The Monster That Kept Little Girls In Dungeons | World’s Most Evil Killers | Real Crime

paper was light gold in medieval times i want tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong in the summer of 1996 the whole of belgium was in shock when two young girls who'd been kidnapped raped and tortured were rescued from a makeshift dungeon below a house in martinel as the weeks passed the bodies of four other young girls were found buried at properties linked to the same man some of them starved to death others were buried alive these are the some of the most horrendous crimes that that any criminologist will ever come across it was the beginning of a terrible nightmare for the entire nation it was such a huge thing no one could believe that such a person could exist in belgium it was unthinkable with the help of his wife michelle marten convicted pedophile marked a true's unhealthy desire for young girls had turned deadly the youngest victims who died in his homemade dungeon were just eight years old it is unimaginable cruelty and something that sets to true apart from some other serial killers mark de true the man dubbed the monster of marcinelle had earned his place as one of the world's most evil killers [Music] [Music] it was a case that sent shock waves across europe for a year during the mid mid-1990s a belgian killer had been abducting torturing and raping young girls keeping them chained inside his abandoned properties it wasn't until the summer of 1996 when two of the young girls were found alive inside a basement in marcinelle that the belgian public discovered the heinous crimes committed by mark de true behind the facade of this perfectly ordinary looking house lay a chamber of horrors down in that cellar it's alleged that detrue built a cage to keep his victims they were locked away like animals raped repeatedly and mentally tortured but this killer's story begins over 60 years ago born in excel on the 6th of november 1956 mark de true was the oldest of five children his parents were teachers and at one point emigrated to the belgian congo where they taught but when the crisis erupted in that country they brought dutrue back to belgium in 1960. his parents eventually separated in 1971 and 15 year old de true stayed with his mother we know that his mother was incredibly dominant his father was very aggressive so i think it was quite a hostile environment to grow up in and i think those attachments or lack of attachments with his parents in those early years did play quite a role in in the person he became trained as an electrician but often unemployed the true soon began a long criminal history including convictions for car theft mugging and drug dealing dutroux had a lot of contact with the police he stepped up from car theft into a rather grand form of car theft which involved shipping quite expensive luxury cars which he'd stolen in belgium out of the country into czechoslovakia and hungary the profit from his crimes led to the true owning seven properties in and around the city of xiaohua 45 miles south of brussels by 1983 26 year old de true was married with two children but he'd begun an affair with a school teacher called michelle marten the 23 year old would eventually become the true's partner in life and crime with whom he also had three more children the severity of detrue's crimes escalated from theft to sexual assault and in 1989 he was found guilty of the abduction and rape of five young girls one of whom was just 11 years old mark detroit was a predator who selected his prey very carefully he wanted to choose people who were easy to target in the first place easy to abduct but also easy to manipulate once he had them under his control so he would go for the most vulnerable victims that he could find that fulfilled his desires de true's now wife michelle was found to be complicit in the abductions and served two years of a five-year sentence the psychiatrists suggest that martine and dutroux husband and wife are a classic example of folly udder that one egged the other on and that therefore the sum of the two of them was even more dangerous than one alone i think when we look at the relationship between the true and his wife who was implicated in in many of his crimes it is quite interesting it's quite possible that that some people see her as just another one of his victims somebody else who was manipulated and and coerced by him and when we look at mark de true and his behavior he is incredibly charming at times and he can be very persuasive um so it wouldn't surprise me if he'd set out with the intention of recruiting somebody to to help him in his crimes and this is somebody who who fell for his charms and and went along with it the true was released on parole in 1992 after serving three years of a 13-year sentence having shown good behavior i find that extraordinary you can be convicted of the rape and abduction of five girls the youngest of which is eleven and you can walk out of jail after three years of the thirteen and a half year sentence george wakano a belgian investigative journalist has spent over ten years reporting on the de true manipulator he made everyone cry he made everybody believe that his family had abandoned him as an exemplary prisoner he came out very quickly the prisons are overpopulated and for authorities he was nothing more than a car thing by the summer of 1995 de true was a free man and living with his wife