Latest / The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories / True Crime Documentary - The Monster That Kept Little Girls In Dungeons
Transcript
- 0:06Speaker 1: Paper was light gold in medieval times.
- 0:17Speaker 2: Oh what tobacco sugar.
- 0:23Speaker 3: That everything we thought we knew about the world might
- 0:26Speaker 3: turn out to be completely wrong.
- 0:36Speaker 4: In the summer of nineteen ninety six, the whole of
- 0:39Speaker 4: Belgium was in shock when two young girls who had
- 0:42Speaker 4: been kidnapped, raped and tortured were rescued from a makeshift
- 0:46Speaker 4: dungeon the lower house in Marcenelle. As the weeks passed,
- 0:50Speaker 4: the bodies of four other young girls were found buried
- 0:54Speaker 4: and properties linked to the same man.
- 0:57Speaker 5: Some of them staff to death, others were buried life.
- 1:00Speaker 5: These are some of the most horrendous crimes that any
- 1:04Speaker 5: criminologists will ever come across.
- 1:06Speaker 4: It was the beginning of a terrible nightmare for the
- 1:09Speaker 4: entire nation.
- 1:10Speaker 2: It was such a huge thing.
- 1:12Speaker 6: No one could believe that such a person could exist
- 1:14Speaker 6: in Belgians.
- 1:15Speaker 2: It was unthinkable.
- 1:18Speaker 4: With the help of his wife, Michelle Martin, convicted pedophile,
- 1:22Speaker 4: marked a True's unhealthy desire for young girls had turned deadly.
- 1:26Speaker 4: The youngest victims who died in his homemade dungeon were
- 1:30Speaker 4: just eight years old.
- 1:33Speaker 3: It is unimaginable cruelty and something that sets to true
- 1:39Speaker 3: Apart from some other serial.
- 1:43Speaker 4: Killers marked a True, the man dubbed the Monster of Marsonnel,
- 1:48Speaker 4: had earned his place as one of the world's most
- 1:51Speaker 4: evil killers. It was a case that sent yoch waves
- 2:18Speaker 4: across Europe. For a year during the mid nineteen nineties,
- 2:22Speaker 4: a Belgian killer had been abducting, torturing and raping young girls,
- 2:27Speaker 4: keeping them chained inside his abandoned properties. It wasn't until
- 2:33Speaker 4: the summer of nineteen ninety six, when two of the
- 2:37Speaker 4: young girls were found alive inside a basement in Marceonel,
- 2:41Speaker 4: that the Belgian public discovered the heenous crimes committed by
- 2:45Speaker 4: Mark the Truth.
- 2:46Speaker 7: Behind the facade of this perfectly ordinary looking house lay
- 2:50Speaker 7: a chamber of horrors.
- 2:52Speaker 2: Down in that cellar.
- 2:53Speaker 7: It's alleged that the True built a cage to keep
- 2:56Speaker 7: his victims. They were locked away like animals, raped, repeating
- 3:00Speaker 7: and mentally tortured.
- 3:02Speaker 4: But this killer's story begins over sixty years ago. Born
- 3:07Speaker 4: in Excel on the sixth of November nineteen fifty six,
- 3:11Speaker 4: Mark de True was the oldest of five children.
- 3:15Speaker 3: His parents were teachers and at one point emigrated to
- 3:21Speaker 3: the Belgian Congo, where they taught. But when the crisis
- 3:25Speaker 3: erupted in that country. They bought Dutrue back to Belgium
- 3:31Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty.
- 3:32Speaker 4: His parents eventually separated in nineteen seventy one, and fifteen
- 3:37Speaker 4: year old that True stayed with his mother.
- 3:40Speaker 5: We know that his mother was incredibly dominant, his father
- 3:43Speaker 5: was very aggressive, so I think it was quite a
- 3:46Speaker 5: hostile environment to grow up in, and I think those
- 3:49Speaker 5: attachments or lack of attachments with his parents in those
- 3:53Speaker 5: early years did play quite a role in the person
- 3:56Speaker 5: He became.
- 3:58Speaker 4: Trained as an elle pctrician, but often unemployed. Da True
- 4:03Speaker 4: soon began a long criminal history, including convictions for car theft,
- 4:08Speaker 4: mugging and drug dealing.
- 4:11Speaker 1: Du True.
- 4:13Speaker 3: Had a lot of contact with the police. He stepped
- 4:16Speaker 3: up from car theft into a rather grand form of
- 4:20Speaker 3: car theft, which involved shipping quite expensive luxury cars which
- 4:25Speaker 3: had stolen in Belgium out of the country into czechoslovakir
- 4:29Speaker 3: and Hungary.
- 4:31Speaker 4: The profit from his crimes led to True owning seven
- 4:35Speaker 4: properties in and around the city of Charleroois, forty five
- 4:39Speaker 4: miles south of Brussels. By nineteen eighty three, twenty six
- 4:43Speaker 4: year old d True was married with two children, but
- 4:46Speaker 4: he'd begun an affair with a school teacher called Michelle Martin.
- 4:50Speaker 4: The twenty three year old would eventually become D'true's partner
- 4:54Speaker 4: in life and crime, with whom he also had three
- 4:58Speaker 4: more children. The severity of Da Tru's crimes escalated from
- 5:03Speaker 4: theft to sexual assault, and in nineteen eighty nine, he
- 5:07Speaker 4: was found guilty of the abduction and rape of five
- 5:10Speaker 4: young girls, one of who was just eleven years old.
- 5:15Speaker 5: Marty True was a predator who selected his prey very carefully.
- 5:19Speaker 5: He wanted to choose people who were easy to target
- 5:23Speaker 5: in the first place, easy to abduct, but also easy
- 5:26Speaker 5: to manipulate once he had them under his control, so
- 5:30Speaker 5: he would go for the most vulnerable victims that he
- 5:33Speaker 5: could find that fulfilled his desires.
- 5:37Speaker 4: Dtru's now wife, Michelle, was found to be complicit in
- 5:40Speaker 4: the abductions and served two years of a five years sentence.
