silence of
your disappearance, silence of the legal system, silence of the powerful,
scandalous silence, accomplice of crime and misfortune. I could never
stand the silences, the things unsaid. Do you remember? I
(22:56):
could never stand to let any silence come between us,
between your father and me, between your brother and you,
between any of you and me. I've always been a
breaker of silence, no matter what the price, even if
it hurt for me. Silence is the beginning of the end,
a harbinger of death, the opposite of life. Never could
(23:20):
I stand silence.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
This was written on a cold December night, six months
after the disappearance of Melissa. The silence Karin wrote about
then was not only about missing a rambunctious little girl
running around the house. It was about the intolerable silence
of police and the judiciary. Was this silence just a
normal course of action for a case that had gone cold,
(23:51):
or could it be something much more sinister. It's hard
to imagine that police might have had an idea of
who kidnapped Julian Melissa, but never for a warrant or
made any effort to make an arrest. But if they
did know and did nothing, why who are they trying
to protect? It sounds like a conspiracy theory born from
(24:11):
the frustration of embittered parents and a community fed up
with law enforcement's lack of progress, and many people today
insist that's exactly what it is, nothing more than baseless accusations.
But sometimes conspiracies are more than theory and need to
be put to the test. Meanwhile, back at the crime
(24:34):
scene and sarch Labuisiere, where Julian Melissa's bodies were found,
police made another shocking discovery. Approximately two hours after finding
the girl's bodies, the excavation team found another body. The
corpse was that of a middle aged white male showing
signs of torture, and autopsy confirmed that this man had
(24:55):
been drugged and tortured, but the final cause of death
was asphyxiated after having been buried alive. What they didn't
know at the time was that there was a link
between this corpse and the two teenage girls, Anne Martial
and Effie Alambricks, who had gone missing over a year
earlier from the Belgian seaside. Next time, on La Montre.
(25:27):
As people begin to learn about Dtrue's previous crimes of
child abduction and rape in his early release from prison,
angers start shifting towards the judicial system.
Speaker 11 (25:37):
Public outrage at the catalog of atrocities attributed to this
man has escalated into nationwide anger at the system which
allowed the True and his accomplices to operate unchecked and
at will for years. Belgian justice is on trial.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
The country is on the brink of revolution. As citizens
take to the street protest.
Speaker 6 (26:01):
It brought to the surface all the frustration of the population.
Speaker 8 (26:08):
Now remember when I.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Walked into the streets and we did the marcha blanche.
So it was like a huge national gathering where everyone
and all the souls of Belgians, being from Brussels, or
being from Walloonya or from Flanders, even though we speak
different languages, were all in that together.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
The Monster is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio,
hosted and executive produced by me Matt Graves, produced by
Thomas Resumont of Bubble Sound. Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay
are executive producers on the behalf of Tenderfoot TV, with producer,
Makeup and Vanity. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive
(27:03):
producers on the behalf of iHeartRadio with producer Trevor Young.
Original music by Jay Ragsdale, Sound design by Cooper Skinner
and Thomas Resimont, mixed and mastered by Cooper Skinner. Cover
design by Trevor Eiler. La Monstra includes archival audio from Sonoma,
RTBF Archives and CNN Archives. Special thanks to back Media
(27:26):
and marketing Station sixteen, Jean Savigna, and the teams at
iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. Find us on social media at
Monster Underscore pod. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Host
Matt Graves
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