Fourteen months ago, Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, both eight years old, were two happy little girls. Playing in the fields near home, they stopped at an overpass to wave with delight at cars streaming down the highway below. Then they vanished. No word, no trace, no hint of what might have happened. The day was June 24, 1995, and their hometown of Grace-Hollogne, a suburb of Liege in southeastern Belgium, lay at the very heart of West European civilization. Nearby is the German city of Aachen, the seat of Charlemagne's court 1,200 years ago, and just downstream on the River Meuse is Maastricht, birthplace of the European Union. At this crossroads of five countries, the heir of such a proud history, how could two sunny children simply disappear? Like Eurydice, they seemed to have been swallowed up by the earth, taken to some netherworld that mortals could only guess and shudder at.
All guessing ended last week when the netherworld's curtains parted, and Belgians sensed that their homeland had suddenly transformed into the heart of darkness. Amid an outpouring of grief and rage unlike anything in recent memory, Belgium buried its smallest of missing citizens in a pair of white coffins. The Liege funeral, broadcast nationally on television, followed a week of one shock, heartbreak and outrage after another. Police had dug up Julie's and Melissa's bodies in the backyard of a house owned by Marc Dutroux, 39, an unemployed electrician who had no fewer than six houses in and around Charleroi, some 70 km southwest of Liege. After interrogation, Dutroux had led authorities to the burial place and admitted killing an accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, whose body was found in the same backyard garden. Dutroux also disclosed a hideaway where two other abducted girls, ages 12 and 14, were still alive. They emerged pale and tearful from a homemade dungeon hidden behind a cellar cabinet. The 14-year-old's mother said her daughter had been drugged and raped several times, and the 12-year-old had been sexually attacked as well.
So wrenching was the pace of these discoveries that Belgians had not finished feeling relief over the rescue when they heard of Melissa's and Julie's fate: starved to death after spending nine months in the underground dungeon, their food supply cut off when Dutroux went to jail for another crime. As if all that were not hideous enough, the jobless handyman then confessed to the abduction of yet another pair of girls, An Marchal, 17, and Eefje Lambrecks, 19, friends who had disappeared while vacationing on the Belgian coast last August. Police said they had reason to believe these teenagers may still be alive elsewhere in Europe--perhaps swept up by an international ring of pedophiles and sex slavers.
Concern for these missing youngsters intensified, and Europeans in general recoiled in horror from the tale. It exposed a macabre underground of child molestation that most people like to think could not exist--at least not in placid, enlightened Europe. What revolted public opinion most, however, was the way authorities had so mishandled these cases. They had long known about the prime suspect and his prior record, could have seen that he lived far beyond his ostensible means and even searched his premises more than once. Yet they inquired only in a desultory way, and they cold-shouldered the victimized families' anxious inquiries and offers to help.
A convicted rapist, Dutroux was paroled in 1992, just three years after his sentencing to 1312 years on multiple charges of kidnapping, unlawful confinement and sexual violation of five girls ages 12 to 19. The grounds for his release: good behavior. As recriminations engulfed the Justice Ministry last week, the police got scorched as well. Leaked documents disclosed that investigators had received tips about Dutroux's designs on children as long as three years ago, and that late last year they had visited the house where Melissa and Julie were being held captive. The visitors left when Dutroux told them the children's voices they heard were those of his own kids.
"The system is worthless," 36-year-old Jean-Denis Lejeune, Julie's father, told TIME last week. "All we can hope for now," he said, "is that their deaths will have served a cause." In fact, throughout 14 months of searching for the little girls, their parents had complained so outspokenly about police foot dragging and seeming indifference that the case became a national cause celebre. Gino Russo, a steelworker, appealed for help in press and broadcast interviews. Lejeune, an auto mechanic, made trips abroad with Russo to Morocco, Spain, Mexico, Canada and several times to the Netherlands, in pursuit of possible sightings. The girls' images were put on the Internet, and posters flooded the region.
As the bodies of the two girls were brought home, Russo declared about law enforcers, "They had nine months to find them alive, and they are handing them back to us today dead from starvation." Public clamor arose for restoration of the death penalty and for a shake-up of the criminal-justice system, in particular of methods of parole. The sentence mitigated for Dutroux stemmed from the 1985 abductions of the five girls. On each occasion he had held his victim for 24 hours, inflicted torture, then let her go. A case had also been brought against him for the 1983 rape and torture of a 50-year-old woman, who told police he had inserted a razor blade into her vagina. Those charges were later dropped for lack of evidence.
