DUTROUX : THE MISSING PIECES, PART I

When researching the Dutroux case, you're left with more questions than you are with answers. This simple observation has led me to look deeper into it, diving in to the unknown.

Genesis

Ever since I’ve started researching the Dutroux affair, one constant has stayed with me throughout my readings and my own writing. This case is a symptom of a larger sickness that’s plagueing Belgium – political and financial corruption, sexual blackmail, massive criminal networks, prostitution, pedophilia, and CSAM¹ rings – all happening right here, in NATO’s heart, and Europe’s capital. The Belgian state has effectively adopted the cover-up of the Dutroux & Nihoul network as the objective truth, the one true reality of the Dutroux affair – there was no network of any kind, he was kidnapping and killing these girls all alone (except for the help of his wife or an accomplice), for his own pleasure. He’s the Monster of Belgium. The boogie man from Charleroi. Now anyone who’s ever spent more than 5 minutes looking up Dutroux understands that you have to be completely oblivious to not at least notice there was a bigger operation of human trafficking and child trafficking happening around Marc Dutroux and Michel Nihoul, but also other people they were affiliated with. And this is what has been obsessing me and staying with me all along : The truth is that there’s multiple aspects to this case. There’s not just one answer that solves it all. There’s what we know of it, there’s what we suppose, and there’s what we don’t know.

What we know of Marc Dutroux and the various criminal networks he was involved with throughout his life makes up most of the mainstream talk around the Dutroux case. It’s what’d you hear if you turned on any true crime podcast or googled “Dutroux” and read the Wikipedia page of the case. What we suppose makes for the theories surrounding him and the people around him, like Michel Nihoul. For example, you’ve got the creation and distribution of CSAM, their links to prostitution and pedophile abuse networks, as well as the various trafficking operations Marc Dutroux was involved with, like vehicle trafficking, as well as the fact that he most likely was a police informant, like Michel Nihoul². This is all documented, but we can’t know exactly to which extent Dutroux and others were involved. And then, there’s what we don’t know. And I’m not only talking about the questions that are left unanswered, like most of them are if you know anything this case, but I’m referring to the shadows of the Dutroux affair. Not even the smaller details, but rather something else completely, the unknown, the missing pieces. This is what I’m after.

Portrait of a monster

When arrested in August of 1996, Dutroux slowly and carefully revealed to the police forces what he knew of those kidnapping cases he was being questioned on. At this point, the investigators were still only looking for Laetitia Delhez officially, and they were trying to make him admit to other kidnappings. He eventually tried to make himself the man in charge when he said to the cops working him “I’m gonna give you two girls”, referring to Sabine Daerdenne and Laetitia Delhez. Dutroux played that game for a few days, giving hints, and every time he would point them towards another dead girl, it would be only indications, barely admitting to being responsible for their disappearance, let alone their death. This is typical behavior from Marc Dutroux, as he’s a known narcissist, a diagnosed sociopath, and he has a major victim complex. He’s always insinuating that he somehow had his hands tied and couldn’t do anything to stop what happened, and that all those deaths simply were the result of society and how he had been treated. He was made this way by Belgium and its justice system, they had slowly shaped him to become this monster. Here’s what the man had to say about himself when asked “Why did you do this ?” :

I wanted to create my own little world. This idea came to me after I got out of prison. I could no longer live in society as it is. It's other people's fault that I became like this. I had the choice between owning a girl or committing suicide (...). I confessed and I showed you their hiding place because I didn't want the girls to suffer.³

Dutroux’s mugshot on the day of his arrest, August 13th 1996

The truth is that Dutroux is a result of his environment, but despite his rough upbringing, Dutroux made his own name as a monster for himself, and that when confronted with what he did, he would either flat out deny or act as victim even when he’s the direct perpetrator. This is of course a reaction you’d expect from a narcissist sociopath. But this split between his actions and his detachment from seeing himself as the one responsible for them could also be explained by the fact Dutroux was working for someone else - he was just handling these girls, the real people responsible for it ? They’re his bosses, whoever he was working for, whoever he was delivering them to. This is a sentiment echoed by Dutroux to his victims when he would paint himself as the “good guy”, saying the people in charge were the “bad guys”, and that he was doing these girls a favor by keeping them with him, in his dungeon, and not giving them out to the bad guys who would surely kill them. And so he would only bring up girls to the cops after they were mentioned to him, and eventually, out of pride, he’ll say he knows what happened to them, vaguely. But how can you trust Marc Dutroux to come forward and reveal all the crimes that he has committed ? That’s the main question that led me to writing this, and it also made me want to go deeper on that thought and see if anything could be dug up. And beyond what could be linking Dutroux to the crimes I found while doing research, bringing up cold cases would also help paint a larger picture of what was happening in Belgium throughout the 80s and the 90s.

In 1989, after kidnapping and raping multiple young girls, Dutroux was arrested and a trial was held for the five girls who came forward, but only those. It is documented from victims’s testimonies that Dutroux was involved with the abuse of at least nine girls during the 80s time period⁴. As for the total of victims for the time period between Dutroux’s release from prison in 1992 until his arrest in 1996, the only account we have for that is the very flawed initial police investigation and Dutroux’s word for it – 6 girls, who all went missing after being kidnapped by Dutroux and/or his accomplices, 4 of them (Julie, Mélissa, An, Eefje) that then later were found dead on his and Bernard Weinstein’s properties, with the other two girls (Sabine and Laetitia) being found alive and saved. But let’s not forget the 3 Slovakian girls that Dutroux abused in 1995 as well : Henrietta, Eva and Yancka. He used a camcorder to record their abuse and was convicted of it in his trial⁵.

