Laetitia Delhez

Magnee also said that the prosecutors didn’t follow up on evidence leading to a cult called "Abrasax", which allegedly performed human sacrifices. In a wooden house of Bernard Weinstein (accomplice of Dutroux) a letter was found from the occult sect "Abrasax", in which a gift for the high priestress (Dominique Kindermans) was mentioned consisting of 17 girls between the age of 2 and 20 for anal, oral and vaginal sex. It was signed by priest "Anubis". This priest was later identified as Francis Desmedt. Later investigations showed that four police men in Charleroi were also members of the sect, one was even the treasurer. The headquarter of the sect (Institut Abrasax) in Rue Emile Vandervelde 223 Forchies La Marche was raided in 1996 by 150 officers. The television showed police taking away bags of papers, video cassettes and a refrigerator. They also took away black magic ritual implements and human skulls.

Although Nihoul was acquitted of kidnapping and conspiracy charges, he was convicted on drug-related charges and was sentenced to five years imprisonment. Nihoul was released in spring 2006. He resided in Zeebrugge until his death on 23 October 2019.

Michel Nihoul was a business man that was known to frequently attend sex parties. He was accused of being the brains behind the child kidnapping and abuse operation around Dutroux. Nihoul was charged in relation to the case with "kidnapping, rape, conspiracy and drug offenses." Nihouls lawyer in the case was, Frederic Clement de Clety. His lawyer denied all charged made against Nihoul by Dutroux and called him a ‘’"liar and manipulator."’’ When the investigative journalist, Olenka Frenkiel, met Nihoul in Brussels he reportedly greeted her with the words "I am the monster of Belgium." He told her that he was certain that he would never be prosecuted. During the encounter he grabbed her, tickled her and pulled her unto him so that she called for her colleagues to help her get away from him. Frenkiel was working on a documentary on the case for the BBC. In 2004 at the end of the Dutroux case trial he was released of all charges in child abduction.. In May 2010 the Belgian prosecutor office dropped all charges against Nihoul relating to a participation to a pedophile ring in the absence of any tangible evidences.

Lelièvre is currently serving his prison sentence in the prison of Ittre. His application for parole in 2013 was denied. He has since then been granted temporary leave, but has violated the conditions of release. He may be released if he can find an apprenticeship as a cabinet-maker, which has so far been unsuccessful. The Belgian state was forced to pay Lelièvre 6000 euros. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that a moral compensation was in order because he was held in custody (nearly eight years) without receiving answers to his requests.

On 4 February 2013, Dutroux requested the court in Brussels for an early release from prison. He insisted that he was "no longer dangerous" and wanted to be released into house arrest with an electronic tag (ankle bracelet) placed upon him. On 18 February, the court denied his request. Dutroux is currently being held in solitary confinement in the prison of Nivelles.

On 19 August 2012, about 2000 people in Brussels demonstrated against Martin's possible early release from prison. She has since been paroled, 13 years into her sentence, and was released into the care of the Poor Clares in Malonne. She was given shelter, although she was not part of the community. The sisters have declared that they were not her guardian and shelter was given under the condition that she would not violate the conditions of her parole. As the convent has since been sold, she has had to find new shelter or go back to prison. A former judge has created an apartment in his converted farmhouse, where she now lives.

In 2009 Wikileaks published the Dutroux Dossier. Belgian authorities tried to have the dossier taken down. The prosecutor general of Liege, Cedric Visart de Bocarme, said “There is some true, some false, some very disparate information here, involving some people who have done nothing wrong, who have simply been mentioned in an investigation and are thus exposed to public contempt, whereas all this material should have remained classified.”

Judge Connerottes testified in the Dutroux case on 4 March 2004. He broke down in the witness box stating that there had been high-level murder plots to stop his investigation into the child-sex mafia. He stated that he had to drive in bullet-proof cars and had armed guards around him at all times because shadowy figures from the crime world were threatening him. The police had informed him that murder contracts had been taken out against the prosecutors in the case. He alleged that organised crime methods were used to discredit his work and make sure that the investigation would end in a judicial failure.

