RedHanded - Episode 61 - Marc Dutroux: The Beast of Belgium

Episode Date: September 13, 2018

Over the course of two summers across Belgium six young girls went missing - their captor, Marc Dutroux, seemed untouchable as he brazenly abducted, imprisoned, raped and murdered his young victims. But this is much more than a sad story about a sick, sadistic pedophile; how Dutroux evaded arrest time and time again raises serious questions as to whether he was just a small part of a powerful pedophile network stretching to the highest levels of Belgian society...   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Mark Dutro is one of the most terrifying pedophiles and serial killers ever to come out of Europe. During the 80s and 90s in Belgium he abducted, imprisoned, raped and tortured at least 11 young girls, murdering at least five of them. He claimed

that he wanted to abduct as many girls as he could and move them all into an abandoned mineshaft and rule this city as a utopia. There is no doubt that Mark Dutro was a sick, controlling psychopath. But this isn't just a simple case of a lone predator who abducted and killed young girls. The many, many, many issues with this story raise serious questions about if Mark Dutro truly acted, or if in fact he served a higher power. In this episode, we're going to take a big old deep dive into Dutroux's stomach churning crimes, the frankly equally stomach churning way the police handled the investigation, and as if that wasn't enough, we'll also be dipping our feet into theories that Dutroux

was only part of a much larger and incredibly powerful paedophile ring. When this case came to light, it didn't just horrify Belgium, it enraged Belgium. And we hear this so much in the world of true crime. We talk about a crime that shook the nation. But this case honestly brought Belgium to the brink of revolution. There was mass demonstrations that tore through the streets of Brussels as people collectively screamed for justice. People took to the streets mourning and crying and demanding justice

like the murdered girls with their very own daughters. And when you watch the videos of the protests that genuinely brought a nation to its knees, it's not hard to see the collective rage they felt as one for what had been allowed to happen. I fucking love a protest. I am all for civil disobedience. As grim as this case is, the reaction of the people, the outcry and the rage they felt on behalf of eight-year-old Julie Lejeune, eight-year-old Melissa Rousseau, 17 Anne Marshall,

19-year-old Effie Alambrix, 14-year-old Letitia Dele and 12-year-old Sabine Dardenne really gave me faith in people. Give me some of that civil disobedience. It's just the only way I feel like we can effectively demand change. And we'll talk about the protests more later on in this case. But honestly, they really did make me quite emotional when I watched the footage of them. I think it's hard not to. But we also wanted to cover this case now specifically because while

Dutroux was found guilty and sentenced to life over 14 years ago, this case burst back into the headlines this summer. In August of this year, 2018, Mark Dutroux's lawyer, Bruno Diaz, wrote letters to six of the victim's families talking of restorative justice. Diaaya said that Dutroux was, quote, ready to provide answers if you wanted to pose questions and said that this was not a matter of creating controversy or reopening wounds, but of contributing, even in a very modest manner, towards healing them. Seriously, like, go fuck yourself. That is vile.

It's disgusting. I mean, honestly, guys, it's going to get so terrible this episode so like be prepared but like that just makes me sick more than anything else it's so transparent absolutely and if you're rolling your eyes and gagging a little bit don't worry because the families felt exactly the same and they saw this shallow empty gesture for exactly what it was detrue was making a play for. One of the families even released the letter by posting it on Facebook and made their revulsion clear, calling it a publicity stunt for parole. And one of the families even called it moral torture after, get this, receiving the letter on the anniversary of their daughter's funeral. Our story today starts on June the 24th, 1995,

in a town called Liège in eastern Belgium. Eight-year-olds Julie Lejeune and Melissa Rousseau were making the most of a hot summer day and playing on an overpass near their homes. It wasn't unusual for them to do this. But that day, the best friends never returned home. The families immediately called the police, made emotional TV appeals

and searched everywhere they could think of. But nothing turned up. The parents were doing everything they could, but somehow, when these two girls went missing, there was no urgency from the police. The official search was so limited, it was basically non-existent. Unsurprisingly, the police turned up no leads whatsoever. After three weeks, the police still said they had nothing. And as we

all know, the window of time you have to find a missing child alive is minuscule. And every hour that passes, the probability of finding that child alive or finding them at all drops dramatically. After three weeks of nothing from the police, the families hired a private detective, who in turn hired a criminal profiler named Corrine Hutzbach to help him. Corrine put together a profile of who she thought had abducted Julie and Melissa, saying that it would be someone incredibly methodical, unemployed, with a past record for abduction, and that he'd be married with kids. This profile would later turn out to be incredibly accurate and basically a perfect fit for Mark Dutroux. Corrine even gave the police her profile and asked them to check it against their suspects.