The reality is that missing children cases were reaching records numbers in Belgium in the early 90s⁶, and it’s not only until the disapperances of Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo in 1995 that these cases started gaining media attention. Before there was any Dutroux affair, there was a missing children panic happening. Who was kidnapping these children ? Were all of them found ? Could any of them have also been kidnapped by Marc Dutroux ? What about one of his accomplices ? Were there any other notorious pedophiles operating at the same time in Belgium or in nearby countries ? That is what I’m going to look into, and in doing so, I will try to find answers, at least a lead that can explain what was happening exactly.

A collage made from various pictures of dead and missing children in Belgium, 2004

The missing children panic

There’s a lot of things I’d like to develop in what I’m calling the “missing pieces” of the Dutroux case but for this first entry, I want to focus mostly on the late 80s and the early 90s in Belgium and the rise in missing children cases. Some of these cases were even attributed to Marc Dutroux before he was dimissed because they found out who did it or because there wasn’t enough evidence. In 2002, as Michel Bourlet, the prosecutor in charge of the Dutroux affair, was gearing up for the trial, he added 11 additional counts to Dutroux and his gang’s charges : 11 attempted kidnappings, people that came forward after 1996 and accused Dutroux⁷. They were later all dismissed because of the lack of evidence, but it goes to show that this “panic” as some described it, wasn’t simply a panic, many missing children cases went cold or were never fully explained, and some of these kids were lucky enough to escape their kidnappers before being taken away. And so after Dutroux happened, a large numbers of people decided to come forward and try to get justice. It’s entirely possible they weren’t kidnapped by Dutroux, and you’re bound to have fake stories popping up from time to time, but it also goes to show that maybe Dutroux was only a cog in a larger system, that Belgium had been underlooking it’s missing children cases, and that something had to be done to bring light to these cases and change the way they were treated by the cops, so easily dismissed. The main story I want to talk about today gets exactly at that.

In November of 1995, a young girl named Caroline from Obaix, near Charleroi, is kidnapped by a man in a vehicle, and then left for dead with her throat cut after being abused. She ended up surviving. The first police man on the crime scene, a man named Dethuin, is immediately remembered of a case he was dealing with in 1985⁸. He goes on to say in his report :

This is how Dutroux works.

He was immediately considered a possible suspect. This is indeed the Dutroux Modus Operandi : for most of his kidnappings in the 80s, he would pick up girls with his van, drug them, either abuse them directly or bring them back to his house, and then drop them off. This is what led to his first arrest in 1986. But the investigation starts to diverge from Dutroux after being passed around and then falling in the lap of “super cop” Georges Zicot of the judiciary police. For those who aren’t familiar, Zicot was THE cop working on car trafficking in Charleroi, and he had multiple informants who were part of the Courcelles Gang⁹ formed around Dutroux, including Gérard Pinon, the man who was hosting Dutroux’s accomplice, Bernard Weinstein. Gérard Pinon was a crooked car dealer who owned more than 20 garages, hangars, properties all over Charleroi¹⁰. Dutroux himself could very well have been an informant for Zicot, who was accused of working with him and protecting him, and was even arrested for 35 days before Belgian justice cleaned up the mess. More about that later. The “protecting Dutroux” accusation came in part from of his unwillingness to investigate any clue that would lead to Dutroux in Caroline’s case.

Furthermore, here in the timeline of the Dutroux affair, we’re at the end of November 1995. Julie and Mélissa would have been alive and kept in Dutroux’s dungeon in Marcinelle. René Michaux, the gendarme who was in charge of Operation Othello (a surveillance operation led in secret and solely by the gendarmerie of Charleroi who were trying to catch Dutroux “in the act”) had been looking for a way to get into Dutroux’s house for weeks now. Later on, when he was interrogated by Belgium’s Permanent Control Committee of the Police Forces (“Comité P” for short, basically the police’s police) about that time period, here’s what Michaux had to say :

If I had known that Dutroux was a potential suspect in the events in Obaix (Caroline’s kidnapping and attempted murder), there would have been grounds to look for evidence in the suspect’s home, for sleeping pills, a knife, or more, and so to draw up a police report and request search warrants.¹¹

Gendarme René Michaux explaining himself in front of the Dutroux parliamentary investigation in 1997

The Comité P was shocked to hear that coming from Michaux’s mouth. Michaux was doing everything he could to find a way to request a search warrant, and yet, didn’t get in contact with Charleroi’s judiciary police when Dutroux’s name immediately came up in Caroline’s investigation. And the judiciary police of course didn’t get in touch with him, because the gendarmerie was riding solo and in total secret on Operation Othello. You’d think this guy was doing it on purpose at this point. Asking the country’s other police services about the man you’re putting under surveillance and looking for any way to get inside his house seems logical and very simple. And yet…

