Marc Dutroux was 39 when he was arrested at Marcinelle, on the southern edge of Charleroi, on August 13, 1996. Two days later he led police to a concealed space in the cellar of his house, where two girls aged 12 and 14 were found alive. Within three weeks investigators had recovered the bodies of four more girls and young women he had abducted in 1995: Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo, both eight, and An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks, aged 17 and 19. The body of a former accomplice, Bernard Weinstein, was found as well.
Dutroux had already served time for abducting and raping girls, and had been granted conditional release in 1992. As the facts came out, Belgians learned that police had information pointing to him well before his arrest, that a gendarmerie surveillance operation had been watching him since 1995, and that officers searching his house in December 1995 had heard children's voices and concluded they came from outside. The anger that followed brought some 300,000 people into the streets of Brussels in October 1996, produced a parliamentary inquiry whose hearings were broadcast live, and led to the merger of the country's police forces and a series of judicial reforms.
The trial did not open until March 2004. On June 17, 2004, a jury at Arlon found Dutroux guilty of the murders of An Marchal, Eefje Lambrecks and Bernard Weinstein and of the abduction and rape of six girls and young women, and held him responsible for the deaths of Julie and Mélissa. On June 22 he was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a further ten years at the disposal of the government. As of August 2026 he was held at Nivelles prison.
Dutroux was born in Brussels on November 6, 1956, the eldest of five children, according to an Agence France-Presse profile published in 2013. His parents were teachers. By his own account they beat him often; AFP noted that there was no suggestion he had been sexually abused. His parents separated in 1971, and he left home and drifted. He married for the first time at 18.
People who knew him described him to AFP as a charmer and a manipulator who dominated weaker people around him. In 1979 he received the first of a series of convictions for theft, violent muggings, drug dealing and trading in stolen cars. AFP reported that the car trade helped him acquire at least seven houses. By the mid-1990s he was described in the Belgian press as a scrap dealer living around Charleroi, in the province of Hainaut.
On February 4, 1986, Dutroux and Michelle Martin, a former teacher who had been his mistress and later became his second wife, were arrested for abducting, confining and raping girls under 16, according to a Belga timeline published by L'Avenir. AFP reported that the case concerned five girls; a 2011 account in La DH spoke of about ten. In April 1989 Dutroux was sentenced to 13 and a half years and Martin to five, L'Avenir reported. La DH wrote that his sentence of 13 and a half years came from the Mons court of appeal. At Dutroux's 2004 trial the prosecutor, Michel Bourlet, described the earlier judgments from the Mons court of appeal as a term of ten years and another of three years and six months for abduction, rape and violence, and recalled Martin's five-year sentence of 1989 for similar facts.
Martin was released in August 1991. Dutroux was granted conditional release on April 4, 1992, after serving about three years of his sentence, as AFP put it in 2023. VRT NWS has reported that the release followed a decision by the justice minister of the time, Melchior Wathelet. AFP described it as release under a government scheme meant to monitor sex offenders. He did not come to official attention again, AFP wrote, until 1996.
In 1994 and 1995, according to the Belga timeline, Dutroux raped young women in Belgium and in Slovakia. At his 2004 trial he was found guilty of sexually abusing three women in Slovakia, the Spanish agency EFE reported. Those women survived.
Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo were eight years old and lived in Grâce-Hollogne, a suburb of Liège. On June 24, 1995, they went out walking together and disappeared. Their parents alerted the gendarmerie, which made little progress, and the families pressed for results at great personal cost, The Brussels Times wrote in 2021. Through the following months the two girls' faces looked out from posters in windows across Belgium, the Belga news agency recalled in 2025.
They had been taken to Dutroux's house in Marcinelle, where he had built a hidden cell in the cellar. Mélissa's mother, Carine Russo, complained repeatedly that the justice system was slow to act on the disappearance. At the trial, Bourlet told the jury that her complaints had led him to take such cases seriously and to make himself available for any similar case in his jurisdiction.
An Marchal, 17, and Eefje Lambrecks, 19, were Flemish girls on holiday on the Belgian coast with their families in August 1995. On the night of August 22 to 23 they went to a hypnosis show at the casino in Blankenberge, and on the way back to a holiday home in Westende, while hitchhiking, they were abducted by Dutroux and Michel Lelièvre, La DH reported in 2011. Some accounts place the abduction in Ostend. The Brussels Times noted that the crime broke Dutroux's habit of operating in Wallonia.