The guardian reported in 2004 that "the entire credibility of the current reformist government of Guy Verhofstadt and Belgium's very reputation as a normal civilised country is on the line."

Dutroux's trial began on 1 March 2004, some seven and a half years after his initial arrest. It was a trial by jury and up to 450 people were called upon to testify. The trial took place in Arlon, the capital of the Belgian province of Luxembourg, where the investigations had started. Dutroux was tried for the murders of An Marchal, Eefje Lambrecks and Bernard Weinstein. While admitting the abductions, he denied all three killings, although he had earlier confessed to killing Weinstein. Dutroux was also charged with a host of other crimes: auto theft, abduction, attempted murder and attempted abduction, molestation, and three unrelated rapes of women from Slovakia.

In a rare move, the jury at the assizes trial publicly protested the presiding judge Stéphane Goux's handling of the debates and the victims' testimonies. On 14 June 2004, after three months of trial, the jury went into seclusion to reach their verdicts on Dutroux and the three other accused. Verdicts were returned on 17 June 2004 after three days of deliberation. Dutroux, Martin and Lelièvre were found guilty on all charges; the jury were unable to reach a verdict on Nihoul's role.

The death penalty was abolished in Belgium in 1996. The last execution for common-law crimes was in 1918. However, the majority of Belgians, at the time of the trial, would have had no problem with Dutroux receiving the death penalty. On 22 June 2004, Dutroux received the maximum sentence of life imprisonment, while Martin received 30 years and Lelièvre 25 years. The jury was asked to go back into seclusion to decide whether or not Nihoul was an accomplice.

There were countless hairs found in the dungeon where the two girls were held. The judge Langlois refused to have them tested for DNA evidence even though the leading police investigator Michel Bourlet had begged him to have them analyzed in order to know whether more people aside from Dutroux were involved. The general prosecutor of the case, Anne Thily, said that she didn't believe that there was anyone else involved and thus didn't have the samples analyzed. Thily told investigative journalist Frenkiel that: "In any case the hairs have all now been analysed - all 5,000.' And the results of this analysis? Nothing. No evidence of any relevance in the Dutroux affair. Which proves, of course, that Langlois was right all along." But according to Frenkiel this wasn't true. Sources central to the investigation confirmed that in 2002 the hairs had still not been analysed. Thus Frenkiel accused the senior prosecutor Thily of lying brazenly. Frenkiel continued to question Thily and asked her how she would want to prove that Dutroux raped the girls, as he was denying it and there was no DNA evidence. Thily then replied that there were DNA tests, but that the results came back inconclusive as the bodies were too decomposed at the time the samples were taken. Dutroux's lawyer, Xavier Magnee, said during the trial proceedings "I speak not only as a lawyer, but also as a citizen and father. He was not the only devil. Out of the 6000 hair samples that were found in the basement cellar where some of the victims were held, 25 "unknown" DNA profiles were discovered. There were people in that cellar that are not now accused." However it was never attempted by the prosecution to match those DNA profiles to people implicated in the case. .

The father of one of the murdered girls, Paul Marchal, the father of An Marchal accused the police and the judicial system of a cover-up in 2001. He was angry that still in 2001 the trial hadn't started even though Dutroux had already been under arrest for several years. Paul Marchal said: "It feels like they don't want to find the truth. It is not a good feeling and not only I think this."

The videos were reportedly stolen after they were returned to Dutroux. In 1999 some of the tapes were finally reviewed. One of them showed Dutroux raping a young woman in Slovakia. The videos could have made it possible to identify other victims and also exactly determine the severity of the torture that the victims had to endure during their ordeal.

Marc Verwilghen, the chairman of the parliamentary inquiry into the handling of the Dutroux case, reported attempts in a book he published in 1999 to stifle their investigation into how the case had been handled. Verwilghen eventually published a book which claimed that the commission’s findings had been muzzled by political and judicial leaders to prevent the revelation of details which would have implicated the complicity of additional perpetrators. Mr Verwilghen claimed that senior political and legal figures refused to cooperate with the inquiry. He said magistrates and police were officially told to refuse to answer certain questions, in what he described as 'a characteristic smothering operation'. Verwilghen blamed Mr Langlois for refusing to hand over evidence of official protection for Mr Dutroux. He said that if they had received that information, their report would have been without doubt more precise and detailed. Verwilghen added that for him, the Dutroux affair was a question of organised crime.