As a reminder, René Michaux would be the man who’d go on to lead multiple house searches on Dutroux’s properties, including the sadly infamous December 13th 1995 search, where Michaux hears voices in front of Julie and Mélissa’s cage hidden behind the wall in Dutroux’s basement, saying “shut up” to his colleagues out loud, making the girls stop talking, only to then dismiss the voices as coming “from kids playing outside” (on a freezing morning when most children are at school…). Not to mention they know they’re looking for young girls and an hidden cage of sorts according to informant tips, and yet, Michaux doesn’t even knock on the walls trying to locate it, nor does he tries to call for someone or bring a camera with him. To top it all, this house search was led by a search warrant that was “flipped” from the judiciary police’s arrest of Marc Dutroux on December 6th (the “truck theft” story¹²), Michaux having forced the investigating judge to give it to the gendarmerie instead of the judiciary police, because they were in charge of Othello¹³. Same thing he could have done a month earlier when Caroline’s kidnapping happened, if Zicot requested a search warrant based on Dutroux being a suspect.

When Michel Bourlet, who’s as I stated previously the prosecutor in charge of the Dutroux affair, learned about the Obaix fiasco, here’s what he had to say to Belgium’s attorney general Eliane Likendaele in October of 1996 :

Beyond the elements included in the 6th of September 1996 report by my colleague from Charleroi, Mr. Marchandise, I can inform you that my astonishment regarding the handling of this case was also based on the fact that a DNA analysis had been carried out on two suspects [of Caroline’s kidnapping] who were later released, and not on Dutroux. However, […] Mr. Dutroux stated that he had agreed to have hair samples taken from him for such an analysis. It should be noted that, during the investigation entrusted to the "P" Committee by my colleague from Charleroi […], the investigators from the "P" Committee found his hair sample in the office of the Judiciary Police officer in charge of the investigation. I therefore deduce that this sample was never submitted to the expert appointed by the investigating judge. Then, recently, the Neufchâteau investigators in charge of the Dutroux case got their hands on a Ford Fiesta vehicle in which, according to my colleague from Charleroi, hairs belonging to the victim of the attack on 22 November 1995 in Obaix were found. Finally, I would add that the statements of Mrs Martin [Dutroux’s wife] recently received by the Arlon Judiciary Police show that on the day of the assault, Dutroux was in Obaix. I therefore share the opinion of my colleague from Charleroi and I am surprised by the manner in which this case was handled, both by the police and the courts, ultimately resulting in a dismissal, when clearly not all the necessary duties had been carried out.¹⁴

Let’s stop here for a second before continuing on with Bourlet. Here, he lays down important points beyond the simple “police service wars” fuckup that Michaux seemed to be invoking :

• At this point, Dutroux’s DNA had never been analyzed in regards to Caroline’s case. His hair sample was found in the office of the cop leading the investigation, just waiting to be used for the past year. Who’s the cop leading the investigation ? Georges Zicot, the handler of the Courcelles gang. Is he trying to protect Dutroux or someone else ?

• A Ford Fiesta was used to kidnap Caroline, and inside, hairs belonging to her were found. Bourlet points this out because one of the cars used by members of the Courcelles gang (Michel Lelièvre, Bernard Weinstein, Pierre Rochow, either or all depending on who you ask) was a Ford Fiesta, and many witnesses linked that same Ford Fiesta to Julie and Mélissa’s kidnapping¹⁵, possibly being the vehicle that was used for it.

• And then finally, Dutroux’s wife places him in Obaix the day of the assault against Caroline. Dutroux was pretty familiar with Obaix and for a good reason : that’s where he grew up. His parents moved there to raise him after coming back from then Belgian Congo, today’s Burundi. Obaix is also the place where Dutroux commits his first kidnapping in 1985, with his then accomplice Jean Van Peteghem¹⁶.

Michel Bourlet goes on :

[…] I can now state that the combination within the same public prosecutor's office of the Othello report, the "kidnapping” file [truck theft story] and the Obaix assault file was bound to lead to an investigation against Dutroux, with a search of his home in Marcinelle. This seems to me all the more dramatic since, in the week preceding Weinstein's death, according to Dutroux's own statements […], Weinstein was held captive in the hidden cage located in Dutroux's basement, with Julie and Mélissa locked in a room upstairs. If the search had taken place between November 22, 1995, the date of the Obaix assault, and November 25, 1995, the approximate date of Weinstein's death, it would inevitably have led investigators to discover the presence of Julie and Mélissa alive upstairs. The shortcomings of the investigation are so serious that I inevitably come to wonder whether they can be explained solely by negligence or whether Dutroux benefited from protection, both from the police and the courts.

Mr. Bourlet doesn’t mince his words here and gets right to the point : they had everything they needed to search Dutroux’s house in November 1995 and save Julie and Mélissa, whether or not he was responsible for the assault against Caroline. Instead, the fuckup is so enormous that Bourlet legit wonders if Dutroux isn’t being protected by magistrates and the police services, hinting at Zicot. Bourlet had been the one who presented Zicot as “Dutroux’s protector” right when the investigation started¹⁷. Bourlet expands on that :

Concerning police protection, investigations are underway […]. These investigations are being entrusted to Committee "P", with regards to Mr. Michaux of the gendarmerie and […] Mr. Zicot of the Charleroi judiciary police. As for court protections, I have no information to give you, and I do not have the authority to investigate magistrates, but I do wonder if some of them might be in possession of certain cars advantageously acquired through Mr. Zicot. I could hardly specify - I am merely wondering - and I cannot find a reasonable explanation for the shortcomings already noted in the instruction relating to the Obaix affair, which are essentially the work of magistrates.