The profile Corrine had handed police should have narrowed their search. And okay, even if you want to say, well she's just a random person giving them a profile, why should they take her seriously? The key point that Corrine had made should have been apparent even to them. She had said that he would have had a past criminal record for abduction. And like, come on, this is so obvious, isn't it? Because taking two girls in broad daylight is such a high risk crime. I like honestly can't think of a more high risk crime you could commit. And such an abduction, therefore, just seems to me like would be completely unlikely to be an offender's first crack at doing something like that. Yeah, I totally agree. And surely anyone with a previous record for such crimes should have been at the top of their list

of suspects. And Mark Dutro, who had been imprisoned for rape and, ding, ding, ding, abduction of five women, had been released just three years earlier. He was also an unemployed electrician who was married with kids. But the police never used the profile and they didn't look into Dutroux. If it wasn't already obvious to the police, Karine had even told them he's going to do this again if you don't catch him. They didn't. And he did. Five weeks later, on the opposite side of Belgium, in a town called Blankenburg, 17-year-old Anne Marchal and 18-year-old Effia Lambrex disappeared. They were on holiday with their friends,

and the two had gone to watch a hypnotist show before heading back to where the group had been staying. They were last seen on CCTV leaving the casino the hypnotist show had taken place in to catch a tram. But they never arrived back to meet the rest of their friends. The friends called the police and their families. The parents obviously immediately freaked out, but the police seemed pretty chill about the whole thing. Saying that Anne and Effie were 17 and 18, that they would be fine, and they had most likely just gone off looking for an adventure with other friends or boys. Which I'm sure we've come across this before where sort of 17, 18 year old girls go missing.

They're like, oh, they've just run off with their boyfriend or it's like, oh, they've run off to join the circus. It's always seen as, oh, well, this was inevitable. It's never seen as like a cause for concern. It's bizarre. It is hard because they're right. They are like 17, 18. They are on holiday with their friends. But when they don't turn up for like a couple of days, all of their shit is still in the place that their friends are on holiday

and like where they're staying. Even if you've gone off for adventure, when you've taken like... Yeah, you need your pants. Exactly. You need a toothbrush. Especially if you're going on an adventure with boys, toothbrush, clean pants. 100%. All of those things are needed.

That is all you need though. Clean pants and a toothbrush. Absolutely. And they didn't have any of those things are needed. That is all you need though. You can't imagine a toothbrush. Absolutely. And they didn't have any of these things. So I find it hard to understand why the police don't really ever seem to pick up any sort of urgency around this case. But I do have to say that a lot is made of the fact that no connection was made between the disappearances of Julia, Melissa and Anne and Effia. And yes, it is odd that no one in the police apparently thought that it could be the same person. Because yes, in two months,

four girls had gone missing from what is a very small country. And just to play like devil's advocate for a moment in this entire episode, the girls had gone missing from essentially opposite ends of Belgium. And the age difference between the two sets of girls was significant. Julie and Melissa were eight. Anne and Effia were 17 and 18. It doesn't scream same MO immediately. No, absolutely not. And I think if a girl goes missing in Southampton

and a girl goes missing in Newcastle, no one's going to draw a line between those two. No. They're just not. No. And like I said, if at any point in this case, I'm going to even slightly defend the police, that's it.

That's it now. I'm done with that because that's the only point. If anyone's making that argument, it kind of sounds like they're saying that kidnappings don't happen in Belgium and these are the only ones that have ever happened, which I can't really get behind, I don't think. No. And also, I have to say, regardless of whether they had linked the cases or not, which you could criticise them for, you might not criticise them for,

the fact of the matter is both investigations were getting absolutely nowhere. That's the critical thing. They were getting nowhere with either of these investigations. But about 100 miles away, again in a totally different part of Belgium, the gendarmerie, who were the state police, had received a letter. Quick explanation of Belgium's policing structure at the time that this was all happening. You had the local police, you had the judicial police, you had the municipal police, and you had the state or federal police known as the Gendarmerie.