- 5:45Speaker 3: The psychiatrists suggest that Martine and du True husband and wife,
- 5:52Speaker 3: are a classic example of foliadder that one egged the
- 5:57Speaker 3: other on and that therefore the sum of the two
- 6:01Speaker 3: of them was even more dangerous than one alone.
- 6:05Speaker 5: I think when we look at the relationship between the
- 6:07Speaker 5: True and his wife, who was implicated in many of
- 6:11Speaker 5: his crimes. It is quite interesting. It's quite possible that
- 6:16Speaker 5: some people see her as just another one of his victims,
- 6:19Speaker 5: somebody else who was manipulated and coerced by him. And
- 6:24Speaker 5: when we look at March the True and his behavior,
- 6:27Speaker 5: he is incredibly charming at times, and he can be
- 6:30Speaker 5: very persuasive. So it wouldn't surprise me if he'd set
- 6:35Speaker 5: out with the intention of recruiting somebody to help him
- 6:39Speaker 5: in his crimes. And this is somebody who fell for
- 6:42Speaker 5: his charms and went along with it.
- 6:46Speaker 4: The True was released on parole in nineteen ninety two
- 6:50Speaker 4: after serving three years of a thirteen year sentence, having
- 6:53Speaker 4: showed good behavior.
- 6:56Speaker 3: I find that extraordinary. You can be convicted of the
- 7:00Speaker 3: ape and abduction of five girls, the youngest of which
- 7:02Speaker 3: is eleven, and you can walk out of jail after
- 7:05Speaker 3: three years of a thirteen and a half year sentence.
- 7:08Speaker 4: Georgeoircano, a Belgian investigative journalist, has spent over ten years
- 7:13Speaker 4: reporting on the De True case.
- 7:16Speaker 1: Is it da man de premiere?
- 7:18Speaker 6: The True is an expert manipulator. He made everyone cry,
- 7:21Speaker 6: He made everybody believe that his family had abandoned him
- 7:24Speaker 6: as an exemporary prisoner. He came out very quickly. The
- 7:27Speaker 6: prisons are overpopulated, and for authorities he was nothing more
- 7:30Speaker 6: than a carthy.
- 7:31Speaker 1: I bid for the old came.
- 7:33Speaker 4: By the summer of nineteen ninety five, d True was
- 7:36Speaker 4: a free man and living with his wife Michelle in
- 7:39Speaker 4: one of his Charlois homes in the suburb of Marcenelle.
- 7:43Speaker 4: On the twenty fourth of June, two eight year old girls,
- 7:47Speaker 4: Julie le Jeerne and Melissa Russo, went missing from the
- 7:51Speaker 4: town of grass Slange, just fifty five miles east of Charlois.
- 7:57Speaker 1: I love badud Mondeonson.
- 7:59Speaker 6: As there was no handsome request, no information about whether
- 8:02Speaker 6: they had been kidnapped. Probably they had been abducted by
- 8:05Speaker 6: a predator, a pedophar who has in most cases killed
- 8:09Speaker 6: his victims to silence them. Yesmo, But who could imagine
- 8:15Speaker 6: that a man was going to take away the girls
- 8:17Speaker 6: to keep them alive, locked alive inside a cellar.
- 8:21Speaker 2: Nobody person.
- 8:23Speaker 4: True, with the help of his wife Michelle, had abducted
- 8:26Speaker 4: the two children and were keeping them prisoner inside a
- 8:30Speaker 4: homemade dungeon.
- 8:33Speaker 3: True constructed a cell beneath his house and child which
- 8:37Speaker 3: was seven feet long, three feet wide and approximately five
- 8:41Speaker 3: feet high, hidden behind a very strong, elaborate door, which
- 8:48Speaker 3: was then covered with concrete and was hidden in his basement.
- 8:53Speaker 3: He put these two eight year old girls, Leisha and
- 8:56Speaker 3: and Rousseau, into the cell and kept them there for
- 9:02Speaker 3: the next three months.
- 9:04Speaker 4: As Julie and Melissa remained locked up into True's dungeon,
- 9:08Speaker 4: his sexual depravity was escalating, and just two months later
- 9:13Speaker 4: he would have duck two more girls, but this time
- 9:16Speaker 4: it would lead to murder. On August twenty third, over
- 9:24Speaker 4: one hundred miles away on the Belgian coast, two more
- 9:28Speaker 4: girls disappeared. Best friends, seventeen year old and Martial and
- 9:33Speaker 4: nineteen year old Effia Lambrecks, had gone missing while on
- 9:37Speaker 4: a camping trip. When the girls didn't return home, their
- 9:40Speaker 4: friends instantly alerted Effia's father, Jean.
- 9:44Speaker 8: Captain zu Meysetu if you need to dirty form.
- 9:49Speaker 9: We immediately had the feeling that something was wrong because
- 9:52Speaker 9: she was always open about things. She always said where
- 9:55Speaker 9: she was going and who she had seen. She would
- 9:59Speaker 9: never not anyone and just stay away. That was not
- 10:03Speaker 9: what Effia would do all.
- 10:07Speaker 1: And that was if you had to do it.
- 10:10Speaker 4: The last reported sighting of Anne and Effia was at
- 10:14Speaker 4: midnight in the central train station of Ostend, a coastal
- 10:17Speaker 4: town in northern Belgium. Initially, the local police had dismissed
- 10:22Speaker 4: the parents' concerns.
- 10:25Speaker 8: Yeah, they did not draw up a report.
- 10:31Speaker 9: They said they must have gone out, they'll return soon.
- 10:34Speaker 9: But during those first days nothing was done. And afterwards
- 10:38Speaker 9: their friends contacted us and we went to see the
- 10:41Speaker 9: police at Hasselt. They did respond, and at that stage
- 10:46Speaker 9: the police at the coast started investigating. The police then
- 10:50Speaker 9: asked questions if she was, you know, if perhaps she
- 10:54Speaker 9: was addicted to drugs or something. My response was that
- 10:58Speaker 9: Efia did not approve of those things. She was against it.