When friends of the two raised the alarm, one police officer told them the girls had probably spent the night at a boyfriend's, VRT NWS reported in 2026, recalling the early police response.
Michel Lelièvre was a petty criminal and heroin addict who depended on Dutroux, The Brussels Times wrote. At the trial, the prosecutor said Lelièvre and a second accomplice had joined Dutroux about a year before the events.
The gendarmerie in Charleroi knew of Dutroux's plans to build hiding places, and from August 1995 it ran a surveillance operation on him code-named Othello, La Libre Belgique reported in 2016. The gendarmerie suspected him about a year before his arrest, La Libre wrote, but acted on its own and did not inform the investigating judge in Liège who was handling the disappearance of Julie and Mélissa. The parliamentary inquiry later examined Othello's strategy of waiting to catch him in the act, and its links to the Liège investigators searching for the two girls.
On December 6, 1995, Dutroux was arrested over a dispute linked to car trafficking. A search of his house in Marcinelle followed. A gendarme heard children's voices but wrongly concluded that they came from outside, according to the Belga timeline. Julie and Mélissa were hidden in the cellar. Belga News Agency later summarized the episode: police had not searched the home thoroughly, despite his earlier conviction for raping children, and officers who heard children's cries during a visit dismissed them.
Dutroux stayed in custody until March 20, 1996. During that time, by his own account, Julie and Mélissa died of hunger in the cellar. He said Martin had been given the job of feeding them but had been too afraid to go to the house, The Brussels Times reported. Martin's role in their deaths was at the center of her later conviction: when she was released in 2022, La DH wrote that the Arlon court had convicted her in part for failing to feed and rescue the children held in the Marcinelle hiding place. The prosecutor told the jury in 2004 that she had stayed silent both while her husband was in prison and while the girls were held in Marcinelle.
When the girls died has not been established. La Libre wrote in 2006 that it remained unclear when they died and whether they could have opened the hiding place. Mélissa's father, Gino Russo, has said it was impossible that the girls survived in the cellar for more than 100 days without outside care, and he regards the question as unanswered.
Bernard Weinstein was a Frenchman who had worked with Dutroux in car trafficking, according to EFE and La Libre. The Brussels Times described him as a former accomplice whom Dutroux murdered over a dispute. His body was found on August 17, 1996, in the garden of Dutroux's property at Sars-la-Buissière, where Julie and Mélissa were buried, according to the Belga timeline and La Libre. When the bodies were recovered, Dutroux denied killing him. The Arlon jury found him guilty of Weinstein's murder.
On May 28, 1996, two months after his release from custody, Dutroux abducted a 12-year-old girl in Kain, near Tournai, as she went to school. By August the trail had gone cold, The Brussels Times wrote. She was held in the cellar at Marcinelle. On August 9, 1996, a 14-year-old girl was taken after leaving the public swimming pool in Bertrix, in the Ardennes province of Luxembourg.
This time there were witnesses. A nun in Bertrix reported a suspicious white van, and a young man noted part of its registration, La DH reported. La Libre gave the vehicle as a Renault Trafic and the partial plate as FFR-692 or 697. The van belonged to Dutroux. On August 12 the tip-off reached investigators.
The Bertrix abduction fell to the prosecutor's office in Neufchâteau, led by Michel Bourlet, and to the investigating judge Jean-Marc Connerotte. On August 13, 1996, Dutroux, Martin and Lelièvre were detained over the Bertrix abduction, according to the Belga timeline. All three denied involvement at first. Lelièvre was released on an alibi that soon collapsed and was arrested again. A first search of the Marcinelle house did not find the hiding place, which was hard to detect, La Libre reported.
On August 14, Dutroux and Lelièvre confessed to both of the 1996 abductions. On August 15, Dutroux offered to hand over "two girls," The Brussels Times reported. A gendarme, Michel Demoulin, had built up his trust before raising the Bertrix case. Dutroux showed investigators how to open the door of the hiding place, and both girls were freed. The younger girl had been held for 80 days, according to The Brussels Times; VRT NWS gave 81. The older girl had been held for six days. At the time, Dutroux said Martin had played no part.
