DUTROUX. Sentenced to life imprisonment in 2004 for the kidnapping, rape and murder of six underage girls, Marc Dutroux saw all his requests for release refused. Back to the Dutroux affair.
[Mis à jour le 26 août 2022 à 16h40] He has been sleeping behind bars for 25 years. Marc Dutroux sentenced in 2004 to life imprisonment in the prison of Nivelles in Belgium, has several times asked to be released from his cell. The so-called “monster of Charleroi” and guilty of the kidnapping, rape and murder of six young women, some of them minors, has been able to apply for parole since 2013 but all his attempts have ended in failure. . The man dreams of getting out of prison, like his ex-wife and accomplice, Michelle Martin, who was placed under an electronic bracelet in 2012 and released in full on August 26, 2022, but the risk of the killer’s recurrence is too great, according to experts.
In 2019, Marc Dutroux had started his third request for parole before being discouraged by the unchanged conclusions of psychiatrists on his case and his dangerousness. Not to mention that the release, even partial, of the pedophile killer and former enemy number 1 of Belgium would arouse unprecedented anger. Anger already visible with the total release of Michelle Martin found guilty of complicity in the kidnapping and rape of six girls.
What is Marc Dutroux’s daily life in prison?
Twenty years in prison have left their mark on the health of Marc Dutroux. The lawyer for the serial killer and rapist, Me Bruno Dayez, described the man as depressed and “at the bottom of the abyss” in front of the Belgian press in February 2021. The argument was to serve to justify the request for parole which does not never came to fruition.
Detained in the Belgian prison of Nivelles, in a cell of 9 m2, since his incarceration in 1996, Marc Dutroux has been placed under an isolation regime which strictly limits his visits, his activities and deprives him of access to certain objects. A surveillance that the lawyer of the monster of Charleroi deplored in the pages of Last hour in February 2021. Me Dayez had indicated that his client did not have the right to telephone and could not read his mail alone.
Despite the isolation regime and the seriousness of the acts of which he was found guilty, Marc Dutroux was able to work in the prison from 2015, after 19 years of imprisonment. He worked three hours a day as a surface technician in the penitentiary centre. A job he decided to stop in 2021, because the prison was “constantly putting a spoke in his wheels” according to the comments reported by his lawyer to the press: “We imposed hours on him that were not possible, we imposed on him to start at 6 o’clock in the morning without any justification, they forbade him to go to work in shorts, they left him to wait an hour in the cold. The killer’s daily life boils down to being alone in his cell or alone in the yard, a few hours a day.
Can Marc Dutroux get parole?
Marc Dutroux was sentenced to the heaviest of sentences, life imprisonment, which reduced his chances of obtaining parole to almost zero. A possibility which was however offered to Michelle Martin, his wife and accomplice at the material time. She escaped life imprisonment by receiving 30 years in prison, a sentence reduced to 16 years in prison and 10 years of parole.
The killer, however, tried several times to obtain an adjustment of his sentence. The first attempt in 2012 proved to be a failure, but the man remained hopeful of being placed on semi-freedom under electronic bracelet in April 2013, date on which according to the terms of the law, he became releasable. The same year, the sentence enforcement court (TAP) was to rule on Marc Dutroux’s request for parole but rejected it. A decision justified by “the lack of prospect of reintegration” but also the lack of accommodation for his release. The friend who had first offered to house the killer and pedophile had finally changed his mind, therefore the two conditions sine qua non for parole were not met. The possibility of a recurrence had also motivated the decision of the TAP, the experts had in particular considered the risk significant. An opinion shared by the mother of Marc Dutroux according to his statements to the press taken up by The Parisian “Marc is not ready to be released because he always wants to blame others for his actions. I’m sure he’ll do it again. He has no sense of reality. He’s a repeat offender. “
In October 2019, Marc Dutroux had asked to be assessed again by psychiatrists for a new request for release. For the process, the killer had also sent a letter to the parents of his victims, the document had aroused the deep anger of the families. The prisoner’s project had been discouraged by this bad publicity as well as by a 2020 expert report which explained that Marc Dutroux was still a psychopath and a certain danger to society.
Who are the victims of Marc Dutroux?
The Charleroi monster killed several of its victims. The bodies of Julie Lejeune, aged 8 and a half, and Melissa Russo, 9, were discovered four days after her arrest at her residence in Sars-la-Buissière on August 17, 1996. A few days later, two new bodies are exhumed. They are those of An Marchal and Eefje Lambrechts, aged 17 and 19. Marc Dutroux is found guilty of having killed them. Alongside them, the investigators also find the body of Bernard Weinstein, a former accomplice of Marc Dutroux, whom he also murdered. Finally, two girls are found alive, sequestered in the man’s house: Sabine Dardenne, 12, and Laetitia Delhez, 14. After being abducted, the two girls were raped by Marc Dutroux. Their testimonies notably made it possible to understand the role of Michelle Martin, who was accused of having left Julie and Melissa to starve to death when her husband had been imprisoned.
What is the Marc Dutroux case?
Marc Dutroux and his second wife, Michelle Martin, raged for more than ten years between the end of the 1980s and 1996. The first arrest of the pedophile took place in 1986 for the kidnapping, forcible confinement and rape of five girls and teenagers but the couple will not be condemned until 1989 for what can be considered as the first act of the Dutroux affair. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison when his wife was sentenced to 5 years in prison for complicity in the rape of minors. But neither of them will go to the end of the sentence, Michelle Martin released from prison after only two years of detention and Marc Dutroux and released in 1992.
Free and married during their stay in prison, the two lovers were arrested again in 1996 while a series of kidnappings had been observed since June 1995 in Belgium. Marc Dutroux was then 39 years old and his wife 36 years old. After two days in police custody, the confessions of the serial killer make it possible to find two young girls immured alive in the cellar of the couple’s house in Marcinelle, Laetitia Delhez and Sabine Dardenne. Later, the bodies of four other victims are found in other houses: Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, who died of starvation in Marc Dutroux’s main residence in Sars-La-Buissière and the remains of two Flemish teenagers An Marchal and Eefje Lambrechts in a third home.
The trial of the Dutroux affair begins on March 1, 2004, while Marc Dutroux and his accomplices, Michelle Martin, who divorced the killer a year earlier, and Michel Lelièvre are in detention. After several weeks of trial and deliberation, the killer and rapist was sentenced to life imprisonment, Michelle Martin to 30 years in prison and Michel Lelièvre to 25 years.