Police take action on 'house of horror' where kids were tortured and raped
Police have torn down the "house of horror" where children as young as eight were repeatedly raped and tortured in one of the most hideous crimes in recent history.
Last year, Belgian officials ordered a modest red brick house in the city of Charleroi to be flattened and a memorial garden be built in its place as a space to remember the young lives taken by the monster Marc Dutroux. But under the memorial, Dutroux's soundproof dungeon is still intact at the request of the parents, who believe the twisted relic could help unravel a wider paedo network in the future.
Dutroux was thrust into the public domain after he led police to two kidnapped girls in August 1996. The girls were found cowering in the secret basement with signs of extensive, prolonged and horrific abuse.
A file photo of the basement of Dutroux (EPA)
Eefje Lambrechts, aged 19 (left), and An Marchal, aged 17 (right) (Collect)Sabine Dardenne, 12, and Laetitia Delhez, 14, had been abducted separately earlier that year, chained to a bed and repeatedly raped.
As the investigation developed, the public and the police realised that the pair were lucky to be found alive. Four more victims - Mélissa Russo and Julie Lejeune, both eight, An Marchal, 17, and Eefje Lambrecks, 19, were kidnapped by the monster and his sick associates a year earlier and none of them made it out of the basement.
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Russo and Lejeune, who were pals from school, were the first to be locked away in the dungeon - which was later found to have been soundproofed to prevent their screams alarming the neighbours.
The room where the children were tied to a bed (EPA)Dutroux, who owned a number of properties, buried their young bodies in the garden of one of his other houses. A post-mortem revealed that they had died as a result of starvation. The two teens, An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks, were also kidnapped, imprisoned and raped before they were killed when Dutroux wrapped their bodies in plastic and buried them alive. Dutroux confessed to having the two survivors, Dardenne and Delhez in his basement, and lead police to the scene of his vile crimes.
Workers demolishing the house (AFP via Getty Images)The case caused public outrage when it turned out that police had missed a number of clues, and that the monster had been released early from jail after serving only three years of a 13-year sentence for the rape and abduction of five more girls from 1985 to 1986.
It then took another eight years before Dutroux was tried and found guilty for kidnapping and raping six of the girls, and the murder of the two teens. However, Dutroux didn't act alone. The investigation revealed that he had four accomplices, including his wife Michelle Martin. Michel Lelievre, Michel Nihoul and Bernard Weinstein. While Martin, Lelievre, and Dutroux were found guilty, there was not enough evidence to convict Nihoul, or Weinstein - who had been killed by Dutroux.
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