michelle in one of his shalwa homes in the suburb of marcinelle on the 24th of june two eight-year-old girls julie lejeune and melissa russo went missing from the town of graca launch just 55 miles east of shawwal as there was no ransom request no information about whether they had been kidnapped probably they had been abducted by a predator a pedophile who has in most cases killed his victims to silence them but who could imagine that a man was going to take away the girls to keep them alive locked alive inside a cellar nobody the true with the help of his wife michelle had abducted the two children and were keeping them prisoner inside a homemade dungeon du true constructed a cell beneath his house in charge which was seven feet long three feet wide and approximately five feet high hidden behind a very strong elaborate door which was then covered with concrete and was hidden in his basement he put these two eight-year-old girls lesion and russo into the cell and kept them there for the next three months as julie and melissa remain locked up into true's dungeon his sexual depravity was escalating and just two months later he would abduct two more girls but this time it would lead to murder on august the 23rd over a hundred miles away on the belgian coast two more girls disappeared best friends seventeen-year-old anne marchelle and nineteen-year-old effia lambrechts had gone missing while on a camping trip when the girls didn't return home their friends instantly alerted effia's father [Music] we immediately had the feeling that something was wrong because she was always open about things she always said where she was going and who she had seen she would never not tell anyone and just stay away that was not what effia would do [Music] well by an actor brave and that that was if you have to need the last reported sighting of anne and effia was at midnight in the central train station of austend a coastal town in northern belgium initially the local police had dismissed the parents concerns [Music] they did not draw up a report they said they must have gone out they'll return soon but during those first days nothing was done and afterwards their friends contacted us and we went to see the police at hasselt they did respond and at that stage the police at the coast started investigating the police then asked questions if she was um you know if perhaps she was addicted to drugs or something my response was that effia did not approve of those things she was against it i did not believe anything like that but anyway you start doubting well sometimes you start wondering did i miss something happy talking to and marshall's father paul went to visit investigative journalist douglas diconink to see if he could help i remember very well that paul marshall came into to the office he plead us please please put a picture of my my daughter on your front page and i i think we were laughing at him inside of coco god this poor man his daughter is sure somewhere partying with some friends and she she will show up in a few days but anne and efyo were not out partying in fact marked a true with the help of a man called michelle lilliev and abducted raped and murdered the two young women they were invaded into the van that do true used for the abductions because this the dungeon beneath the house was full of the two eight-year-olds they chained these two girls to a bed in the rest of the house when exactly marshall and lembrick died and precisely how has always been a little mysterious what is not in doubt is that they were tortured and raped and eventually strangled in december 1995 detroit was arrested in relation to a car theft he was convicted and served almost four months in prison during this time the police searched his marcinelle home they were agonizingly close to finding out the true's darkest secret twice in december 1995 on the 13th and the 19th police searched the house inshallah one of the most poignant and tragic parts of that search which included a search of the basement was that the police failed to identify the dungeon even more horrifying the two policemen who searched the house were accompanied by a locksmith who would help them the locksmith told the policeman that he heard screams the policeman said oh it must be from outside and disregarded him the terrible truth is it was from the two eight-year-olds hidden in this cell this dungeon at the true's house officers had also found several vhs cassette tapes but investigators didn't watch them until much later there was a video a home video being made by mark du true um where he was filming the developments in the works in his child cage this was essential proof that they were on on the right track but for some strange reason they did this house search and they didn't exploit the information they got from it the police mistakes came at a fatal cost by the time to true arrived back home after his release from prison in march 1996 julie lecherne and melissa russo were dead his wife michelle had allowed the two eight-year-old children to starve to death in the makeshift dungeon du true had told her to feed their large german shepherd dog look after him he neglected to tell michelle apparently to feed the two eight-year-olds in the dungeon some say in defense of uh duterte's wife that she was so terrified of the whole idea of the dungeon and the fact that uh they might do something or she wouldn't be able to control them meant