Lord have mercy on us all.
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Yep. |
Posted on 03/02/2004 8:06:30 PM PST by yonif
Belgian prosecutors accused Marc Dutroux yesterday of burying two young girls alive in a series of abductions and child murders eight years ago.
The bodies of An Marchal, 17, and Eefje Lambrechts, 19, were found drugged and wrapped in plastic sheets on Dutroux's land in August 1996, a year after they were seized on their way back from a party.
"The victims were not dead when they were buried according to their autopsies," said the chief prosecutor, Michel Bourlet, reading from a 74-page list of charges.
Mr Bourlet accused Dutroux, 47, of torturing and raping six girls in a filthy cell underneath his house in Charleroi, portraying him as a monster without remorse.
He said the two youngest girls, Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, both eight, starved to death in the freezing dungeon.
The prosecution described Dutroux as a psychopathic manipulator with an intense victim complex, but not insane. "In his mind, all social rules are perfectly recognised, but are rejected as unacceptable constraints," said Mr Bourlet.
Dutroux denied killing any of the girls, but admitted rape and abduction. He confessed to the murder of a French accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, burying him alive as a punishment for "letting the girls die".
After falling asleep and seeming to mock the court on the first day of the trial, he could be seen scribbling notes behind the bullet-proof screen yesterday.
His lawyers alluded to reports of satanic cults and child sacrifice by shadowy networks. The defence cited DNA evidence indicating that other people visited Dutroux's cell, alluding to hundreds of human hairs that cannot be accounted for.
"Can people really make you believe there wasn't a paedophile ring? We see clearly in the dossier material proof that other people than the accused here present frequented the cellar. How can this trial go ahead while these unknowns are watching calmly on television?" said his lawyer, Xavier Magnee.
The parents of Julie and Melissa say they do not believe that their daughters could have survived 106 days without food and water while Dutroux was in prison.
Reading out the 74-page list of macabre charges to the 12-man jury at Arlon's Palais de Justice, the prosecutor appeared to give some credence to allegations of a wider criminal network, asserting that Dutroux "and others raped, abused, and murdered" the girls. The claim contradicts the conclusions of the investigating magistrate, Jacques Langlois, who has said Dutroux was an "isolated pervert".
The prosecutor and judge have been in bitter conflict for the last seven years, each pulling the case in opposite directions. The result has been a "schizophrenic" set of charges that baffle the public.
The original judge, Jean-Luc Connerotte, was credited with rescuing two of the girls - Sabine Dardenne, 12, and Laetitia Delhez, 14.
Investigators believe Dutroux was planning to murder Sabine after tiring of her as a sex slave. She was chained by the neck for 79 days and raped repeatedly.
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Yep. |
Somebody should kill him before he goes in.
Oh... I do wish. They've had years to do so, however, so we may just have to wait to see it until he serves his teeny amount of time and then is let loose again.
A file photo of accused Belgian paedophile and murderer Marc Dutroux. Dutroux has been dubbed the 'monster of Charleroi' by the Belgian press, but psychiatrists say he is less a paedophile than an icy-hearted predator with a murderous desire to control his victims
Marc Dutroux, a suspect in the pedophile case centering on the murder of four abducted girls eight years ago in 1996, front right, is led out the courthouse in Neufchateau, Belgium in this March 20, 2000 file photo. Sabine Dardenne, who was rescued from a cell in the basement of Dutroux in 1996, announced Monday, Feb. 22, 2004, that she would testify at the trial of the suspects in the pedophile case
The long-awaited trial of alleged child killer Marc Dutroux, finally began nearly eight years after a spate of abuse of schoolgirls that convulsed his country and shocked the world.
Belgian Michel Nihoul, one of the three suspected accomplices of convicted child rapist Marc Dutroux, waits for the start of their trial in the Arlon court house in southeast Belgium March 1, 2004. Nihoul, Lelievre, Dutroux and his wife Michelle Martin stand trial for the abduction and rape of six girls and the murder of four of them in the mid-1990s.
Belgian Michel Lelievre, one of three suspected accomplices of convicted child rapist Marc Dutroux, waits for the start of his trial in the Arlon court house in southeast Belgium March 1, 2004. Lelievre, Michel Nihoul, Dutroux and his wife Michelle Martin stand trial for the abduction and rape of six girls and the murder of four of them in the mid-1990s.
Belgian Michelle Martin, wife of convicted child rapist Marc Dutroux, waits for the start of her trial in the Arlon court house in Belgium March 1, 2004. Martin, Dutroux, Michel Nihoul and Michel Lelievre are standing trial for the abduction and rape of six girls and the murder of four of them in the mid-1990s.
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