End of quote. Again, here Bourlet is directly attacking Zicot, saying he might have corrupted magistrates through car business… It wouldn’t be a first for him.

Good cop/Bad cop

When Georges Zicot was arrested during the first weeks of the Dutroux investigation in 1996, it’s precisely because of the truck theft story mentioned earlier and the following arrangement with Gérard Pinon to cash in on that sweet insurance money. The implication being that since he’s so directly involved in the Courcelles gang, he must be familiar with Dutroux, who himself is living partly thanks to his own car trafficking, everything looping back together. Dutroux had a backyard full of more than a dozen old cars and car pieces just sitting there at Sars-la-Buissière¹⁸. And he of course knew directly Gérard Pinon, Weinstein’s friend and landlord as well as Zicot’s informant.

Georges Zicot during his arrest (La Nouvelle Gazette)

There were massive car theft and trafficking rings operating in and near Charleroi at the time, and while Georges Zicot was the golden boy to some, for others, he was known as a corrupt and crooked policeman. Especially over Belgium’s eastern border, where German police forces said that he was running an international car theft ring¹⁹.

We simply never managed to approach several suspects in this car trafficking ring whose hub was in Charleroi.

This is what a spokesperson of the Cologne police had to say after Zicot refused to help them arrest their suspects unless they brought in a rogatory commission. The Germans were after a gang of thieves who stole BMWs in Cologne and then moved them to Belgium. Everything pointed towards Charleroi but the non-cooperation from Zicot made them raise their eyebrows, rightfully.

To get back to what Bourlet was insinuating, if such global car theft operations were covered up by Zicot, you’d think this guy would have the means to make magistrates look the other way when they stumble upon something he doesn’t want them to look into. And this is where a story about Mons’s attorney general (who was effectively also covering Charleroi, Zicot’s playground), Georges Demanet, comes to play.

The double car

Georges Demanet’s son Philippe is an automotive expert for prosecutor offices. He bought a rare brand new Porsche model at a car shop named Adam Auto Service, ran by Bernard Adam, the son of a police officer from Charleroi. Small world. It was later established that the car had been used for the past 2 years when it was bought “brand new” and that Philippe Demanet, an expert in his own right, seemingly didn’t (or didn’t want to) notice it. It could have easily been told from the chassis number. Later on, in 1993, while in vacation in Spain, Philippe declares his Porsche as stolen to his insurance company. Philippe cashes in on the money and later buys another brand new Porsche, the same model. With the same license plate. Cops notice it immediately when his garage is searched in 1994 and he’s accused of faking the theft of the car to get the insurance money. His explanation is that it’s not the same car, it’s just the same model, and he made a double of his personalized licensed plate that he was using on his first car when it got “stolen”, and he now had the original plates on. Which is illegal - can’t sport a copy of a license plate, but apparently that didn’t cause him any problems. Here’s where the even funnier stuff gets in : Georges Zicot was the cop in charge of the investigation into that Porsche in 1993²⁰.

The story of the son of a magistrate driving around a stolen Porsche after doing insurance fraud gets all over the news in September of 1996. Georges Demanet defends his son in Belgian newspapers before stepping down. He takes a two months leave before being retired early by Belgium’s Minister of Justice, Stefaan De Clerk. Turns out the Porsche was already “stolen” a first time in 1993 when Demanet got his hands on it, stolen from a guy named Yvo Van Onsem, who worked closely in transportation with Jan De Clerk, a parent of the Minister of Justice²¹. Small world, eh? Philippe Demanet also didn’t do much thinking after reporting his car as stolen in Spain, because a few days later, he’s flashed by a speed monitoring radar in Italy driving his Porsche, proving he was lying. He later brought it back to Belgium where he changed the chassis number in some shed in Charleroi. Demanet was charged in 1996 and awaiting trial.

And so now, after this tangent, Bourlet’s remarks start to cohere in a way that’s practically impossible to ignore : Georges Zicot, a corrupt cop in charge of car trafficking related cases in Charleroi, doing murky car business with magistrates, possibly the protector of Dutroux’s little gang, ends up with leading the investigation on a case that fits the Dutroux Modus Operandi, and yet, nothing is done about it, and Dutroux is not being considered as a serious suspect. There’s one more troubling coincidence that alerted me when I was reading about that Porsche story.

On March 24th 1995, upon finding out what his son had done in Spain and Italy, Georges Demanet called for a meeting with the Gendarmerie’s boss (Willy Deridder), Belgium’s national judge (André Vandoren) and a lawyer. The whole purpose of this meeting was to try and find a friendly way to resolve this story. Demanet is told there’s a separate investigation into stolen cars being set up in Brussels, and that he has to give out all his files. Panicking, he alerts his son, and tells him that he better get rid of that damned Porsche. Which he does. By selling it to a guy named Jean-Pol Taminiau who buys it for low money. Taminiau, an orbiter of the Courcelles gang, decides to store that Porsche inside one of… Gérard Pinon’s garage units²². The key to one of these units, unit 21, was found in Taminiau’s belongings. Taminiau was waiting on a guy called Thierry De Haan from Demanet’s insurance company “La Royale Belge” to have the paperworks ready to drive his new car. But De Haan now knows that this car is hot, and all the protections around it are basically gone. Taminiau was getting impatient, and during that time period, he’s always heard complaining and cursing on the phone about a “goddamn Porsche” by his family and friends. On April 2 1995, Taminiau is last seen at a bar (where he worked as a bouncer) at 4am, leaving with a gun in his belt. He’s never seen again.