A book was published in November 1999 titled: "The X-Files: What Belgium Was Not Supposed to Know About the Dutroux Affair." It was written by two journalist from the Flemish Belgian newspaper De Morgen, Annemie Bulte and Douglas De Coninck and another journalist from the French Belgian newspaper Journal du Mardi, Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. It claimed that the X witnesses were much more believable than stated by the media. But it also stated that there had been substantial efforts by the magistrates and senior police officials to demolish the testimony of the X-witnesses. The father of a police officer that was murdered while investigating a car smuggling ring, Judge Guy Poncelet, said that the book was brilliant and convincing. He said he believed that crucial evidence had been down played by the authorities.

In 1998 Dutroux was allowed to have a look at his case files. He was accompanied by two police officers for that. When one officer went on a break Dutroux overwhelmed the other officer and was able to escape. He was captured a few hours later. The Minister of Justice Stefaan De Clerck, the Minister of the Interior Johan Vande Lanotte, and the police chief resigned as a result. In 2000, Dutroux received a five-year sentence for threatening a police officer during his escape. In 2002, he received another five-year sentence for unrelated crimes.

A 17-month investigation by a parliamentary commission into the Dutroux affair produced a report in February 1998, which concluded that while Dutroux did not have accomplices in high positions in the police and justice systems, as he continued to claim, he profited from corruption, sloppiness and incompetence.

Several police officer that had worked on the case were subsequently removed in 1997. They were reportedly removed because they had manipulated evidence surrounding the testimony of Régina Louf. However the involved officers always denied that accusation. This included officer Rudi Hoskens, who believed that the testimony of witness X1, Régina Louf, was true because her testimony matched an unsolved murder case that she could have had no knowledge on, had she not witnessed it. What she described was the murder of then 15 year old Christine van Hees. She said that the girl was tortured to death by the group and that Nihoul took part in the torture. She said Dutroux watched. Christine's body was found in 1984. The officer leading the investigation, Mr. De Baets, said that they followed up on all testimonies the X witnesses had given, in order to determine whether what they said was possible or not and that they came to the conclusion that it was possible that the things had occurred as the witnesses described them. As this took up a lot of resources and time of the police force an inquiry was initiated into the handling of the case, which then again took up as much resources as the investigation of Mr. De Baets itself. It was said that: "The suspicion grew that De Baets and others formed part of a sect bent on destabilising the kingdom." So De Baets and large parts of his team were removed from the investigation and sent home on indefinite leave. Not only was De Baets dropped from the investigation, he was also charged in 1997 with concealing the fact that Louf had wrongly identified the photograph of one of the victims. However, on the video tapes of her interrogation it is visible that it was very hard for her to stand looking at the photographs and that her right answer had been in the files all along. In 1999 De Baets was exhonerated from the charges. Additionally two journalists from Le Soir Illustre, who had defamed him and four colleagues were convicted to pay two of them 55.000 $ plus court costs. Even though De Baets had been exhonerated, he and his colleagues remained on leave.

In 1996, Dutroux was arrested on suspicion of having kidnapped, tortured and sexually abused six females aged between 8 and 19, four of whom died. His widely publicised trial took place in 2004. Dutroux was convicted of all charges, along with the murder of a suspected former accomplice, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Martin was convicted and sentenced as an accomplice to 30 years in prison. Another accomplice Michel Lièvre was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Michel Nihoul was first tried with Marc Dutroux but then convicted in a separate case and sentenced to five years in prison. Another accomplice of Marc Dutroux, Bernard Weinstein, was killed by him and thus never tried.