- 11:02Speaker 9: I did not believe anything like that. But anyway, you
- 11:06Speaker 9: start doubting, well, sometimes you start wondering, did I miss something?
- 11:11Speaker 8: Havoc dogis overaed in my other afterdam I mix Smith, Marg.
- 11:16Speaker 4: And Martial's father Paul went to visit investigative journalist Douglas
- 11:21Speaker 4: to Connig to see if he could help.
- 11:25Speaker 8: I remember very well that poor Marschall came into the office.
- 11:29Speaker 8: He pleaders, please please put a picture of my daughter
- 11:32Speaker 8: on your front pitch, and I think you were laughing
- 11:37Speaker 8: at him. And said, oh, oh God, God, this poor man.
- 11:40Speaker 8: His daughter is sure somewhere partying with some friends, and
- 11:44Speaker 8: she will show up in a few days.
- 11:47Speaker 4: But and if you were not out partying. In fact,
- 11:50Speaker 4: marked the True, with the help of a man called
- 11:52Speaker 4: Michel Lilievre, had abducted, raped, and murdered the two young women.
- 11:58Speaker 2: They were.
- 12:01Speaker 3: Inveigled into the van that Dutreu used for the abductions.
- 12:08Speaker 3: Because the dungeon beneath the house was full of the
- 12:13Speaker 3: two eight year olds. They chained these two girls to
- 12:17Speaker 3: a bed in the rest of the house when exactly
- 12:22Speaker 3: Marshall and Lembrick died, and precisely how has always been
- 12:27Speaker 3: a little mysterious. What is not in doubt is that
- 12:30Speaker 3: they were tortured and raped and eventually strangled.
- 12:36Speaker 4: In December nineteen ninety five, De True was arrested in
- 12:40Speaker 4: relation to a car theft. He was convicted and served
- 12:44Speaker 4: almost four months in prison. During this time, the police
- 12:48Speaker 4: searched his Marcinelle home. They were agonizingly close to finding
- 12:53Speaker 4: out da True's darkest secret.
- 12:56Speaker 3: Twice the December nineteen ninety five, On the thirteenth and
- 12:59Speaker 3: the ninth, police searched the house in shaha. One of
- 13:07Speaker 3: the most poignant and tragic parts of that search, which
- 13:14Speaker 3: included a search of the basement, was that the police
- 13:19Speaker 3: failed to identify the dungeon. Even more horrifying, the two
- 13:26Speaker 3: policemen who searched the house were accompanied by a locksmith
- 13:31Speaker 3: who would help them. The locksmith told the policeman that
- 13:36Speaker 3: he heard screams. The policeman said, oh, it must be
- 13:41Speaker 3: from outside, and disregarded him. The terrible truth is that
- 13:48Speaker 3: it was from the two eight year olds hidden in
- 13:51Speaker 3: this cell as dungeon.
- 13:54Speaker 4: At the True's house, officers had also found several VHS cassettapes.
- 14:00Speaker 4: His investigators didn't watch them until much later.
- 14:04Speaker 8: I was a video home video bearing made by market
- 14:06Speaker 8: your True where he was filming the development into works
- 14:11Speaker 8: in his child cage. This was essential proof that they
- 14:16Speaker 8: were on the right track. But for some strange reason,
- 14:19Speaker 8: they did this house search and they didn't exploit the
- 14:24Speaker 8: information they got from it.
- 14:26Speaker 4: The police mistakes came at a fatal cost. By the
- 14:30Speaker 4: time the True arrived back home after his release from
- 14:34Speaker 4: prison in March nineteen ninety six, Julie Lechern and Melissa
- 14:38Speaker 4: Russo were dead. His wife, Michelle had allowed the two
- 14:44Speaker 4: eight year old children to starve to death in the
- 14:48Speaker 4: makeshift dungeon.
- 14:49Speaker 3: The True had told her to feed their large German
- 14:52Speaker 3: shepherd dog look after him. He neglected to tell Michell,
- 14:59Speaker 3: apparently to feed the two eight year olds in the dungeon.
- 15:02Speaker 3: Some say, in defensive due to his wife, that she
- 15:08Speaker 3: was so terrified of the whole idea of the dungeon
- 15:12Speaker 3: and the fact that they might do something or she
- 15:16Speaker 3: wouldn't be able to control them meant that she couldn't
- 15:18Speaker 3: go in, and so she therefore allowed them to starve
- 15:21Speaker 3: to death. I've always regarded that as an over benevolent
- 15:26Speaker 3: description of what probably happened. But what I do believe
- 15:31Speaker 3: is that between them, they allowed these children, eight year
- 15:38Speaker 3: old girls, to suffer dreadfully, and there is no excuse
- 15:41Speaker 3: in my mind for them.
- 15:43Speaker 4: The True didn't wait long to find a replacement for
- 15:47Speaker 4: the two girls. On the twenty eighth of May nineteen
- 15:50Speaker 4: ninety six, he kidnapped twelve year olds Sabine Den on
- 15:54Speaker 4: her way to school and locked her in his dungeon
- 15:57Speaker 4: for the next three months. To True emotion tortured Sabine
- 16:01Speaker 4: by making her think she was in contact with her
- 16:04Speaker 4: mother and father.
- 16:07Speaker 6: She wrote letters to her parents, but obviously he didn't
- 16:09Speaker 6: send the letters. He read them. He used what was
- 16:12Speaker 6: in the letters to manipulate her. Yet she resisted. Despite everything,
- 16:16Speaker 6: she did not create that attachment with him.
- 16:18Speaker 4: The True was still on the hunt for more girls.
- 16:22Speaker 4: On August and ninth, he abducted fourteen year old Letitia
- 16:25Speaker 4: Delay as she walked home from her local swimming pool,
- 16:29Speaker 4: before taking her back to his Marcinelle home to join
- 16:32Speaker 4: Sabine Darden in the underground dungeon. But Letitia's kidnapping would
- 16:37Speaker 4: be the first step in the dramatic downfall of Mark
- 16:41Speaker 4: de True.
- 16:43Speaker 3: By accident, it was an eyewitness who saw her being
- 16:48Speaker 3: bundled into a van on that day and got part
- 16:51Speaker 3: of the number plate.