On August 13th 1996, the day of Dutroux’s arrest, a fisherman picks up an human foot in the Bruxelles-Charleroi canal. DNA analysis establishes that it belongs to Jean-Pol Taminiau. His mother, grieving him but like everyone else, still turning on TV to watch the news about the latest developments of the Dutroux affair, recognizes Michel Lelièvre and Michaël Diakostavrianos after their arrest was shown on TV - Taminiau would talk about them because they worked at a friend’s garage. That friend is Daniel P. (name redacted). Daniel P. admits to having known Marc Dutroux, Michel Lelièvre, Michaël Diakostavrianos, Bernard Weinstein, Michelle Martin, Bruno Tagliaferro, and more²³. Here we are with the Courcelles gang again. Who possibly could have wanted to kill Taminiau? Did the fact that he was orbiting the shady Dutroux related underworld make him too much of a liability for Demanet father and son? For Zicot ? There’s only 9 days in between the “friendly” meeting between Georges Demanet and officials and Taminiau’s death… Whoever murdered him was never found.

Dead ends

Philippe Demanet and Bernard Adam were finally judged for the insurance fraud in 2003. After being postponed multiple times, the trial declared them guilty, but they weren’t given any sentence since “they couldn’t have been judged within a reasonable period of time”. It’s not every day you see a trial being delayed for 10 years. Demanet moved to Madagascar after the sentencing.

There never was any trial for Jean-Pol Taminiau’s murder. The rest of his body was never found. Experts pointed to his ex girlfriend Nadège Renard and her new boyfriend Alexandre Varga as possible culprits, but their guilt could never be established as there was no body, no DNA match, and not even really any motive behind the murder. The case was given up on in 2011 after both Nadège and Alexandre died (a car accident and a suicide)²⁴.

Georges Zicot had to wait until 2005 and the “Dutroux & car trafficking” trial that was differentiated from the larger Dutroux trial that started in 2004 to be put in front of a judge. A judge who immediately dismissed the claims made by Michel Bourlet as mere rumors. All the bribing and forgery charges against Zicot were dropped. He was cleared of any links with the Courcelles gang and Marc Dutroux²⁵ as well of any wrongdoings. Zicot later filed a lawsuit against the Belgian state for 100.000 euros of “damages and interests”, covering a time period of 6 years of expenses where he was moved to Brussels following the accusations against him. He won that lawsuit and curiously, the decision was published in the Kingdom of Belgium’s official newspaper, the “Moniteur Belge”²⁶, an extremely rare honor. And so as Zicot was officially innocent in the eyes of Belgian justice, no further investigations were lead into his Charleroi days. He’s now retired and often shares conspiracy videos about climate change, Russia, and France’s Emmanuel Macron on his public Facebook profile.

Who assaulted Caroline ?

This the frustrating thing when researching this case, you think you’re onto someone who could be the missing link on the wider web network of people involved, only for them to be completely dismissed by Belgian officials and Belgium’s justice system. Even Michel Bourlet’s investigations are not enough. In my opinion, Georges Zicot was involved with Marc Dutroux’s underworld, maybe without realizing Dutroux was trafficking young girls as well as trafficking cars. He’s essential to the car trafficking aspect of Dutroux’s activities. Him not realizing Dutroux was kidnapping young girls doesn’t mean that Zicot was protecting Dutroux directly, but rather that he had to cover his own ass because if anyone went digging deeper into his activities, they’d see he had been hanging around the Courcelles gang for a while, and who knows, maybe had Dutroux as an informant or might even have indirectly financed some of his child trafficking operations.

To get back to the case that made me talk about Georges Zicot in the first place, Caroline’s kidnapping and murder attempt was never solved and ended up a cold case. Marc Dutroux and Bernard Weinstein’s DNA were eventually tested and they didn’t match the DNA from the case files²⁷. Caroline was presented pictures of Dutroux and didn’t recognize him as the man who assaulted her.

But Jean-Pierre Verduyckt, a gendarme assigned at the Dutroux investigation cell in Neufchâteau, brought up Caroline’s case during Dutroux’s trial in 2004. He explained that Dutroux was changing his appearance quite frequently, including right after the kidnapping in Obaix. He also mentioned a witness who described someone who shared Dutroux’s figure²⁸. But trying to prove guilt almost a decade later with no evidence is impossible. Did Dutroux kidnap and attempt to Murder Caroline that day of November 1995 ? We don’t know. I don’t know. Evidence says no. No DNA match would theoretically mean it’s not Dutroux or Weinstein, but it’s unclear where that sample came from exactly. The tests came after a year’s wait too. Did someone tinker with the DNA samples ? Who knows. I think it’s a question worth asking at least, and at the risk of sounding too much like a conspiracy theorist, this is something that I wouldn’t put past Charleroi’s police services. There’s absolutely no proof of that though. What if someone in Dutroux’s circles or even a collaborator of his like Lelièvre, took off on his own and decided to assault a girl the same way Dutroux did it ? Or tried to kidnap her and bring her back to him, only to panick, and try to kill her instead ? Same thing : We can speculate all we want, but the truth is, we’ll never know.