The businessman Michel Nihoul, who had been named by Lelièvre and Martin, surrendered to police on August 16 and denied any involvement, according to Belga. The same day Lelièvre admitted abducting An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks.
On August 17, 1996, Dutroux led police to his property at Sars-la-Buissière, in Hainaut. The bodies of Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo were recovered from the garden, with that of Bernard Weinstein. A postmortem showed that the girls had starved to death, AFP reported. On September 3, 1996, the bodies of An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks were found buried at a chalet in Jumet, next to another Dutroux house, according to Belga. La Libre gave the place as Weinstein's property in Jumet.
Accounts at the time of sentencing and since, among them Al Jazeera in 2004 and VRT NWS in 2026, say the two young women had been drugged and buried while still alive. Dutroux told investigators that An and Eefje had been intended for a Dutch network, La Libre reported; no such network was ever established.
In late August 1996 Bourlet made remarks that fed public suspicion that paedophiles were being protected, La Libre wrote in 2016. Connerotte and Bourlet believed the crimes were linked to a powerful paedophile network, a theory La Libre later described as having been shown to be exaggerated.
Connerotte had attended a fundraising dinner organized by a victims' support group, where he greeted the two rescued girls. On October 14, 1996, after challenges by the defense lawyers of Dutroux and Nihoul, the Court of Cassation removed him from the case for legitimate suspicion of bias. He was replaced by Jacques Langlois. The decision angered the public and the families, Belga reported, and VRT NWS recalled nationwide demonstrations and strikes; a court reporter told VRT that it had felt as if a revolution were about to break out.
On Sunday, October 20, 1996, about 300,000 people walked through Brussels in the White March, demanding justice for the victims and deep reform of the judicial system. Belga News Agency has put the crowd at between 275,000 and 350,000 and called it the largest demonstration in Belgium since the Second World War. The prime minister, Jean-Luc Dehaene, pledged judicial reform and sanctions for those responsible, and announced a center for missing children. It became Child Focus.
The Chamber of Representatives set up a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the way the police and judicial investigations in the case known as "Dutroux, Nihoul and others" had been conducted. It began work on October 24, 1996, chaired by Marc Verwilghen. Its hearings were broadcast live and drew up to 700,000 viewers, La DH reported in 2026.
The commission's first report, on April 15, 1997, found failures by the judiciary and the police and recommended an integrated police force, according to the Belga timeline. It pointed to poor coordination and harmful rivalry between police services. A supplementary report, dated February 16, 1998, and written by the rapporteurs Renaat Landuyt and Nathalie de T'Serclaes, set out what it called an impressive list of shortcomings and missed opportunities in the Charleroi investigation and an accumulation of eroding standards. It examined the December 1995 searches, Operation Othello and its strategy of waiting to catch Dutroux in the act, the gendarmerie's handling of informants' information, and the question of whether anyone had protected Dutroux or Nihoul. The commission recorded that Nihoul had been a registered gendarmerie informant, later classed as inactive and unreliable.
On the central question, the second report found no judicial or police protection of Dutroux, according to the Belga timeline, and La Libre wrote that the commission ruled out protection networks while finding that faults had been committed and recommending a new judicial organization.
On Thursday, April 23, 1998, at about 3 p.m., Dutroux fled during a routine visit to the courthouse at Neufchâteau, where he had gone to consult his file, VRT NWS and La Libre reported. Gendarmes surrounded the woods of Herbeumont. At about 6:30 p.m. a forester, Stéphane Michaux, who had gone to fetch the gendarmerie and came back with them, found Dutroux with a gendarme; he gave himself up without resistance.
The political cost was immediate. Parliament's question time was suspended, and Dehaene called an emergency meeting. That evening the justice minister, Stefaan De Clerck, and the interior minister, Johan Vande Lanotte, resigned. The head of the gendarmerie offered his resignation, according to the Belga timeline. VRT has reported that the long-planned police and judicial reforms were put into effect after the escape. On June 19, 2000, Dutroux was sentenced to five years for the escape.