- 16:52Speaker 4: The man had seen a suspicious white van driving away
- 16:56Speaker 4: from the swimming pool where Letitia was last seen light
- 17:00Speaker 4: reno traffic with a license plate beginning with the letters
- 17:04Speaker 4: F F R. Prosecutor Michelle Boulat began to investigate.
- 17:10Speaker 1: Vagi Adibi Black.
- 17:14Speaker 10: I had the beginning of a license plate and a
- 17:16Speaker 10: make of car to work with. There are twenty names
- 17:19Speaker 10: that matched, and the police officer said, ah. Among these
- 17:23Speaker 10: twenty names, there is a certain and he said that
- 17:25Speaker 10: with a Flemish accent, because he was Flemish. The True,
- 17:29Speaker 10: The True. This name sounds familiar, so I asked who
- 17:32Speaker 10: is this to True? He's a man who lives in Charlerois,
- 17:36Speaker 10: who owns a white fan with a license plate beginning
- 17:39Speaker 10: with the letters F f R, who is sentenced in
- 17:41Speaker 10: nineteen eighty nine on multiple abductions and rape charges to
- 17:45Speaker 10: thirteen years in prison. So he has a high profile suspect.
- 17:51Speaker 4: One of the police officers working with Michelle had been
- 17:55Speaker 4: involved in a separate investigation called Operation Othello led where
- 18:00Speaker 4: it is in Charlois looking into Da True's movements in.
- 18:06Speaker 10: He provides us with all the information from that dossier,
- 18:09Speaker 10: which he had been collecting since July nineteen ninety five.
- 18:14Speaker 10: We are currently in August nineteen ninety six.
- 18:21Speaker 4: Investigator Michelle and his partner Jean Mark Conrod found even
- 18:25Speaker 4: more damning information in the Othello file, the testimony of
- 18:29Speaker 4: a man who'd been approached by the True to help
- 18:32Speaker 4: him kidnap girls.
- 18:34Speaker 6: He had asked a certain Claude Thero from the Charalowar region,
- 18:38Speaker 6: who is also a fugitive who needed money. He said
- 18:41Speaker 6: to him I'll pay you to help me abduct girls.
- 18:44Speaker 6: For this guy was a police informant, so he went
- 18:47Speaker 6: and told the Gendarmerie there's a guy named Mark de
- 18:51Speaker 6: True who lives there. He offered me money to kidnap children.
- 18:57Speaker 10: With such strong evidence, obviously, mister Connor and I decided
- 19:01Speaker 10: immediately to take major action concerning markd True.
- 19:06Speaker 4: Michel and his team were planning a synchronized raid on
- 19:10Speaker 4: all seven of Marked True's Charrois homes. If they could
- 19:13Speaker 4: find him, it may lead them to missing fourteen year
- 19:17Speaker 4: old Letitia del Haye, and there was a good chance
- 19:20Speaker 4: that she may still be alive, but they needed to
- 19:23Speaker 4: act fast. On the thirteenth of August, over forty special
- 19:29Speaker 4: ops police officers took part in a synchronized raid on
- 19:33Speaker 4: all seven of d True's properties in Charrois.
- 19:41Speaker 10: At about one in the afternoon. I was at the
- 19:43Speaker 10: headquarters of the Gendarmery of Charlois at the very moment
- 19:47Speaker 10: when mister Connuart received the news that in one of
- 19:50Speaker 10: the properties in Sa Le Bussier, the True was found
- 19:53Speaker 10: with his wife and the vehicle. This was the time
- 19:57Speaker 10: to act, as it seemed that the True was about
- 20:00Speaker 10: to change the license plate on the Van.
- 20:04Speaker 1: Di Vic.
- 20:07Speaker 4: The True, his wife Michelle Martin, and an accomplished Michelle
- 20:11Speaker 4: l'alievre were taken in for questioning. Over several hours of interrogations,
- 20:17Speaker 4: all three maintained their innocence.
- 20:21Speaker 10: He was consistent in his lies, following each lie by
- 20:25Speaker 10: telling another lie. It was a manipulative behavior, but otherwise
- 20:31Speaker 10: he stayed very, very calm.
- 20:39Speaker 4: Belgian authorities had no choice but to eventually release l'aliev
- 20:44Speaker 4: who denied being with the True on the day that
- 20:46Speaker 4: Tissue was kidnapped. But moments after he left the police
- 20:50Speaker 4: station in Charleois, a startling witness account came through Livois.
- 20:57Speaker 10: The neighbors of his property in Marconete saw Mark de
- 20:59Speaker 10: True and Nileev return on Friday evening carrying a child
- 21:04Speaker 10: covered by a blanket. As they returned to his house
- 21:08Speaker 10: to d Tru's house.
- 21:10Speaker 3: She.
- 21:13Speaker 4: Lulievre was immediately re arrested and taken back into custody.
- 21:17Speaker 4: As his accomplices Alibi began to grumble. The True's interrogation
- 21:22Speaker 4: took a drastic turn.
- 21:25Speaker 1: Galldrid Joussi.
- 21:27Speaker 10: The True knows that we had proof that Letitia was
- 21:30Speaker 10: in the car, so he says, yes, I was in Beatrice,
- 21:33Speaker 10: which he denied at the start. I met a young girl.
- 21:36Speaker 10: I talked with her, and then she told me she
- 21:39Speaker 10: was tired of her parents stories because there are parts
- 21:43Speaker 10: against him, and he changes the stories to suit his
- 21:45Speaker 10: narrative on the spot. Then at the same time Lileev
- 21:50Speaker 10: said she was with the True, and finally on Thursday,
- 21:53Speaker 10: he ends up telling us now that all of these
- 21:56Speaker 10: parts of the story contradict each other, I will give
- 21:59Speaker 10: you the two girls, not.
- 22:00Speaker 1: That quilla contredie the jeveludni Lufi.
- 22:07Speaker 4: The True pointed to a poster inside the interrogation room
- 22:11Speaker 4: of another missing girl, Sabine Duden.