I just think it makes absolutely no sense for him to be dismissed that early in the investigation by one of Charleroi’s notoriously crooked cops only for this case to end up the way it does, a cold case. And then there’s the fact that no matter what, if the police services’ job had been done properly, René Michaux of the gendarmerie would have gotten his house search warrant and he would have found Julie and Mélissa alive. That’s a kick to the gut.

In the Ardennes woods…

Marc Dutroux isn’t the only pedophile and criminal who’s active in the Charleroi region at that time, I think it’s also entirely possible that Caroline was abused by someone else. As a matter of fact, another notorious pedophile from France, Michel Fourniret²⁹, was considered a possible suspect upon his arrest in 2004³⁰. The Charleroi police services transferred their files to the Dinant cell in charge of Fourniret’s case but nothing came out of it. This is not the first nor the last time Dutroux and Fourniret would cross paths, as a long believed victim of Dutroux, the young Elizabeth Brichet, would later be found out to be a victim of Fourniret. There even was a time when the two of them working together was thought of as a possibility, but again, no evidence proving it was ever found³¹. Earlier this month (it’s April of 2025 as I’m writing this), Elizabeth’s mom, Marie Noelle Bouzet, passed away. She was the instigator of the White March³² that took place in Brussels on October 20th 1996, an event that showed how much the Belgians truly cared about wanting to find out the truth about the Dutroux affair. I think her lifework of seeking the truth about what happened to her daughter - who went missing in 1989 and whose body was found in 2004, that’s 15 years (!) - and to other missing children was essential and inspiring. May she rest in peace. As for Fourniret, we’ll eventually get to him and his crimes through this series, or maybe a separate one. Keep your eyes peeled.

The original missing poster of Elizabeth Brichet, 1989

Finally, I wanna end this with another interesting coincidence. As I was saying, the former cop Jean-Pierre Verduyckt spoke up about Caroline’s case at the Dutroux trial. She’s not the only one he brought up. He also mentions Virginie Pinon, Gérard Pinon’s daugther. Him, again. At the end of August 1996, the young girl went to the police with her mother and her sister’s boyfriend. They were there to report a kidnapping attempt that happened in the summer of 1994 when Virginie was 13. Here’s part of her testimony to Charleroi’s police :

My father lives in Lodelinsart. […] Late in the afternoon, I was standing in front of a store entrance at the end of the driveway leading to my father’s house. Several times, I saw a gray car drive by in a short time. […] At one point, the car stopped right next to me. I got scared and ran off down the driveway towards my father’s house. The driver of the gray car followed me, also running. While running, I called for help from my sister’s boyfriend, Patrice Fouargé, who was at home. He came out of the house and called out the man who was following me, asking him what he was doing. […] The stranger replied “Nothing… I’m just looking around” and then he got in his car and drove off. I was nevertheless able to see the individual who was chasing me. A complaint was filed at the time. In fact, it was my father's statement that the police took, even though my father was not present at the time of the incident. […] Today, I clearly felt I recognized the man who had chased me two years ago. It was Marc Dutroux.³³

Virginie says she recognized Dutroux from pics taken in 1994 and published in a then recent number of the French sensationalist magazine Le Nouveau Détective³⁴ in 1996. The cop who received Virginie’s declaration that day simply didn’t take her seriously, writing it down in his notebook instead of writing a proper police report, despite her sister’s boyfriend also saying that the man he saw running after Virginie looked a lot like Dutroux. Nobody believed Virginie Pinon and the case simply died off… Until a few years later when investigators dived into the “car trafficking” aspect of the Dutroux case and a drawing was found during a search of Gérard Pinon’s house. It was a drawing made by Virginie in 1995. The drawing depicts a young girl who is chained and tied up to a chair with her pants down. Virginie never complained about abuse from her family. But her dad, Gérard Pinon, did know Dutroux and Weinstein well. Is it possible that she saw something she shouldn’t have ? Or simply heard about it. Nobody knows what the drawing meant exactly (even though I’d say it’s pretty clear) and it was impossible to ask Virginie because she died of cystic fibrosis in 1997, at only 17 years old. The drawing was found after her death.

This brings to an end the first part of this written series. Caroline and Virginie’s stories are only a few out of the many testimonies surrounding the Dutroux affair who never made it into the mainstream. Shining a light on these hopefully helps to realize that the Dutroux affair was the result of something larger and darker operating in the shadows of Belgium at that time period. Dutroux himself didn’t work alone, he had his little gang, that’s for sure, and so if there’s a network of people helping him out and there’s also others he’s working for, there might also be others just like him, running operations, abusing, kidnapping girls just like he does. And that’s terrifying to think about.

A very “bizaar” institute

Next time in The Missing Pieces, I want to bring up the story of a child prostitution network who was operating in Belgium’s capital, Brussels, and who could possibly be related to big players of the Dutroux affair, like Michel Nihoul, but also a notorious Belgian gangster of the 80s named as a suspect in the Brabant Killers case, Patrick Haemers. It’s a story I’ve rarely seen talks about online, if any at all. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and as always, feel free to ask questions or adress remarks.