The reforms that followed the case and the escape are listed by Belga and La Libre: an integrated police service on two levels, local and federal, replacing the fragmented system of gendarmerie, judicial police and municipal police; a federal prosecutor's office; the Franchimont law, which strengthened victims' rights, including the right to ask for further investigative steps and to be heard when release is considered; a High Council of Justice, created in 1999; and sentence-enforcement courts to rule on release, created in 2007. Some promises were never kept: a school for magistrates was never set up, and disciplinary proceedings against those responsible for the failures produced no sanctions, because fault was not proven, the facts were time-barred or the procedures were defective, Belga reported in 2026.
On April 30, 2003, Dutroux, Martin, Lelièvre and Nihoul were committed for trial before the assize court, according to the Belga timeline. A separate file, known as "Dutroux bis," was kept open to look for other possible perpetrators. In October 2005 the prosecution asked the investigating judge to pursue it, with the Liège procurator general saying it chiefly concerned hair found in the Marcinelle hiding place, La Libre reported. The bis file was closed on October 26, 2010, without identifying anyone else, after about 6,000 hair samples and other traces had been analyzed.
The trial opened before the Cour d'assises at Arlon on March 1, 2004, eight years after the arrests, and sat for 62 days over more than three months. Broadcasters from both language communities installed containers beside the courthouse, and reporters took turns in the courtroom. The jury visited the cellar in Marcinelle. VRT's court reporter Caroline Van den Berghe said in 2026 that the visit would stay with her forever.
Dutroux pleaded guilty to the abductions and abuse charges and denied the murders, RTÉ reported. He gave successive versions of events and accused unnamed people and networks he could not substantiate, La Libre wrote during the trial, and he claimed to belong to a larger paedophile network, according to EFE. Martin's defense presented her as a woman terrorized by Dutroux who did not dare disobey him. Lelièvre accepted responsibility for the abductions of An and Eefje and of the two girls taken in 1996, and said Dutroux had considered killing him. Nihoul's lawyers argued he had no place in the dock; the investigating judge, Jacques Langlois, had already cleared him of taking part in the children's disappearances.
Hundreds of witnesses testified, among them the two girls rescued in 1996. The younger told the court that Dutroux had convinced her he was protecting her from a "big boss," VRT recalled. The lawyer for the older girl told the jury that she had at first been afraid to attend the trial but chose to come.
In his closing speech in late May, Bourlet called Dutroux a psychopath and a repeat offender with a calculated strategy, who had conditioned his victims and refined his methods after leaving prison, and the undisputed leader of a criminal association. He described Martin's responsibility as overwhelming. On June 21, La Libre reported his sentencing requests: life imprisonment for Dutroux, citing three murders, nine unlawful detentions, torture that caused the deaths of four children and repeated rapes, with ten years at the disposal of the government, which he called the maximum; at least 30 years for Martin, saying anything less was inconceivable; at least 30 years for Lelièvre; and 15 to 20 years for Nihoul, whom he described as the head of a criminal association trafficking in ecstasy and people.
The jury of eight women and four men began deliberating on Monday, June 14, 2004, at a military base, RTÉ reported. On Thursday, June 17, it returned its answers to 243 questions.
Dutroux was found guilty of the murders of An Marchal, Eefje Lambrecks and Bernard Weinstein, of the abduction and rape of six girls and young women, of sexually abusing three women in Slovakia, and of leading a criminal association, and was found to belong to a drug-trafficking gang, EFE reported. RTÉ reported that he was found guilty on all counts. For the deaths of Julie and Mélissa he was held responsible without being found to have killed them: reports at sentencing said he had killed two girls and caused the deaths of two others. The prosecutor had described the facts concerning the two eight-year-olds as unlawful detention with torture that caused their deaths. In his last words to the court before sentence, Dutroux said he had not raped Julie and Mélissa.
Martin and Lelièvre were each found to be co-perpetrators in the confinement of six girls, EFE reported; Al Jazeera said they were found guilty of playing a role in the girls' abductions and deaths. Lelièvre was also found guilty of belonging to the drug gang. On Nihoul, the jury found him guilty of leading the drug-trafficking gang but could not agree on whether he belonged to the group that abducted the girls or on his role in the abduction of Eefje Lambrecks, so those questions went back for further deliberation.