According to Dutroux and Martin, Lejeune and Russo were still alive in the house at the time of Dutroux's arrest in December, and Dutroux had ordered Martin to leave new food and water for the girls in the dungeon each time they ran out. Martin neglected to feed them, later claiming she was too afraid to go into the dungeon. Lejeune and Russo eventually starved to death. Dutroux initially stated that they were still alive when he returned home following his release from prison on 20 March 1996; according to him, Lejeune died that day, and Russo followed suit four days later despite his efforts to save her; during his trial, he said they were already dead when he returned from prison. An expert asserted that they would not have been able to survive the entire time Dutroux was in prison on the total amount of food and water they were said to have been given. Dutroux buried Lejeune and Russo's bodies in the garden of the house he owned in Sars-la-Buissière, near to that of Weinstein.

On the morning of 28 May 1996, Dutroux and Lelièvre kidnapped 12-year-old Sabine Dardenne, who was cycling to school in Tournai. In a book originally published under the title J'avais 12 ans, j'ai pris mon vélo et je suis partie à l'école (and published in the United Kingdom under the title I Choose to Live), Dardenne described her time in captivity in Dutroux's Marcinelle home, where she spent most of the time imprisoned in the dungeon and was starved and repeatedly raped by Dutroux. On 9 August, Dutroux and Lelièvre kidnapped 14-year-old Laëtitia Delhez as she was walking home from her local swimming pool in Bertrix. An eyewitness observed Dutroux's van, described it and was able to identify part of the license plate. On 13 August, Dutroux, Martin and Lelièvre were arrested. An initial search of Dutroux's houses proved inconclusive, but two days later, Dutroux and Lelièvre both made confessions. That same day, Dutroux led the police to the basement dungeon inside which Dardenne and Delhez were imprisoned, and the girls were subsequently rescued. On 17 August, Dutroux led police to his house in Sars-la-Buissière, and with his help they were able to locate and exhume the bodies of Lejeune, Russo and Weinstein. On 3 September, the remains of Marchal and Lambrecks were located and exhumed in Jumet. Hundreds of commercial adult pornographic videos, along with a large number of home-made sex films that Dutroux had made with Martin, were recovered from his properties.

Several sources said that Michel Nihoul and Marc Dutroux were planning on a prostitution and trafficking operation between Slovakia, the Czech Republic and western Europe. Several pieces of evidence lead to connections to Slovakia and the Czech Republic. This included a video tape of Dutroux raping a young woman in Slovakia that wasn't reviewed after it was seized. It also included testimonies saying that they were planning on setting up a trafficking operation. Also the car theft and smuggling operation that Dutroux was involved in lead to those two Eastern European countries. During the time of his arrest Dutroux was in the possession of 2.000 SKK (Slovakian currency) in cash. Six Belgian investigators visited the Czech Republic and Slovakia in August 1996. It wasn't possible to prove that Dutroux had committed any crimes while being there. Thus they returned without any substantial evidence.

The investigating police said in 1996, that Dutroux was part of a child-prostitution ring, that may also have been responsible for several other disappearances still unsolved. They also said that the gang around Dutroux offered $5000 per girl they received. Their criminal activities also involved car theft. It was said that the criminal network around Dutroux was involved in car theft and smuggling. The car in which Mélissa and Julie were kidnapped has never been found. The general prosecutor, Anne Thilly, decided to have the car theft and smuggling be investigated by different police authorities in different parts of the country. In this way it was nearly impossible to investigate the connection between the car theft, kidnapping and human trafficking. Dutroux also said that Nihoul had proposed to traffic girls from Eastern countries.

Connerottes criticised authorities for not rescuing Julie and Mélissa even though Dutroux had been a prime suspect for one year before they were found dead. The judge also said that he had received files describing a child-sex network. It described seizure of children and foreign trafficking. The sum of 150.000 Francs was mentioned as the price for a girl. Connerottes also said that he was doubtful about the official explanation on how Julie and Mélissa died. It was said that they starved to death in the dungeon. An adult can last about three days without water and maximum 60 days without food. If they received nothing to drink and eat they should have been dead very soon after Dutroux was imprisoned. However Michelle Martin insisted that they were still alive when he returned. Connerottes had even written to King Albert in 1996 stating that his investigations into crime networks were being blocked because suspects "received serious protection". The judge said that the "dysfunctional judiciary" was breaking down as mafia groups took secret control of the "key institutions of the country".