- 22:14Speaker 1: Twelve year old.
- 22:15Speaker 4: Sabine had been kidnapped by him in May.
- 22:19Speaker 3: Two days after his arrest, dou True confessed and took
- 22:26Speaker 3: the police to the basement where Sabine and Letitia were
- 22:32Speaker 3: found alive.
- 22:33Speaker 4: On the fifteenth of August nineteen ninety six, the True
- 22:37Speaker 4: led the investigators to his property in Marcinelle. Were hidden
- 22:41Speaker 4: behind a false wall in the basement was the dungeon
- 22:44Speaker 4: where he'd been keeping Sabine Dudden and Letitia del Hay
- 22:48Speaker 4: locked up.
- 22:49Speaker 10: He pulled down the wardrobe and inside the cage behind
- 22:52Speaker 10: was Sabine and Letitia.
- 22:54Speaker 1: And then we got this.
- 22:57Speaker 8: That moment, incredible news that to kidnapped girls had been
- 23:00Speaker 8: found alive in the cage of a person who had
- 23:04Speaker 8: been convicted before for this kind of crimes.
- 23:07Speaker 2: It was such a huge thing.
- 23:08Speaker 6: All the journalists were on the scene at the time,
- 23:11Speaker 6: the news magazines were there. It is as if there
- 23:14Speaker 6: had been a terrorist attack. No one could believe that
- 23:17Speaker 6: such a person could exist in Belgium.
- 23:20Speaker 2: It was unthinkable.
- 23:28Speaker 4: Exc Douglas to coninc was one of the few journalists
- 23:37Speaker 4: who was allowed to enter the true's basement.
- 23:41Speaker 8: We had seen pictures, we had been seen images, but
- 23:43Speaker 8: being there, it's difficult to describe because it's it's it's
- 23:49Speaker 8: like constructed to You wouldn't even put a dog in
- 23:53Speaker 8: such a small place. This was really the the kind
- 23:59Speaker 8: of cage made to hide guns from the police.
- 24:03Speaker 4: As Belgium woke in shock to the news that a
- 24:06Speaker 4: man from Marcinelle had abducted, raped, and tortured two girls
- 24:10Speaker 4: over several months, the families of Sabine Darden and Letitia
- 24:14Speaker 4: del Hay rejoiced that their daughters had been found alive.
- 24:19Speaker 1: I said Stark Or who they are.
- 24:22Speaker 10: Rare occasions when we find the relatives and a policeman
- 24:26Speaker 10: or a magistrate has the opportunity to return a child
- 24:29Speaker 10: who have been kidnapped in such circumstances alive. It's fantastic, obviously,
- 24:36Speaker 10: it is a joy that can be shared with the parents.
- 24:41Speaker 4: Over the next forty eight hours, investigators continued to relentlessly
- 24:46Speaker 4: question the True. They were desperate to find the two
- 24:49Speaker 4: eight year old girls, Julie le Geerne and Melissa Russo,
- 24:53Speaker 4: who'd been missing for more than a year.
- 24:57Speaker 8: Undtrue was playing a game with his investigators. Knew that
- 25:01Speaker 8: he never would get out of prison anymore. He knew
- 25:04Speaker 8: that he would be presented as the most famous criminal
- 25:08Speaker 8: we've ever had in Belgium, and he wanted to exploit
- 25:11Speaker 8: that situation.
- 25:12Speaker 1: It's put it up for.
- 25:14Speaker 6: He had to be flattered. They had to make him
- 25:17Speaker 6: believe that they believed his pitiful story, make him believe
- 25:20Speaker 6: that things were not that bad for him. It's true that.
- 25:23Speaker 2: You were ingenious on this one.
- 25:25Speaker 6: You were not caught, and you fooled the police and
- 25:27Speaker 6: here and there at that point, his ego, his ego
- 25:31Speaker 6: had been flattered, and little by little he let information slip.
- 25:35Speaker 6: That's his attitude.
- 25:37Speaker 4: After forty eight hours of this cat' and mouse game,
- 25:40Speaker 4: Mark the True finally revealed to investigators that he had
- 25:43Speaker 4: abducted the two eight year old girls. Officer Jean Pierre
- 25:47Speaker 4: Adam was in the interrogation room come in buletpar As.
- 25:52Speaker 11: He did not say he had killed them. We hoped
- 25:55Speaker 11: they would be alive. We had to go fast. It
- 25:58Speaker 11: could have been a matter of life or death for them.
- 26:01Speaker 11: They could very well have been left there without food
- 26:04Speaker 11: or drink yet.
- 26:08Speaker 4: But there was no happy ending this time. In the
- 26:11Speaker 4: back garden of the True's house in Marcinelle, police found
- 26:15Speaker 4: the bodies of Julie le Geerne and Melissa Russococo.
- 26:22Speaker 11: I remember all my life the moment that I learned
- 26:25Speaker 11: that we had found the bodies of Julie and Melissa.
- 26:28Speaker 11: It was disappointing because we always hoped to find them alive.
- 26:32Speaker 11: It was a great moment of solitude. Yeah, I put
- 26:35Speaker 11: myself in the place of the parents. For them, it
- 26:38Speaker 11: is one hundred thousand times worse. But even for me
- 26:41Speaker 11: and my colleagues who are looking for the right information, well,
- 26:45Speaker 11: we are extremely disappointed.
- 26:47Speaker 1: Extreme Modiciu.
- 26:50Speaker 3: I can only imagine what the parents of Lejourn and
- 26:53Speaker 3: Rousseau Master felt. I mean, not only have their daughters disappeared,
- 26:58Speaker 3: but they're allowed staff to death and are then unceremoniously
- 27:04Speaker 3: shoved in a bin bag and buried in the garden.
- 27:06Speaker 3: It is unimaginable cruelty and something that sets to True
- 27:12Speaker 3: apart from some other serial killers.
- 27:17Speaker 4: Despite the bodies of both girls being found buried in
- 27:20Speaker 4: the garden of his house, the True denied both abducting
- 27:24Speaker 4: and killing them.