On Tuesday, June 22, 2004, Dutroux, then 47, was sentenced to life imprisonment, the maximum sentence, and placed at the disposal of the government for ten years after the end of that sentence. The presiding judge, Stéphane Goux, told him he had been given the maximum sentence and said he believed Dutroux still came out of it better than most of his victims, who were no longer alive. Dutroux complained that the media had ignored his right to be presumed innocent and said he would keep searching for the truth about the other victims.
Martin was sentenced to 30 years and Lelièvre to 25. Lelièvre's convictions, as BX1 summarized them in 2019, were for criminal association, abduction of children, unlawful detention and drug trafficking; he was found guilty of helping Dutroux abduct An, Eefje and the two girls taken in 1996. Nihoul was acquitted of conspiracy and of the abduction charges and sentenced to five years for drug trafficking and criminal association. La Libre wrote in 2016 that his acquittal on all the child abduction charges ended the network theory as far as the courts were concerned.
The families' reaction was mixed. La DH wrote in 2011 that the trial had not answered the most basic questions of the victims' parents. The Brussels Times wrote that the life sentence runs from his first arrest in 1996, and that the ten years at the government's disposal could keep him in prison until 2036.
In 2011 the sentence-enforcement court in Mons approved Martin's conditional release to a convent in France. France refused to take her, and the court revoked the measure on September 22, 2011. On July 31, 2012, the same court granted her conditional release again, with a place at the convent of the Poor Clares at Malonne, near Namur. Prosecutors and some of the victims' families appealed. On August 28, 2012, the Court of Cassation rejected the appeals, finding that the lower court had made no procedural errors, the Associated Press reported, and Martin left prison that day after serving a little more than half her sentence. Protesters gathered outside the Palace of Justice in Brussels; on August 19, about 5,000 people had marched in Brussels for reform of the release rules at the call of Julie's father, Jean-Denis Lejeune. The government then tightened the release rules for the most serious crimes, La Libre reported.
Martin completed her ten years of conditional release without breaching her conditions, and her 30-year sentence ended in August 2022, when she became free with no remaining conditions, La DH reported. She was then 62. She had studied law and passed her exams, but no employer had hired her. Jean Lambrecks, Eefje's father, reacted angrily to the news.
Nihoul was granted conditional release in April 2006. He later founded an association to help people involved in legal proceedings and published an autobiography. He had lived on the Belgian coast since leaving prison and had been in hospital in Zeebrugge for several days when his death, at 78, was reported on October 23, 2019.
On September 30, 2019, the Brussels sentence-enforcement court granted Lelièvre early release under conditions, about two years before the end of his 25-year sentence, BX1 reported. He had to find housing within six months, was barred from areas where the victims and their families live and work, and was forbidden any contact with them. The Brussels prosecutor's office had opposed his release but did not appeal, saying the ruling gave no grounds for review by the Court of Cassation. By 2021 he was free, The Brussels Times reported.
Under Belgian law, a prisoner serving a life sentence may apply for conditional release after 15 years, RTBF reported in 2019. In Dutroux's case that point was reached on April 30, 2013, La Libre wrote. The ten years at the disposal of the government, a power now held by the sentence-enforcement court, can keep him in custody even when the main sentence would otherwise permit release.
On September 13, 2012, Dutroux applied to serve his sentence at home under electronic monitoring, according to the Belga timeline. At a hearing on February 4, 2013, which he attended in person, he asked the Brussels sentence-enforcement court for an electronic ankle tag and for a leave permit to complete a reintegration plan. On February 18, 2013, the court refused both. It found that he had no prospect of social reintegration and did not examine the other conditions; he had not presented a complete reintegration plan, and both the prosecutor's office and the management of Nivelles prison had given negative opinions, RTBF reported. No appeal was possible. "I am happy with this judgment," Eefje's father, Jean Lambrecks, said. RTBF noted that Dutroux could file a new request for electronic monitoring from February 15, 2014. A 2025 Belga report, published by La DH, described his first application as having been rejected in November 2012, a date that does not match the RTBF and Belga accounts of the February 2013 decision.