that she couldn't go in and so she therefore allowed them to starve to death i've always regarded that as an over-benevolent description of what probably happened but what i do believe is that between them they allowed these children eight-year-old girls to suffer dreadfully and there is no excuse in my mind detroit didn't wait long to find a replacement for the two girls on the 28th of may 1996 he kidnapped 12 year old sabine darden on her way to school and locked her in his dungeon for the next three months detroit emotionally tortured sabine by making her think she was in contact with her mother and father she wrote letters to her parents but obviously he didn't send the letters he read them he used what was in the letters to manipulate her yet she resisted despite everything she did not create that attachment with him the true was still on the hunt for more girls on august the 9th he abducted 14 year old latisha delay as she walked home from her local swimming pool before taking her back to his martinel home to join sabine darden in the underground dungeon but leticia's kidnapping would be the first step in the dramatic downfall of mark to true by accident it was an eyewitness who saw her being bundled into a van on that day and got part of the number plate the man had seen a suspicious white van driving away from the swimming pool where the tissue was last seen a white renault traffic with a license plate beginning with the letters ffr prosecutor michelle boulay began to investigate i had the beginning of a license plate and a make of car to work with there are 20 names that matched and the police officer said ah among these 20 names there is a certain and he said that with a flemish accent because he was flemish the true the true this name sounds familiar so i asked who is this to true he's a man who lives in charlotte who owns a white van with a license plate beginning with the letters ffr who was sentenced in 1989 on multiple abductions and rape charges to 13 years in prison so he is a high profile suspect one of the police officers working with michelle had been involved in a separate investigation called operation othello led by authorities inshallah looking into the true's movements he provides us with all the information from that dossier which he had been collecting since july 1995. we are currently in august 1996. [Music] investigator michelle and his partner sean mark connerot found even more damning information in the othello file the testimony of a man who'd been approached by the true to help him kidnap girls he had asked a certain claw thero from the shalawah region who is also a fugitive who needed money he said to him i'll pay you to help me abduct girls but this guy was a police informant so he went and told the gendarmery there's a guy named mark de true who lives there he offered me money to kidnap children such strong evidence obviously mr connerot and i decided immediately to take major action concerning mark to true michelle and his team were planning a synchronized raid on all seven of mark to true's shalwa homes if they could fight him it may lead them to missing 14 year old leticia delhi and there was a good chance that she may still be alive but they needed to act fast on the 13th of august over 40 special ops police officers took part in a synchronized raid on all seven of the true's properties inshallah at about one in the afternoon i was at the headquarters of the john d'armary of charwa at the very moment when mr conorada received the news that in one of the properties in sao la bousier the true was found with his wife and the vehicle this was the time to act as it seemed that the true was about to change the license plate on the van de true his wife michelle marter and an accomplice michelle lalievr were taken in for questioning over several hours of interrogations all three maintained their innocence he was consistent in his lies following each lie by telling another lie it was a manipulative behavior but otherwise he stayed very very calm belgian authorities had no choice but to eventually release lelieve who denied being with the true on the day the tissue was kidnapped but moments after he left the police station in charlotte a startling witness account came through the neighbors of his property saw mark de true and liliv return on friday evening carrying a child covered by a blanket as they returned to his house to the true's house was immediately rearrested and taken back into custody as his accomplices alibi began to crumble the true's interrogation took a drastic turn [Music] the true knows that we had proof that leticia was in the car so he says yes i was in patrice which he denied at the start i met a young girl i talked with her and then she told me she was tired of her parents stories because there were parts against him and he changes the stories to suit his narrative on the spot then at the same time lelev said she was with the true and finally on thursday he ends up telling us now that all of these parts of the story contradict each other i will give you the two girls the true pointed to a poster inside the interrogation room of another missing girl sabine darden twelve-year-old sabine had been kidnapped by him in may two days after his arrest dude drew confessed and took the police to the basement where sabine and leticia were found alive on the 15th of august 1996 detroit led the investigators to his property in