- 27:25Speaker 10: Well, it's not me who took them away. It's not
- 27:28Speaker 10: my fault if they died. I was in prison. Yes,
- 27:30Speaker 10: that's what he said to me. It's Martin who should
- 27:32Speaker 10: have fed them, who did not come to feed them.
- 27:36Speaker 4: The police also found the body of a Frenchman named
- 27:39Speaker 4: Bernard Wainstein buried into True's garden. It's believed that he
- 27:44Speaker 4: helped the True kidnap Julie and Melissa in June nineteen
- 27:48Speaker 4: ninety five. Back in the police station, the pedophiles soon
- 27:52Speaker 4: confessed to abducting another two girls.
- 27:57Speaker 10: In the meantime, we also had a fairly rapid confess
- 28:00Speaker 10: about the abduction of Anne and Effia on the Belgian coast.
- 28:03Speaker 1: Bene.
- 28:05Speaker 4: It was the news that Effia's father, Jean had been dreading.
- 28:09Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 28:11Speaker 9: To begin with, we were not told anything. Then the
- 28:14Speaker 9: police started asking questions if we had any more people children,
- 28:19Speaker 9: if he had been involved with more children. Finally, de
- 28:23Speaker 9: Troux also admitted that he had Anne Annaly.
- 28:28Speaker 1: Come through on the neth you hope.
- 28:32Speaker 4: The True pointed investigators to a property in the Jumai
- 28:36Speaker 4: district of Charlois owned by Bernard Weinstein. The accomplice's body
- 28:41Speaker 4: had just been found in the True's back garden in Martinel.
- 28:46Speaker 4: On September third, nineteen ninety six, near a shack not
- 28:50Speaker 4: far away from the house, police exhumed the bodies of
- 28:54Speaker 4: Anne Martial and Effia Lambrecks. They had been missing for
- 28:58Speaker 4: over a year. Mortem results to reveal the pair had
- 29:02Speaker 4: been buried alive.
- 29:04Speaker 6: At that time. It was only then that people began
- 29:07Speaker 6: to make more or less the connection between everything. No
- 29:10Speaker 6: one had made the link.
- 29:13Speaker 4: The nation was completely stunned. Between nineteen ninety five even
- 29:17Speaker 4: nineteen ninety six marked a True, a convicted child abuser,
- 29:22Speaker 4: had abducted and raped six young girls aged between eight
- 29:27Speaker 4: and nineteen years old. Four of them were now dead.
- 29:34Speaker 1: That's conflict, useful thought, that's for him.
- 29:36Speaker 6: His fantasy was to take youngers. He soon realized that
- 29:40Speaker 6: Julia and Melissa were sexually too young for him, so
- 29:42Speaker 6: he took ones that were a little older. That was
- 29:45Speaker 6: Anne and Effier. But he found that they were too
- 29:48Speaker 6: difficult to manage because they were older, stronger, more intelligent.
- 29:53Speaker 6: There was one that escaped several times. He had to
- 29:55Speaker 6: catch her again and it became unmanageable for him, so
- 29:58Speaker 6: he killed them as well. In his crazy and depraved mind,
- 30:04Speaker 6: the first ones were too young, the others were too old.
- 30:07Speaker 6: He chose in between, so he first took Sabine and
- 30:10Speaker 6: then Letitia.
- 30:13Speaker 5: These are some of the most horrendous crimes that any
- 30:16Speaker 5: criminologists will ever come across. But this is somebody who
- 30:20Speaker 5: who just wouldn't have felt bad about his victims at all.
- 30:23Speaker 5: He has no sense of connection to them or empathy
- 30:27Speaker 5: with them.
- 30:27Speaker 4: Due to the size of the ongoing investigation, it would
- 30:31Speaker 4: take seven and a half years before De True, Martin,
- 30:35Speaker 4: and their accomplice Michelle Lalive were finally.
- 30:38Speaker 1: Taken to trial.
- 30:39Speaker 4: During those years, the sheer gruesomeness of De True's crimes
- 30:43Speaker 4: couple with the major shortcomings of police investigations led to
- 30:47Speaker 4: widespread protests across the country.
- 30:50Speaker 1: So it comes to Yakuski.
- 30:52Speaker 6: It's as if something falls on your head and you
- 30:54Speaker 6: say to yourself, but how did we not see it?
- 30:57Speaker 6: How did we not see it happen? Those events deeply
- 31:00Speaker 6: shuk society. You wondered what we're going to build tomorrow
- 31:03Speaker 6: on them?
- 31:03Speaker 4: All the True's case had grabbed the headlines of every
- 31:09Speaker 4: news outlet in Belgium and had become an international story.
- 31:13Speaker 4: Belgian society was on the verge of breaking point. The
- 31:19Speaker 4: trial against Mark the True, his wife Michelle, and an
- 31:22Speaker 4: accomplished Michel Lariev was due to begin on the first
- 31:26Speaker 4: of March two thousand and four, nearly eight years after
- 31:29Speaker 4: the bodies of four girls had been found in two
- 31:32Speaker 4: properties linked to the True. By the time the trial arride,
- 31:37Speaker 4: the story had become one of the biggest controversies in
- 31:40Speaker 4: Belgian history.
- 31:42Speaker 7: Belgian society still remains deeply divided over whether they've got
- 31:46Speaker 7: the right people in the dock and just how thoroughly
- 31:49Speaker 7: the case has been investigated.
- 31:51Speaker 12: On espir Con Truvill and Poula Viti onnesper certain Marker sepossible.
- 31:58Speaker 1: Lifton went to sleep. With this trial. It was like
- 32:02Speaker 1: a no an addiction.
- 32:05Speaker 8: There were so many pages in the newspaper, so many
- 32:07Speaker 8: hours on television.
- 32:09Speaker 4: The prosecution that brought over two hundred charges against the
- 32:12Speaker 4: True and his accomplices.
- 32:15Speaker 10: There was the kidnapping, the abduction, rape and murder of
- 32:19Speaker 10: young girls. So if you multiply that by four or five,
- 32:22Speaker 10: so there were roughly two hundred and thirty five two
- 32:25Speaker 10: hundred and fifty five charges attributable to him.