A letter of juge Connerottes addressed to King Albert II in 1996 stated: "This institution seems to acquire its authority and supremacy over sectors of the justice system by relying on a complex and secret modus operandi, that of the appropriation of certain key circuits of our institutions created and regulated by the Law. It is a matter essentially of political, financial, police, and media circuits. This mafia-style criminal phenomenon is evidently not peculiar to Belgium, but it involves particular manifestations that are well suited to this small country. We can imagine the obstacles that a judiciary inquiry will meet when investigating such facts: numerous taboos, problems of mentality, and a lack of cultural reference on the issue in order to be able to become aware of or deal with such criminal phenomena, taking advantage in Belgium of official reticence in terms of their acknowledgement, which favours or supports their occultation. The function of a criminal system of this sort is obviously to serve its fundamental purpose, the pursuance of particularly profitable illicit activities, such as money-laundering, and to protect the ‘legitimacy’ of its activities and the impunity of its agents. This indispensable function corresponds to the motive of criminal protection that assures the permanency of the incriminated system by means of the infiltration of the certain circuits of our institutions, especially the police force, a veritable ‘knot’ which my whole investigation has come up against."

In a wooden house of Bernard Weinstein (accomplice of Dutroux) a letter was found from the occult sect "Abrasax", in which a gift for the high priestress (Dominique Kindermans) was mentioned consisting of 17 girls between the age of 2 and 20 for anal, oral and vaginal sex. It was signed by priest "Anubis". This priest was later identified as Francis Desmedt. Later investigations showed that four police men in Charleroi were also members of the sect, one was even the treasurer. The headquarter of the sect (Institut Abrasax) in Rue Emile Vandervelde 223 Forchies La Marche was raided in 1996 by 150 officers. The television showed police taking away bags of papers, video cassettes and a refrigerator. They also took away black magic ritual implements and human skulls.

In October 1996 more than 300.000 Belgians marched through the streets of Brussels after the beloved judge Jean-Marc Connerotte was removed from the case. He was removed for attending a fundraising dinner for the families of the victims, which the court system claimed damaged his impartiality. They demanded an investigation and reform of the police and justice system. The protest was called the "White March". Judge Jean- Marc Connerotte was beloved by the public because the only two surviving victims were rescued on his initiative, which made him a national hero. Protesters were wearing signs that said "Stop the cover-up".

To protest the prospect of a conditional release of Marc Dutroux, a "Black March" was organised on the 23rd anniversary of the historic "White March" protest that was held in Brussels on 20 October 1996. The calls to take part in the march were made after it was made public that a court had approved the request of Michel Lelièvre for conditional release, who was an accomplice of Dutroux and had received a 25-year sentence.

Dutroux claimed that he was a low dog in a powerful pedophile network. He further claimed that Michel Nihoul was the organizer of their abductions." He said that he did torture and abuse all of the girls but denied killing any of them until the very end. Dutroux further denied the kidnapping, raping and murdering Mélissa and Julie. He however admitted to incarcerating them at one of his houses. On the case of Mélissa and Julie Dutroux also claimed that he had "protected them from a power and sinister child sex ring." His testimony that he never raped Julie and Mélissa was somewhat supported by examinations of psychiatrists in 1996 stating that Dutroux didn't fit the pedophile profile. He wasn't attracted to children. But might have chosen to abduct younger victims because they were easier to manipulate and control. Dutroux admitted to abduction and rape of the other girls. He also admitted to burying his accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, alive for "letting the girls die." Dutroux further said that two unidentified policemen had taken part with him in the kidnapping of An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks. He boasted about having build the dungeon in which An and Eefje were held for a while. He said: "I wanted to create a hiding place to spare them from being sent to a prostitution ring." Dutroux admitted to raping Eefje. He said that Weinstein had raped An. He also admitted to drugging both of them. Dutroux also admitted that he kidnapped Sabine Dardenne and raped her. He also admitted to kidnapping and raping Lateita Delhez but not handing them over to Nihoul ‘’"to spare them the fate of An and Eefje."’’ Dutrouxs lawyer, Xavier Magnee, repeatedly said that the prosecution never followed up on evidence of a network surrounding Dutroux.