marcinelle where hidden behind a false wall in the basement was the dungeon where he'd been keeping sabine darden and the tisha del hay locked up he pulled down the wardrobe and inside the cage behind was sabine and leticia and then we got this [Music] that moment incredible news that two kidnapped girls had been found alive in the cage of a person who had been convicted before for this kind of crimes it was such a huge thing all the journalists were on the scene at the time the news magazines were there it is as if there had been a terrorist attack no one could believe that such a person could exist in belgium it was unthinkable [Music] douglas deconink was one of the few journalists who was allowed to enter the true's basement we had seen pictures we had been seen images but being there [Music] is uh difficult to describe because it's it's it's like constructed to to you wouldn't even put a dog in uh such a small place this was really the the kind of cage they made to to to hide guns from the police as belgium awoke in shock to the news that a man from marcinelle had abducted raped and tortured two girls over several months the families of sabine dardenne and the tisha delhi rejoiced that their daughters had been found alive there are rare occasions when we find the relatives and a policeman or a magistrate has the opportunity to return a child who have been kidnapped in such circumstances alive it's fantastic obviously it is a joy that can be shared with the parents over the next 48 hours investigators continue to relentlessly question to true they were desperate to find the two eight-year-old girls julie lejeune and melissa russo who'd been missing for more than a year margaret was playing a game with his investigators he knew that uh he never would get out of prison anymore he knew that he would be presented as the most famous criminal we've ever had in belgium and he wanted to exploit that situation he don't he had to be flattered they had to make him believe that they believed his pitiful story make him believe that things were not that bad for him it's true that you were ingenious on this one you were not caught and you fooled the police and here and there at that point his ego his ego had been flattered and little by little he let information slip that's his attitude after 48 hours of this cat and mouse game mark the true finally revealed to investigators that he had abducted the two eight-year-old girls officer jean-pierre adam was in the interrogation room as he did not say he had killed them we hoped they would be alive we had to go fast it could have been a matter of life or death for them they could very well have been left there without food or drink but there was no happy ending this time in the back garden of detroit's house in marcinelle police found the bodies of julie lashun and melissa russo [Music] i'll remember all my life the moment that i learned that we had found the bodies of julie and melissa it was disappointing because we always hoped to find them alive it was a great moment of solitude yeah i put myself in the place of the parents for them it is 100 000 times worse but even for me and my colleagues who are looking for the right information well we are extremely disappointed [Music] i can only imagine what the parents of lejeune rousseau must have felt i mean not only have their daughters disappeared but they're allowed to starve to death and are then unceremoniously shoved in a bin bag and buried in the garden it is unimaginable cruelty and something that sets to true apart from some other serial killers despite the bodies of both girls being found buried in the garden of his house the true denied both abducting and killing them well it's not me who took them away it's not my fault if they died i was in prison yes that's what he said to me it's mata who should have fed them who did not come to feed them the police also found the body of a french man named bernard weinstein buried into true's garden it's believed that he helped a true kidnap julie and melissa in june 1995. back in the police station the pedophiles soon confessed to abducting another two girls in the meantime we also had a fairly rapid confession about the abduction of anne and effia on the belgian coast it was the news that effia's father jean had been dreading yeah to begin with we were not told anything then the police started asking questions if we had any more people children if he had been involved with more children finally detroit also admitted that he had ann and effort nothing like the true pointed investigators to a property in the germain district of charwa owned by bernard weinstein the accomplice whose body had just been found into true's back garden in marcinelle on september the 3rd 1996 near the shack not far away from the house police exhumed the bodies of anne marchel and effia lambrechts they had been missing for over a year postmortem results revealed the pair had been buried alive at that time it was only then that people began to make more or less the connection between everything no one had made the link the nation was completely stunned between 1995 and 1996 marked a true a convicted child abuser had abducted and raped six young girls aged between eight and nineteen years old four of them were now dead for him his fantasy was to take young girls he soon realized that julia and melissa were sexually too young for him so he took ones that were a little older