- 32:30Speaker 4: The trial began on March the first, two thousand and
- 32:33Speaker 4: four at the Arl Honor Seis Court in southeast Belgium.
- 32:37Speaker 4: The True pleaded guilty to the murder of his French
- 32:40Speaker 4: accomplice Bernard Weinstein, but denied kidnapping eight year olds Julie
- 32:45Speaker 4: la Gerne and Melissa Russo and killing camping friends Anne
- 32:50Speaker 4: Martielle and Effia Lambrecks.
- 32:53Speaker 10: He continued to deny kidnapping Julian Melissa, and he also
- 32:57Speaker 10: denied the fact that he had killed Anne and but
- 33:01Speaker 10: the most important thing with regards to the kidnapping of
- 33:05Speaker 10: Julia and Melissa, he said, the death of Julie and
- 33:08Speaker 10: Melissa is not my fault. I was in prison kidding, he.
- 33:13Speaker 6: Said, one was already deceased and the other practically dead.
- 33:16Speaker 6: He tried, he said, that's what he said, to save her,
- 33:19Speaker 6: but he could not do it. He could not do it,
- 33:22Speaker 6: so he buried them.
- 33:24Speaker 4: As the prosecution began to make its case, the most
- 33:27Speaker 4: gruesome details of the True's crimes were laid bare in
- 33:30Speaker 4: front of the eyes of the jury and of the
- 33:33Speaker 4: families of the girls.
- 33:39Speaker 9: They asked about the photos, how they had been found,
- 33:43Speaker 9: photos had been taken, and I left the cortees. I
- 33:46Speaker 9: did not look at those photos. They were too horrible.
- 33:51Speaker 1: To good to us after it.
- 33:55Speaker 2: That.
- 33:56Speaker 12: It's very dramatical to be there, because we have to
- 34:02Speaker 12: see again everything that was not so so easy to
- 34:08Speaker 12: see and to accept.
- 34:10Speaker 4: The testimony of kidnapped twelve year old Sabine Den now
- 34:14Speaker 4: age twenty, described how the True had repeatedly raped her
- 34:18Speaker 4: during the eighty days she was held prisoner inside the
- 34:22Speaker 4: trus Dungeon.
- 34:30Speaker 13: SMA potually if you if you see this, quos to Macriu.
- 34:42Speaker 4: For fourteen weeks, the self obsessed psychopath used the court
- 34:46Speaker 4: room as his stage, communicating with his captive audience from
- 34:51Speaker 4: behind the glass cage where he was made to sit
- 34:54Speaker 4: for his own protection.
- 34:55Speaker 8: I start to understand him better just by hearing talking
- 34:59Speaker 8: in direct For example, one of the moments I never
- 35:03Speaker 8: forget was the aircode didn't work anymore. That was just
- 35:07Speaker 8: terribly hot in that courtroom. And there were some people saying,
- 35:12Speaker 8: we cannot go through with this, we should should stop
- 35:14Speaker 8: today and wait until the plumber has arrived. And then
- 35:18Speaker 8: suddenly might be True knocked on his glass and said
- 35:21Speaker 8: I can fix it. And he started a whole explanation
- 35:24Speaker 8: about what was wrong with the system and how to
- 35:28Speaker 8: fix it, and he just said, to be released from
- 35:30Speaker 8: the box, and you would do it.
- 35:32Speaker 5: Mark the True is a textbook psychopath, in my opinion,
- 35:35Speaker 5: And when we look at psychopathy, these are people who
- 35:38Speaker 5: are not as emotionally complex as the rest of us.
- 35:42Speaker 5: They don't have that same depth of feeling. They lack
- 35:45Speaker 5: a conscience. They operate pretty much like robots, so they
- 35:51Speaker 5: are able to kind of live in the present, to
- 35:54Speaker 5: just simply follow their own wants and desires. But I
- 35:57Speaker 5: think one important thing to remember about psych is they're
- 36:01Speaker 5: not mentally ill. They are rational, they're aware of what
- 36:04Speaker 5: they're doing. Their actions are the results of choice.
- 36:08Speaker 4: What many found so disturbing was the role of the
- 36:11Speaker 4: True's wife, Michelle, who became a silent witness and at
- 36:15Speaker 4: times accomplished his Henus crimes.
- 36:19Speaker 1: Michelle Martain.
- 36:20Speaker 6: This Michelle Martain, she's a total riddle because she's different.
- 36:24Speaker 6: She's not liked you, True. I think if she had
- 36:27Speaker 6: not met you, True, she might not have done what
- 36:30Speaker 6: she did. And here she also tried to explain she
- 36:33Speaker 6: regretted it. But it's so strange that as an explanation,
- 36:37Speaker 6: she was going to feed the dog and in the
- 36:39Speaker 6: house the kids were downstairs, yet she did not go
- 36:42Speaker 6: to them. How can people live with themselves? It's not
- 36:46Speaker 6: them who created the horror, but the fact that they
- 36:48Speaker 6: can live alongside it.
- 36:53Speaker 4: The True's defense lawyers argued that he was part of
- 36:56Speaker 4: a europe wide pedophile network.
- 36:58Speaker 8: That was very weird because margu True had changed his
- 37:02Speaker 8: lawyers on several occasions, and now he showed up with
- 37:06Speaker 8: four lawyers, with each a different defense line. There was
- 37:11Speaker 8: one saying he's a psychopath. Don't listen to all these
- 37:14Speaker 8: stories about networks of criminal.
- 37:16Speaker 1: Organization behind him. No, it's him alone.
- 37:18Speaker 8: And there was his other lawyer saying he's part of
- 37:21Speaker 8: a big network he's just the guy who kidnaps girls,
- 37:26Speaker 8: brings them to sex parties, and.
- 37:29Speaker 1: Cleans up the mess.
- 37:31Speaker 4: But the jury ruled out the involvement of others, and
- 37:34Speaker 4: on July seventeenth, two thousand and four, they found Marked
- 37:38Speaker 4: the True guilty to all.