IRC_NIC

All books and articles excerpts translated by myself.

1. Child Sexual Abuse Material, or CSAM for short. Imagery or videos.

2. Michel Nihoul was the informant of a gendarme from Dinant, Gérard Vanesse. Phone numbers of different police services like Charleroi and Brussels were found in his personal notebooks. Private calls were traced back to his office as well. See René-Philippe Dawant. (1997) Marc Dutroux. Le dossier, Bruxelles : Éditions Luc Pire, p. 97.

3. Interrogation of Marc Dutroux, Gendarmerie of Marche-en-Famenne, August 15th 1996, police report 100.204 L107.

4. Girls kidnapped and/or abused by Dutroux from 1979 to 1985 :

Flora (58, in Hainte-Saint-Pierre), Sidonie (16, in Charleroi), Joelle (18, in Obaix), two unnamed young girls (in Morlanwelz, no complaint filed), Isabelle (16, Valenciennes, France), unknown ice skater (of unknown age, in Valenciennes, France), unknown hitchiker (in Marseillan,France), unnamed girl (11, in Gilly), Céline (19), unknown girl and unknown hitchiker (unknown ages, in Viesville, no complaint filed), Deborah (18), Odette (15).

A total of 14. These names are compiled from the 1985 police investigation as well as declarations by Michelle Martin, Dutroux’s wife, and Jean Van Peteghem, Dutroux’s accomplice at the time. Dutroux won't be accused of raping his French victims in his 2004 trial as they will never be identified. See this Le Parisien online article as well as Nicolas Jean and Lavachery Frédéric. (2001) Dossier Pédophilie. Le scandale de l’affaire Dutroux, Paris : Flammarion, pp. 24-31 and René-Philippe Dawant. (1997) Marc Dutroux. Le dossier, Bruxelles : Éditions Luc Pire, pp. 40-50.

5. After Dutroux got out of jail in 1992, he starts going to Slovakia with Michel Lelièvre for car parts trafficking as well as human trafficking. There were talks in between Dutroux, Lelièvre, and Michel Nihoul of establishing a child prostitution network with Slovakian girls brought to Belgium. In 1994, while on a trip there, he gains the trust of the Mackova family (possibly bribes them ?) and brings their daughters Eva and Yancka back to Belgium, for them to have a “vacation”. He drugs them, abuses them, and records it on his Sony HI8 camcorder. The kids don’t report anything to their family because they can’t remember. He does the same to another girl, Henrietta, this time in Slovakia. All three recorded abuses were found on tapes in Dutroux’s Marcinelle house, as well as additional tapes of him having sex with his wife Michelle Martin, or him being a pervert and filming young girls at the beach. See M. Be. “Les films scandaleux”, La Dernière Heure, 24 March 2004.

6. In Brussels (Belgium’s capital) alone, 1300 minors were reported missing from 1991 to 1997, on a total of 3000 unresolved missing person cases. Aimé Bille, investigator on the X files case, got these official numbers from Brussels’s public prosecutor office. The numbers of other provinces of Belgium were incomplete or not given to him. See Douglas De Coninck, Annemie Bulté and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. (1999) Les dossiers X. Ce que la Belgique ne devait pas savoir sur l’affaire Dutroux, Bruxelles : Éditions EPO, p. 263.

7. Here’s the list of the 11 children who were reportedly almost kidnapped : Vanessa, Diana and two other unnamed girls in Grâce-Hollogne/Ougrée/Jupille (8, 9, 10, and 11 years old), Tiffany (3 years old, in Profondeville), Samantha (11, in Dave), Aurélie (9, in Gerpinnes), two unnamed girls (in Spy), Frédéric (13, in Spy), Sylvia (in Courtrai). This brings the total to 10 girls and a boy (Frédéric). See M. Pe, M. Ka, and Gil. “Affaire Dutroux: 18 enfants pour cibles” La Dernière Heure, 24 April 2002 and Annick Hovine. “Ougrée avant Grâce-Hollogne?” La Libre, March 3 2005.

8. Nicolas Jean and Lavachery Frédéric. (2001) Dossier Pédophilie. Le scandale de l’affaire Dutroux, Paris : Flammarion, p. 57.

9. The “Courcelles gang” is a term used by investigators to refer to the criminal milieu surrounding Dutroux. Courcelles is a small locality near Charleroi where most of these criminals operated. Names include but are not limited to : Marc Dutroux, Michel Lelièvre, Bernard Weinstein, Gérard Pinon, Claude Thirault, Michaël Diakostavrianos (aka “The Greek”), Pierre Rochow, Philippe Divers, Patrice Charbonnier, Bruno Tagliaferro. They were all involved in shady and illegal activities, mostly centered on car and car parts trafficking. Many of these guys were informants, including Claude Thirault and car trader Gérard Pinon (who was handled by Georges Zicot). See Douglas De Coninck, Annemie Bulté and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. (1999) Les dossiers X. Ce que la Belgique ne devait pas savoir sur l’affaire Dutroux, Bruxelles : Éditions EPO, p. 38.

10. Douglas De Coninck, Annemie Bulté and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. (1999) Les dossiers X. Ce que la Belgique ne devait pas savoir sur l’affaire Dutroux, Bruxelles : Éditions EPO, p. 38.