In October 2019 his lawyer, Bruno Dayez, asked the sentence-enforcement court to appoint a panel of experts to assess whether Dutroux was still dangerous. The hearing was set for October 17, 2019. In 2020 the panel delivered a 90-page report concluding that he was certainly dangerous and should be kept in a strict, closed setting. It described a psychopathic personality, asocial, with a total lack of empathy, strong narcissism and perverse and sadistic traits, and noted that Dutroux wanted a new trial and believed it would free him. Dayez withdrew the request for conditional release in October 2020, judging the report too damning, La Libre reported. He argued that the traits described largely reflected 25 years of solitary detention and said he would seek a softer regime, including contact with other prisoners.
In June 2025 Dayez told Belga that Dutroux remained fixed on his own version of events and believed Nihoul had orchestrated some of the abductions. He called his client completely harmless, "an old circus lion without teeth," while admitting he was psychologically unstable. He had tried and failed to find psychiatrists in France and Germany willing to assess Dutroux again, put the chance of conditional release close to zero, and said he expected Dutroux to die in prison. No application for conditional release had been filed since 2019. By August 2026 Dayez had retired after ten years on the case, and a team of three or four lawyers who chose to remain anonymous was representing Dutroux, Belga reported.
In July 2024 the management of Nivelles prison reported that Dutroux had a mobile phone and had looked at images of child sexual abuse. On July 31, 2024, investigators searched his cell. They found no phone, but seized four envelopes of pictures of naked women and underage girls, about 200 photographs in all according to Belga, some of them possibly of minors. The case was referred to the prosecutor's office on January 8, 2025, which asked for further inquiries, and on June 13, 2025, the office asked that Dutroux be sent to the criminal court for possessing images of the sexual abuse of minors. When the council chamber reviewed the case in November, his lawyer asked for more investigation; the investigating judge refused, and the indictment division upheld her refusal on January 2.
The case became public in February 2026 through the weekly magazine Humo. On February 23, 2026, the Walloon Brabant prosecutor's office confirmed that a judicial investigation was under way, and the next day the prosecutor, Marc Rézette, said the office deeply regretted the leak of fragmentary information. Further inquiries followed, including a handwriting analysis to establish whether Dutroux had written annotations on some of the photographs. He has said someone planted the images to harass him. As of August 2026 the investigation was still open and the experts' findings were awaited. Jean-Denis Lejeune criticized the slow pace and asked how such images could reach a high-security cell. "Either we are dealing with incompetent police officers, or someone does not want to tell us the truth," he said.
As of Belga reports of August 1 and 12, 2026, Dutroux was held in a cell at Nivelles prison, serving his life sentence, and no application for release was pending. He was 69 when the Nivelles investigation became public in February 2026. As of October 21, 2026, no new release application, court decision in the images case or change in his detention had been reported.
The city of Charleroi demolished the Marcinelle house in 2022. On September 19, 2023, a memorial garden opened on the site, with a mural of a child watching a kite. Jean-Denis Lejeune and Gino Russo inaugurated it and the crowd kept a minute of silence. "Thank you for preserving the memory of our little ones," Lejeune said. The mayor, Paul Magnette, said the crimes were a tragedy of such universal scope that they must be remembered forever. At Russo's request, the city left the cellar intact beneath the garden, because he believes important questions remain open and future investigations may need it. His indignation, he said, had not diminished. The house at Sars-la-Buissière where the girls' bodies were found was also demolished in 2023, AFP reported.
Proven by final verdict: the murders of An Marchal, Eefje Lambrecks and Bernard Weinstein; the abduction, unlawful detention and rape of six girls and young women, including the two who survived; responsibility for the deaths of Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo, which reports at sentencing described as causing their deaths, not killing them; sexual abuse of three women in Slovakia; criminal association; and drug offenses. Martin and Lelièvre were convicted as co-perpetrators of the confinements. Nihoul was acquitted of the abductions and convicted only of drug trafficking and criminal association.
Not proven: a network of clients or protectors. Dutroux has claimed that he acted for a larger network and that Nihoul was behind some of the abductions. Connerotte and Bourlet took a network seriously in 1996. The parliamentary inquiry's second report found no police or judicial protection of Dutroux; the jury acquitted Nihoul of the abductions; and the bis investigation, closed in 2010 after the analysis of some 6,000 hair samples, identified no other perpetrator. Gino Russo and Jean-Denis Lejeune have continued to question whether the full truth is known, and a large part of the Belgian public has shared their doubts.