- 37:40Speaker 10: The charges that I brought against the True. The jury
- 37:43Speaker 10: answered positively.
- 37:48Speaker 2: Guest Mirror.
- 37:51Speaker 10: Guest trez Well.
- 37:55Speaker 8: There was doing not much suspense because you could feel
- 37:58Speaker 8: how non No matter how the jury was critical towards
- 38:02Speaker 8: the official story, it was clear that they would condemn
- 38:06Speaker 8: Marked the True for.
- 38:08Speaker 1: Every accusation.
- 38:10Speaker 4: On the twenty second of June two thousand and four,
- 38:14Speaker 4: Mark the True was given the maximum life sentence. His wife,
- 38:17Speaker 4: Michelle Martin received thirty years in prison and Michelle Lalievre
- 38:22Speaker 4: twenty five years for his part in the crimes. Despite
- 38:26Speaker 4: the four month trial, there are still many questions left
- 38:30Speaker 4: unanswered in the True case.
- 38:34Speaker 8: For example, the exact locations as well as Julia Melissa
- 38:38Speaker 8: as If miss their parents. Until today, they don't know
- 38:42Speaker 8: where it happened. And it's crucial because if you want
- 38:46Speaker 8: to determine responsibilities, to know what exactly happened, that's what's
- 38:52Speaker 8: what his parents is promised what they absolutely want to
- 38:54Speaker 8: just a convincing explanation of what happened. They never got that, Yeah,
- 39:00Speaker 8: doctor mere correct.
- 39:02Speaker 9: I was hoping for more justice so that we'd know
- 39:06Speaker 9: who we were dealing with and also what happened to
- 39:10Speaker 9: e Fier, how was she murdered? And that we still
- 39:14Speaker 9: don't know. We do not know the details, so we
- 39:18Speaker 9: have never found out how she died.
- 39:22Speaker 1: I have annoyed to it.
- 39:24Speaker 4: Who's a Indiga Cormans the True. His wife, Michelle, was
- 39:29Speaker 4: controversially released from prison on August twenty eighth, twenty twelve.
- 39:34Speaker 4: She now lives in hiding under protection from the Belgian authorities.
- 39:40Speaker 3: The True asked to be released on the grounds that
- 39:42Speaker 3: he'd seen in the light that he was no danger
- 39:47Speaker 3: to anybody anymore, that after all, they released his wife,
- 39:51Speaker 3: wouldn't why couldn't they release him. The request was refused
- 39:57Speaker 3: and he is in solitary confinement.
- 40:02Speaker 4: Mark the True has continued to deny killing the four girls,
- 40:06Speaker 4: and despite pleas from the families and the survivors, has
- 40:09Speaker 4: never given an explanation for his actions. Many people believe
- 40:14Speaker 4: his crime spread further and wider, and that there were
- 40:17Speaker 4: other accomplices involved. Leaving some with a feeling that justice
- 40:22Speaker 4: had not been served.
- 40:24Speaker 1: The seris.
- 40:26Speaker 9: We did not get any answers, and we started our
- 40:30Speaker 9: own investigation. We examined dossiers ourselves. We found out some things,
- 40:36Speaker 9: but much more is still unclear.
- 40:40Speaker 8: Is it not fair the fact that this was a
- 40:44Speaker 8: case of child production.
- 40:47Speaker 1: This was a case where.
- 40:50Speaker 8: The violence used against children was so evident, so uncommon,
- 40:56Speaker 8: that it was hard to believe that this guy not
- 40:59Speaker 8: only was really east from prison after only a few years,
- 41:03Speaker 8: but managed to find a way to start immediately again
- 41:06Speaker 8: with the kidnapping girls, buying houses, and he was like
- 41:16Speaker 8: everything that could be worse was worse.
- 41:21Speaker 4: The True's crimes not only affected the families of his victims,
- 41:25Speaker 4: the entire country was second by this deadly psychopath.
- 41:31Speaker 3: Unfortunately, The True is the one thing that Belgium would
- 41:35Speaker 3: not want to be remembered for. In the years between
- 41:37Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six and ninety eight, one third of the
- 41:41Speaker 3: Belgian people whose name was Dutru asked to change their name.
- 41:46Speaker 1: It is.
- 41:48Speaker 3: A commentary on how deeply affected the country was by
- 41:51Speaker 3: this lone wolf.
- 41:56Speaker 5: Well, some of the things that Mark the True did
- 41:58Speaker 5: were incredibly depraved, and he didn't seem to have any
- 42:03Speaker 5: bad feelings about that. He completely lacked any empathy for
- 42:08Speaker 5: his victims. He treated his victims essentially as commodities, as
- 42:13Speaker 5: items to use and discard when he was fed up
- 42:16Speaker 5: with them.
- 42:18Speaker 10: He is depraved. There are no physical signs. He's a
- 42:21Speaker 10: man who if you meet on the street, you'll meet him.
- 42:24Speaker 10: He doesn't stand out, but when you analyze his personality
- 42:28Speaker 10: is that of a depraved man. That's all, an intelligent
- 42:31Speaker 10: man who knows what he wants, but is depraved.
- 42:35Speaker 6: He's a psychopath, someone who has no feelings for people.
- 42:38Speaker 6: He thinks he can reconstruct his fantasies. He believes that
- 42:41Speaker 6: he is going to kidnap two girls away and that
- 42:44Speaker 6: they will become attached to him, and that they will
- 42:46Speaker 6: love him. He will grow old with them. One must
- 42:49Speaker 6: be seriously disturbed to think that.
- 42:52Speaker 4: Mark de True's hideous crimes left many families in mourning
- 42:57Speaker 4: and a whole nation stunned. By manipult relating those around him,
- 43:01Speaker 4: he was able to satisfy his depraved sexual urges. We
- 43:08Speaker 4: may never know the truth about how far and why
- 43:10Speaker 4: Dtrue's network of crime spread, or how many children may
- 43:15Speaker 4: have suffered in his homemade dungeon. But we can be
- 43:18Speaker 4: sure that Mark the True will never be free to
- 43:21Speaker 4: cause harm to anyone ever again,