11. Michel Bouffioux. “Les inquiétudes de Michel Bourlet” Télé Moustique, 24 December 1996, pp. 26-27.

12. On November 4th 1995, Marc Dutroux and Bernard Weinstein held Philippe Divers, Pierre Rochow and Bénédicte Jadot (members of the Courcelles gang) captive in Weinstein’s house. Dutroux believed Divers and Rochow had sold a stolen truck that was staying on Gérard Pinon’s property behind his back, and he intended to interrogate them about it. The two were oblivious to the questions Dutroux asked them, because the truck was actually given up to judiciary police officer Georges Zicot by Gérard Pinon in a scheme to get insurance money from the company the truck was stolen from. That night, Dutroux and Weinstein later on brought Bénédicte Jadot, Rochow’s girlfriend, after stopping by his house to search for clues. Dutroux had chained them all and was keeping them drugged by giving them Rohypnol. Jadot didn’t swallow the drugs and then managed to escape, alerting the police, and making both Dutroux and Weinstein flee on foot while shots were fired after them. After a report to the police, they end up arresting Marc Dutroux on December 6th. An arrest that should have triggered the end of his conditional release but for some mysterious unexplained reason, he was allowed to be released in March of 1996 without it happening. Weinstein was never seen publicly after this. Dutroux killed him (he was buried in one of his yards under Julie and Mélissa) in between this event and his arrest a month later in December. For more, see Douglas De Coninck, Annemie Bulté and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. (1999) Les dossiers X. Ce que la Belgique ne devait pas savoir sur l’affaire Dutroux, Bruxelles : Éditions EPO, pp. 38-39.

13. Marc Toussaint and Xavier Rossey. (2010) Tous manipulés ? Avant, pendant, après l’affaire Dutroux, Bruxelles : Bernard Gilson, p. 188.

14. Michel Bouffioux. “Les inquiétudes de Michel Bourlet” Télé Moustique, 24 December 1996, pp. 26-27.

15. A witness described seeing a van and a red car stopped on the highway directly next to where Julie and Mélissa lived and were kidnapped, in Grâce-Hollogne. The witness, a doctor named Jean Paul Hardy, remembered part of the license plate number of the red car, and said it started with “either NKV or NVK”. It was later found out that Pierre Rochow owned a red Ford Fiesta that had the license plate number “NKV-947”. As I stated, different members of the Courcelles gang were said to be driving this car. See this online article by La Libre and this online article by La Dernière Heure. Interesting to note that to this day, Marc Dutroux hasn’t admitted to kidnapping Julie and Mélissa (unlike the 4 other girls of 1995-1996), insisting Lelièvre or Weinstein brought them to his house.

16. Douglas De Coninck, Annemie Bulté and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. (1999) Les dossiers X. Ce que la Belgique ne devait pas savoir sur l’affaire Dutroux, Bruxelles : Éditions EPO, p. 53.

17. See this online article by La Libre.

18. Michel Bertrand. “Les véhicules de Dutroux” La Dernière Heure, January 8 2004.

19. Philippe Mac Kay. “Georges Zicot et le « gang des BMW». Entrave à une enquête allemande en 94 ?” La Nouvelle Gazette, 29 August 1996, p.6.

20. Ibid.

21. Douglas De Coninck. (2004) 30 témoins morts, Wavre : Éditions Mols, pp. 35-43.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. F. D. “Le meurtre de Taminiau à jamais impuni” La Dernière Heure, May 19 2011.

25. BELGA. “Georges Zicot blanchi de tout lien avec Marc Dutroux” La Dernière Heure, May 30 2005.

26. “The Belgian official journal (French: Moniteur belge) is the official journal or gazette of the Kingdom of Belgium. It is where the official publication of laws, royal decrees, decrees, ordinances, and official notices are published. The publication is handled by the Federal Public Service Justice.” (Wikipedia)

27. La rédaction. “LES ANALYSES GENETIQUES DISCULPENT LE COMPLICE DE MARC DUTROUX, WEINSTEIN HORS CAUSE DANS L'AFFAIRE D'OBAIX” Le Soir, July 7 1997.

28. BELGA. “Un policier persuadé que Marc Dutroux n'a pas tout avoué” La Libre, 8 April 2004.

29. Michel Fourniret is a French serial killer and pedophile active between 1987 and 2003. He admitted to commiting 12 murders but has been suspected of many others, especially in Belgium, where he was active at the same time and near the same region as Marc Dutroux. He was also accused of providing a pedo network because he owned a prestigious property, a castle. The possibility that Dutroux and Fourniret knew each other was considered for a while but no evidence was ever found. See this La Libre online article and Fourniret’s Wikipedia page.

30. J-P. P. “Fourniret soupçonné pour un viol à Obaix” La Dernière Heure, July 10 2004.

31. R.P. “Fourniret serait sans lien avec Dutroux” La Libre, July 1 2004.

32. “The White March was a demonstration in Brussels on 20 October 1996 after serial killer and criminal Marc Dutroux was arrested. The demonstrators wanted better protection for children and a better functioning justice system that could investigate the Dutroux affair independently.” (Wikipedia)

33. Hearing of Virginie Pinon, Judiciary Police of Charleroi, August 29 1996, police report 328/3-1.

34. Douglas De Coninck. (2004) 30 témoins morts, Wavre : Éditions Mols, p. 141.