Martin testified that Dutroux and Weinstein kidnapped Mélissa and Julia. She also said that Dutroux had told her that he had murdered Weinstein. Martin further said that Dutroux and Weinstein had killed An and Eefje. She further testified that Mélissa and Julie starved to death in their basement in 1996 while Dutroux was in jail. She claims, that she was too scared to descend to the basement.

The Dutroux case is so infamous that more than a third of Belgians with the surname "Dutroux" applied to have their surname changed between 1996 and 1998.

On 24 June 1995, eight-year-old classmates Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo were kidnapped after going for a walk in Grâce-Hollogne, probably by Dutroux, and brought to his house in Marcinelle. Dutroux kept them imprisoned in the dungeon he had created, repeatedly sexually abused them and produced pornographic videos of the abuse. Two months later, in the early hours of 23 August in Ostend, Dutroux and accomplice Michel Lelièvre kidnapped An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks, two teenage girls from Hasselt who were on their way back to their holiday home in Westende following a night out in Blankenberge. With Lejeune and Russo already in the dungeon, Lambrecks and Marchal were kept chained up in a bedroom. In September, according to Martin, Lambrecks and Marchal were drugged and brought to Jumet, where Dutroux and accomplice Bernard Weinstein killed them by burying them in a hole.

In 1995 Dutroux's mother wrote a letter to the authorities stating that she knew that Dutroux had kidnapped two girls and was keeping them at his house.

After Mélissa and Julie were kidnapped in 1995, it took police 14 months to arrest Dutroux even though he had been a prime suspect from the start and had committed similar crimes before. During the search for Mélissa and Julie, police visited Dutroux's house twice on 13 December and 19 December where Julie and Mélissa were held. However, no attempts were made to free them, even though the locksmith who accompanied the police, René Michaux, said that he heard screams of children coming from inside the house. The locksmith repeatedly said: "I'm not leaving before we turn the place upside down. The screams are clearly coming from inside the house." To which Michaux replied: "Who is the police officer here? You or me?"

Marc Dutroux was arrested on 6 December 1995 on car theft charges and subsequently convicted to three months in jail. During the three months Mélissa and Julie died of starvation and dehydration in their dungeon cell as the wife of Dutroux didn't feed them, even though she knew that they were there.

During the search of the houses of Marc Dutroux several video tapes were found. Those were never looked at. Some of them showed Dutroux constructing the dungeon in which Mélissa and Julie were held. Had police looked at it, they would have found the dungeon and Mélissa and Julie. The video tapes had been in possession of the police since December 1995. They had been passed on the to the prosecutors in the case but not to the judges. Furthermore, some of the video tapes were actually returned to Dutroux by police officer René Michaux without ever being looked at.

The officer that searched Dutrouxs house while Julie and Mélissa were likely still alive on 13 and 19 December 1995. However even though the locksmith that he inspected the house with suggested they should search the whole house to find out where children's screams were coming from, Michaux left after not having searched the house thoroughly. Not only did Michaux fail to rescue Julie and Mélissa, he also failed to look at video tapes that were confiscated from Dutroux's house. Those video tapes showed him constructing the dungeon, which would have led them to the place where Julie and Mélissa were kept. Some of the videos also included tapes of Dutroux raping women. Many of the tapes were returned to Dutroux without ever being looked at by law enforcement.

The assassination of André Cools took place in 1991. The revelations in the Cools case coincided with the revelations in the Dutroux case and in total made the Belgian public lose trust in their government. Van der Biest was eventually convicted but had already been investigated five years prior as the one who ordered the contract hit on Cools. Due to failures in the investigation he wasn't charged. It was found that several Belgian politicians had been bribed with large sums of money by an Italian helicopter manufacturer, Agusta-Dassault, in exchange for military contracts. This included Belgian secretary general of NATO, Willy Claes. There were allegations that both the assassination of André Cools and the case surrounding Dutroux showed that organised crime had spread in Belgium and that the institutions weren't efficient in combatting the spread or corruption and organised crime.