that was ann and effia but he found that they were too difficult to manage because they were older stronger more intelligent there was one that escaped several times he had to catch her again and it became unmanageable for him so he killed them as well in his crazy and depraved mind the first ones were too young the others were too old he chose in between so he first took sabine and then leticia these are some of the most horrendous crimes that that any criminologist will ever come across but this is somebody who who just wouldn't have felt bad about his victims at all he has no sense of of connection to them or empathy with them due to the size of the ongoing investigation it would take seven and a half years before to true martin and their accomplice michelle lelieve were finally taken to trial during those years the sheer gruesomeness of the true's crimes coupled with the major shortcomings of police investigations led to widespread protests across the country it's as if something falls on your head and you say to yourself but how did we not see it how do we not see it happen those events deeply shook society you wondered what we're going to build tomorrow the true's case had grabbed the headlines of every news outlet in belgium and had become an international story belgian society was on the verge of breaking point the trial against mark to true his wife michelle and an accomplice michelle leave was due to begin on the 1st of march 2004 nearly eight years after the bodies of four girls had been found in two properties linked to the true by the time the trial arrived the story had become one of the biggest controversies in belgian history belgian society still remains deeply divided over whether they've got the right people in the dock and just how thoroughly the case has been investigated and and went to sleep with this trial it was like an uh an addiction there were so many pages in the newspaper so many hours on television the prosecution that brought over 200 charges against a true and his accomplices there was the kidnapping the abduction rape and murder of young girls so if you multiply that by four or five so there are roughly 235 255 charges attributable to him the trial began on march the first two thousand and four at the arlena seas court in southeast belgium the troop pleaded guilty to the murder of his french accomplice bernard weinstein but denied kidnapping eight-year-olds julie lejeune and melissa russo and killing camping friends and michelle and effie lambrechts he continued to deny kidnapping julian melissa and he also denied the fact that he had killed anne and effia but the most important thing with regards to the kidnapping of julian melissa he said the death of julie and melissa is not my fault i was in prison he said one was already deceased and the other practically dead he tried he said that's what he said to save her but he could not do it he could not do it so he buried them as the prosecution began to make its case the most gruesome details of de true's crimes were laid bare in front of the eyes of the jury and of the families of the girls they asked about the photos how they had been found photos had been taken and i left the cortez i did not look at those photos they were too horrible it's very dramatical to to be there because we have to see again everything that was not so so easy to see and to accept the testimony of kidnapped 12-year-old sabine dardenne now aged 20 described how detrue had repeatedly raped her during the 80 days she was held prisoner inside the true's dungeon um [Music] for 14 weeks the self-obsessed psychopath used the courtroom as his stage communicating with his captive audience from behind the glass cage where he was made to sit for his own protection i start to understand him better just by hearing him talking indirect for example one of the moments i i never forget was uh the erico didn't work anymore it was just terribly hot in in that courtroom and there were some people saying we cannot go through this uh we should stop today and wait until the plumber has arrived and then suddenly margaret knocked on his glass and said i can fix it and he started a whole explanation about what was wrong with the with the system and how to fix it and he just had to be released from the box and do it mark detroit is a textbook psychopath in my opinion and when we look at psychopathy these are people who are not as emotionally complex as the rest of us they don't have that same depth of feeling they lack a conscience they they operate pretty much like like robots so they are able to to kind of live in the present to just simply follow their own wants and desires but i think one important thing to remember about psychopaths is they're not mentally ill they are rational they're aware of what they're doing their actions are the results of choice what many found so disturbing was the role of detrue's wife michelle who became a silent witness and at times accomplished to his heinous crimes this michelle marta she's a total riddle because she's different she's not like to true i think if she had not met jatru she might not have done what she did and here she also tried to explain she regretted it but it's so strange that as an explanation she was going to feed the dog and in the house the kids were downstairs yet she did not go to them how can people live with themselves it's not them who created the horror but the fact that they