The heaviest opprobrium fell on Melchior Wathelet, who was Justice Minister at the time of Dutroux's early release. In his defense, Wathelet pointed out several unwelcome facts: that Belgian prisons are scandalously overcrowded, resulting in contradictory public pressures to lower the prison population while ensuring that criminals stay behind bars; that Dutroux had actually served nearly half his full term, since three years spent in jail before the 1989 trial counted as part of the sentence; and that as Justice Minister, Wathelet had approved parole only on the weight of a 4-2 recommendation by advisers, mainly corrections officials and social workers.
At that, he said, he had appended a handwritten note to Dutroux's file: "Follow very closely." Nonetheless, social workers followed up only perfunctorily. The last report, dated July 27, noted nothing special except marital frictions between the man now reviled as the Monster of Charleroi and his wife, former schoolteacher Michele Martin. One ghastly feature of the case is that this couple managed outwardly to maintain a semblance of normal family life with three young children, when all the while Dutroux was apparently contriving nightmares for innocent youngsters. What ought to have set off alarms was this welfare recipient's life-style. Besides the six houses in his name, he owned a variety of cars and vans and associated with shady types, including Weinstein and a vagrant named Michel Lelievre, the man who allegedly let Julie and Melissa starve early this year as Dutroux served four months in jail on charges connected with a car-theft ring.
By Dutroux's account, these two accomplices also carried out the actual kidnapping of the eight-year-olds. The mastermind told interrogators that he paid the sidekicks the equivalent of $1,600 to get a girl, after he had fixed up a cell. A police informant related that Dutroux prescribed a simple technique: "You just put your hand over their mouth. Once they're in the car, they can't get out because of the child-security systems." When two girls were brought to him, he supposedly snapped, "The cage isn't ready." The police tipster's story that Dutroux was quoting prices for abducted children, ranging from $3,200 to $4,800, suggested an organized ring of pedophiles, as did the police discovery of 300 to 400 videotapes, clearly intended for sale in the lucrative black market in such merchandise. "That indicates this was not a family enterprise," said Marie-France Botte, Belgium's leading campaigner against child prostitution. Prosecutor Michel Bourlet said Dutroux was among those who could be seen on the tapes making sexual use of underage girls and declared, "All those who have been identified on the videos will be prosecuted." With backhoes, jackhammers and drills, investigators took apart Dutroux's other houses, finding in one basement a trench of cells that may have been a holding tank for victims. Besides Dutroux, Lelievre and Martin, who have been charged in connection with the kidnapping of the two rescued girls, three other people have been charged or arrested.
These discoveries lent more credence to the families' long-asserted suspicions of a pedophile ring, a theory the police had refused to consider. Says Lejeune: "We were told from the beginning that pedophile rings do not exist here. Other investigators from other jurisdictions were eager to collaborate, but we were told this could be a sensitive issue to the investigators already working on the case." Although the families felt sure their children were alive, detectives argued that the abductions were probably the work of a lone psycho who had disposed of the bodies. Says Victor Hissel, a Liege lawyer who has helped the families: "I'm convinced that after a few weeks the police were looking only for cadavers. That's why they didn't find the girls when they searched Dutroux's house.
"It was a disaster," concludes Hissel, who kept petitioning for greater access to the case files--only to be repeatedly put off, rejected or fed small bits. "The criminals have more rights to see the files than the victims or their families," he notes, adding, "That's not right. It's the families' obligation to help--they know their children better than anyone." The case's most tragic aspect was the investigators' visit last December to Dutroux's home in the Charleroi suburb of Marcinelle, an instance in which the girls may have been drugged or frightened into not crying out. Their parents were heartsick to learn that had they been present, the sound of their voices could have produced a response. Says Russo: "If the authorities had listened to us, we might have been able to save our children."
Still in need of saving are the two teenagers who disappeared on the night of Aug. 22, 1995, when they were sharing a holiday bungalow with friends near Westende. An and Eefje, who came from the town of Hasselt, went off to the seaside resort of Blankenberge to see a show at a casino. On their return journey the tram terminated at Ostend because of the late hour. The motorman saw them off the car and urged them to take a taxi. That was the last seen of them. Their housemates raised an alert the next afternoon, but until Dutroux's confessions, nothing further had turned up.