Details that vary between sources: whether An and Eefje were abducted in Ostend or on the road from Blankenberge to Westende, and whether on August 22 or 23, 1995; whether the younger survivor was held 80 or 81 days; the size of Dutroux's 1989 sentence (13 years per AFP; 13 and a half years per L'Avenir and La DH; two terms of ten years and three and a half years per the prosecutor in 2004); and whether the 1986 case involved five girls (AFP) or about ten (La DH). Some later reports say he was convicted of murdering four or five of the victims, including Julie and Mélissa; the reports written at the time of the verdict give three murders, with responsibility for the two girls' deaths treated separately. Whether Weinstein was buried at Sars-la-Buissière with Julie and Mélissa (Belga, La Libre) or at Jumet with An and Eefje (The Brussels Times) also differs.
November 6, 1956: Marc Dutroux is born in Brussels.
1979: first of a series of convictions for theft, muggings, drug dealing and car trafficking.
February 4, 1986: arrested with Michelle Martin for abducting and raping girls.
April 1989: sentenced to 13 and a half years; Martin to five years.
August 1991: Martin is released.
April 4, 1992: Dutroux is granted conditional release.
1994 to 1995: rapes young women in Belgium and Slovakia.
June 24, 1995: Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo, both 8, disappear in Grâce-Hollogne.
August 1995: the Charleroi gendarmerie begins Operation Othello.
August 22 to 23, 1995: An Marchal, 17, and Eefje Lambrecks, 19, are abducted on the Belgian coast.
December 6, 1995: Dutroux is arrested over a car-trafficking dispute; during a search of the Marcinelle house a gendarme hears children's voices and concludes they come from outside.
December 1995 to March 1996: by Dutroux's account, Julie and Mélissa die of starvation in the cellar while he is in custody.
March 20, 1996: Dutroux is released.
May 28, 1996: a 12-year-old girl is abducted in Kain.
August 9, 1996: a 14-year-old girl is abducted in Bertrix; witnesses note the van.
August 13, 1996: Dutroux, Martin and Lelièvre are arrested.
August 15, 1996: both girls are freed from the Marcinelle cellar.
August 16, 1996: Michel Nihoul surrenders to police.
August 17, 1996: the bodies of Julie, Mélissa and Bernard Weinstein are found at Sars-la-Buissière.
September 3, 1996: the bodies of An and Eefje are found at Jumet.
October 14, 1996: the Court of Cassation removes Judge Connerotte.
October 20, 1996: the White March in Brussels.
October 24, 1996: the parliamentary inquiry begins work.
April 15, 1997: first inquiry report.
February 16 to 17, 1998: supplementary report; no protection of Dutroux found.
April 23, 1998: Dutroux escapes at Neufchâteau and is recaptured within hours; the justice and interior ministers resign.
June 19, 2000: five years for the escape.
April 30, 2003: the four defendants are sent for trial.
March 1, 2004: the Arlon trial opens.
June 17, 2004: the jury's verdict.
June 22, 2004: life imprisonment for Dutroux, plus ten years at the government's disposal; 30 years for Martin, 25 for Lelièvre, five for Nihoul.
April 2006: Nihoul is released on conditions.
October 26, 2010: the bis investigation is closed.
August 28, 2012: Martin is released to the convent at Malonne.
September 13, 2012: Dutroux applies for electronic monitoring.
February 18, 2013: the request is refused.
April 30, 2013: Dutroux becomes eligible to apply for conditional release.
September 30, 2019: Lelièvre is granted early release under conditions.
October 2019: the court is asked to appoint psychiatric experts; Nihoul's death is reported on October 23.
2020: the experts find Dutroux still dangerous; the release request is withdrawn in October.
August 2022: Martin's sentence ends; the Marcinelle house is demolished in 2022.
September 19, 2023: the memorial garden opens in Marcinelle.
July 31, 2024: Dutroux's cell at Nivelles is searched.
June 13, 2025: prosecutors ask for him to be sent to the criminal court.
February 2026: the images investigation becomes public.
August 2026: thirty years after his arrest, he remains at Nivelles; the investigation is still open.
October 21, 2026: no later development found.