can live alongside it the true's defense lawyers argued that he was part of a europe-wide pedophile network it was very weird because mardi gras had changed his lawyers on several occasions and now he showed up with four lawyers with each a different defense line there was one saying he's a he's a psychopath don't listen to all these stories about networks a criminal organization behind him now it's him alone and there was his other lawyer saying he's part of a big network he's just the guy who kidnaps girls brings them to sex parties and cleans up the mess but the jury ruled out the involvement of others and on june the 17th 2004 they found mark to true guilty to all the charges that i brought against the true the jury answered positively questioning well there was not much suspense because you could feel how no matter how the jury was critical towards the official story it was clear that they would condemn marty true for every every accusation on the 22nd of june 2004 mark de true was given the maximum life sentence his wife michelle marter received 30 years in prison and michelle lalieved 25 years for his part in the crimes despite the four-month trial there are still many questions left unanswered in the de true case for example the exact locations as well julia melissa as i mean their parents until today they don't know where it happened and it's crucial because if you want to to to determine responsibilities to to know what exactly happened that's what these parents is promised what they absolutely want just a convincing explanation of what happened they never got that yeah i was hoping for more justice so that we'd know who we were dealing with and also what happened to effia how was she murdered and that we still don't know we do not know the details so we have never found out how she died i have a naughty waiter who's a honorary indigenous communist the true's wife michelle was controversially released from prison on august 28 2012. she now lives in hiding under protection from the belgian authorities do true asked to be released on the grounds that he'd seen in the light that he was uh no danger to anybody anymore that uh after all they released his wife wouldn't why couldn't they release him um the request was refused and he is in solitary confinement mark de true has continued to deny killing the four girls and despite pleas from the families and the survivors has never given an explanation for his actions many people believe his crime spread further and wider and that there were other accomplices involved leaving some with a feeling that justice had not been served yeah we did not get any answers and we started our own investigation we examined dossiers ourselves we found out some things but much more is still unclear the fact that uh this was a case of child abduction um this was a case where um the violence used against children was so so evident so so uncommon that it was hard to believe that this guy not only was released from prison after only a few years but managed to find a way to start immediately again with kidnapping girls buying houses and he was he was like everything that could be words was worse the true's crimes not only affected the families of his victims the entire country was sickened by this deadly psychopath unfortunately do true is the one thing that belgium would not want to be remembered for in the years between 1996 and 98 one third of the belgian people whose name was du troupe asked to change their name it is a commentary on how deeply affected the country was by this lone wolf well some of the things that mark detroit did were incredibly depraved and and he didn't seem to have any any bad feelings about that he he completely lacked any empathy for his victims he treated his victims essentially as as commodities as items to to use and discard when when he was fed up with them he is depraved there are no physical signs he's a man who if you meet on the street you'll meet him he doesn't stand out but when you analyze his personality is that of a depraved man that's all an intelligent man who knows what he wants but is depraved he's a psychopath someone who has no feelings for people he thinks he can reconstruct his fantasies he believes that he is going to kidnap two girls away and that they will become attached to him and that they will love him he will grow old with them one must be seriously disturbed to think that [Music] mark de true's hideous crimes left many families in mourning and a whole nation stunned by manipulating those around him he was able to satisfy his depraved sexual urges we may never know the truth about how far and wide the true's network of crime spread or how many children may have suffered in his homemade dungeon but we can be sure that mark to true will never be free to cause harm to anyone ever again

Channel: Real Crime

Views: 1,639,636

Keywords: TV Shows - Topic, belgium monster, best documentaries on youtube, channel 4, chilld killer, crime documentary channel, documentary movies - topic, full documentary 2022, full length documentary 2022, hd crime documentary, hd documentary, julie et melissa, mark dutroux, michelle martin, monster of belgium, murder documentary, real crime, real crime channel, serial killer, true crime, true crime documentary, true crime documentary usa, worlds most evil killers

Id: wKGD70Lpyfg

Length: 43min 25sec (2605 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 15 2021