Dutroux was convicted in 1989 for the abduction and rape of five young girls (with his then-wife Michelle Martin) and other accomplices. He was released on parole after three years in prison.

Dutroux had already committed similar crimes (kidnapping and rape of young girls). He had been imprisoned for that in 1989. He was however released early and was thus able to reoffend. Namely he was released in 1991 after only serving three and a half years of a thirteen-year sentence.

Dutroux abducted Axelle D. on 14 December 1985. During her testimony, she told the police that Dutroux's accomplice Peteghem had told her that "he was part of a gang" led by two gang leaders, "an Italian and a crazy stupid one." Jean van Peteghem admitted to having taken part in the abduction. He said he had abducted Axelle D. with Marc Dutroux and Michelle Martin. He had lived with Dutroux after being discharged from the military and having his marriage fail. Peteghem told police that the first victims of his and Dutroux were two girls from Morlanwelz. These two victims were never recovered by police. On 7 June 1985 the first proven abduction by the two took place. They abducted eleven-year-old Sylvie D.. On 17 October 1985 the pair abducted Maria V., 19, from Peronnes-lez-Binche. Maria V. also identified a third man that took part in her abduction and appeared to be in his fifties. The man was never found by police. On 17 January 1986 Catherine B., 18, was abducted from Obaix. Dutroux had one or two accomplices in her abduction that were never found by police. Peteghem was stationed as army personnel in Germany during that time and could not have assisted Dutroux. On 18 December 1985, Dutroux abducted Élisabeth G., 15, in Pont-à-Celles. Peteghem told police that Dutroux filmed Élisabeth naked and took pictures of her. At the beginning of February 1987, Martin, Dutroux and Peteghem were arrested. This had to a large extent been the fault of Peteghem who had given out a lot of information about him in conversations with the girls, which had been enough for police to identify him. The three were eventually convicted on 26 April 1989. Dutroux received 13.5 years. Peteghem received 6.5 years and Martin received 5 years. Dutroux received a harsher sentence because he had also committed several robberies with Peteghem. Dutroux was thus additionally convicted for the brutal robbery of a 58-year-old woman. The robbery was also committed with accomplices. One of the accomplices in this robbery was also never found by police.

Martin said that Dutroux had already decided to abduct girls in 1985. He had said that it was easier to abduct and rape girls than having to start affairs with them. This way he would also have more resources and time to spend on her. So she had to help him with the abductions.

The judge presiding of the Dutroux case, Judge Van Espen, had a close relationship to Michel Nihoul. A journalist revealed that as a lawyer Nihoul had represented the wife of Nihoul. Van Espens sister was the godmother of Nihouls child. However even though his close friend Michel Nihoul was involved in the case, Van Espen never resigned. He was also not removed from the case for a very long time. Even though judge Conerotte had been removed simply for attending a fundraising dinner. Van Espen was further more the judge presiding over the murder case of Christine van Hees from 1984. He only resigned from this case in 1998 when Nihoul was accused of being involved in the murder and van Espens close ties to Nihoul were revealed.

Dutroux reported that he was repeatedly beaten by his parents. His parents divorced in 1971 and Dutroux left home. He then became a drifter and a male prostitute. Dutroux married at age 20 and had two children. He admitted to beating his wife and cheating on her. They separated in the 1980s. One of his mistresses was Michelle Martin, whom he later married and had three more children with. Dutroux and Martin were married in 1989 while both were in prison. They divorced in 2003, also while in prison.

Marc Paul Alain Dutroux (French: [dytʀu] ; born 6 November 1956) is a Belgian convicted child molester and murderer.

Born in Ixelles, Belgium, on 6 November 1956, Dutroux was the eldest child of five of Victor and Jeanine, who were both teachers. He spent the first years of his life in the Belgian Congo. After the Congo crisis his parents had to return to Belgium.