All along, apparently, police around Charleroi had harbored evidence of the paroled child molester's criminal stratagems. In 1993, leaked reports last week asserted, a tipster told them Dutroux was preparing to get back into the abduction business. The informant said Dutroux was creating a basement cell to hold kidnapped girls before shipping them abroad. By July 1995 police reportedly put questions about the basement work to Dutroux, who said he was just fixing up the place.
In early August last year, before An and Eefje's kidnapping, authorities received yet another tip about Dutroux's conspiracy and his quotation of prices for abducted girls. At the end of the month, investigators inspected one of his houses, but in connection with their probe into a car-theft ring. Then came the December search, at the house where Julie and Melissa were. The check was occasioned by a strange development: at his own place, Weinstein, described by neighbors as "gentle Bernard," had been involved in a police raid that exploded into a shoot-out, which he escaped. Inside were found three beaten, captive adults--two men and a woman who had purportedly stolen trucks for Dutroux and Weinstein but refused to give up the booty. Dutroux was arrested and jailed for four months on the charge of theft with violence.
By Dutroux's account, before reporting to prison for his short stretch, he paid drifter Lelievre $1,600 to make sure his two abducted eight-year-olds were kept fed. The steward supposedly provided food for only six weeks and then shirked the job. When Dutroux got out in March, he says, one of the little girls was already dead and the other so close behind that she practically gave up her young life in his arms. Around the same time, he admits, he killed Weinstein, burying the "double-crossing" confederate drugged but alive. As for the girls, their bodies were so well preserved by clay surrounding them that clear signs of sexual assault remained.
The investigators' big break came in pursuing the disappearance of the two girls who were rescued on Aug. 15 from the Dutroux dungeon in Marcinelle. The 12-year-old vanished last May 28 while riding her bike to school in Kain, a village near Tournai, northwest of Charleroi. A little more than two months later, on Aug. 9, the 14-year-old disappeared while standing in front of a public swimming pool in Bertrix, near Neufchateau, some 80 km southeast of Charleroi. This time authorities canvassed the neighborhood at once. A nun reported seeing a noisy white van. A teenage boy also saw a white van, with a disreputable-looking driver. The lad, it turned out, had a hobby of trying to memorize the numbers on registration plates, and he rattled off a sequence. After changing the order of a couple of digits, police running a trace came up with Dutroux.
The electrician and his wife were picked up for questioning on Aug. 13, and a mystery man, real estate agent Jean-Michel Nihoul, was later detained for associating with Dutroux. Finally the main suspect broke down under questioning. "I'm going to take you to the girls," he said, proceeding to show where they were held, still alive but shattered, in a white-painted concrete "cave" measuring 2 m by 3 m. The cell was cleverly concealed by sliding doors behind a basement cabinet. Front-page news celebrating the girls' rescue quickly changed to national mourning when Julie and Melissa were found.
REVULSION! proclaimed the one-word banner headline on a Belgian newspaper. Discovery of all the past slipups, botched inquiries and missed leads compounded sorrow with fury at the criminal-justice system. As the dismaying disclosures piled up, suspicions grew that something more sinister than bureaucratic bungling was to blame. "It's clear that internationally--and that includes Belgium--for sex trafficking in children to work, offenders have to have protection. There must be political and financial support," said child advocate Botte. "It wouldn't be surprising to discover that important people in Belgium and in Europe are implicated in the system."
Some credit was due to the Belgian Central Bureau of Information's new unit to coordinate missing-persons inquiries: it pitched in with quick action following the most recent disappearances. Yet Europe was not yet ready to give credit, much less to forgive and forget. At Julie and Melissa's funeral last week, government officials who turned up at St. Martin's Basilica in Liege had to find their own seats in the packed house. Thousands of weeping citizens lined the cortege's route from Grace-Hollogne as the tragic motorcade crept by. Amid a sea of flowers, the children were buried in a private cemetery, side by side, getting all the official attention they had not won in life.
--Reported by Jay Branegan/Grace-Hollogne, Catherine Kotschoubey/Brussels and Rhea Schoenthal/Bonn