In 2001, they were however abolished and the system was replaced with just the local and the federal police. But the Gendarmerie play a really important role in this case. And it's maybe important to note that in 1995, when this story began, the Gendarmerie play a really important role in this case. And it's maybe important to note that in 1995, when this story began, the Gendarmerie had only been a civilian police force for about three years, previously having been a paramilitary police force. That's nuts. They didn't have a federal police force until 1995, well, 1992. I think it's confusing. When I was looking at it, it seemed like potentially there was the federal police force and the Gendarmerie and all of these. But fact of the matter now is that they don't exist,

but they did at the time. And I think the best way that we can think of them is that they were a powerful group within law enforcement in Belgium. It's like the FBI or like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They were like the top dogs. Or like Scotland Yard. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So the Gendarmerie received a letter from a woman called Janine Lowens saying that she thought her son was holding two girls aged 16 and 17 captive in his house. Janine Lowens was Mark Dutro's mum and she's telling them that he has two girls captive when their whole country is supposedly desperately

looking for two girls aged 17 and 18. You'd think that on the face of it, it does seem like a letter from a crazy woman. But under the circumstances, maybe worth a look. They get a tip off about a man who has a criminal record for doing this stuff in the past. And guess what? They did absolutely nothing about it. And the worst thing is, Anne and Effie were still alive at this point. And it gets better because we can't make excuses to the gendarmerie that this is just a crackpot letter that they didn't need to take seriously. The gendarmerie had actually been independently compiling a file on Marc Dutro. They knew all about him and he was clearly important enough to keep track of. They even had a police informant, a man called Claude Thriot, feeding them information about Dutroux. That is absolutely bonkers that they receive a letter confirming what they're

investigating and they don't look into it. Absolutely. They have a file that they are putting together on Mark Dutroux. They get a letter from his mother telling them that she thinks he has two girls captive in his house. Two girls who are the same age as two girls that are currently fucking missing and front page news in Belgium. And he has a past record. And they don't go and look. And she's not told them, I think he's got two dead girls. She says he's got two girls held captive. That means they're fucking alive and they didn't go. It blows my mind. It blows my mind. This is Scotland Yard.otland yard this is fbi this is royal canadian mounted police they don't go what literally what so this trio had been a tenant of detroit's and one day detroit had asked him if he'd help him abduct a girl cash like i can't believe you've got a lodger can you imagine

like your landlord just knocking on your door being like, do you, uh, what are you doing later on? Have you got anything much on today? Oh, no, you're free. Cool. Let's go and abduct some children. And Thoreau said he just laughed it off and told him, no, that doesn't really seem like a proper position you can just sort of laugh off. He's not asking you to go to the Lido.

But Dutroux's not having any of it because he keeps bringing it up again and again. And he even offers Thoreau money. And apparently this is the thing that freaked Claude Threo out enough that he had gone to the gendarmes and told them. I'm questioning his moral fibre, if it was the money that freaked him out rather than the proposition of abduction. I don't know, but I also feel like the first time somebody makes a joke like that, are you going to run off to the FBI to tell them?

Are you going to run off to Scotland Yard to be like, this guy said guy said this kind of feel like maybe he just thought he was a weird guy and it was a weird joke but he says that whenever they were out together if they were ever just in the car together driving around and they saw some girls detroit would be like oh yeah like look at them we could just grab them now and then that's when claude was like okay maybe he's being serious okay still though i'm not sure i'd get in someone's car if they were making abduction jokes. So then they turned Threo into an informant for them. And for two years before Julie and Melissa had gone missing, Threo had been telling them all of the fucked up things Mark Dutro had been saying,

like how he wanted to abduct a load of girls, stick them in a mine shaft, and rule over them. As we said at the top of the show, he wants to build his own underground utopia of abducted children. Like Hushabye Mountain, but horrible. A utopia for no one but him. Yeah. It's so grim. The reality had even told the police that Dutroux seemed to be building a dungeon or a hiding space in his cellar. The gendarmerie even looked into it, but Dutroux just told them that he was renovating his basement

and they were like, okay, cool. Seriously? I'm like tearing my hair out. Like how long have they been watching this guy? And he's like, I'm just going to make some major renovations. Don't worry about it. Yeah, in my cellar. That's where you start when you're making renovations, in the cellar.

Yeah, I'm just turning it into a man cave, don't worry. It's how you really add value to your property. Man cave. It's renovating your cellar. That's where you start when you're making renovations, in the cellar. Yeah, I'm just turning it into a man cave, don't worry. It's how you really add value to your property. Man cave. It's renovating your cellar. I mean, I guess it kind of was his man cave. This whole thing will have you tearing your hair out. And Dutroux, after this little questioning by the gendarmerie, actually abandoned his cellar project and instead built a new cell under his main house in the town of Charleroi. The gendarmerie had so much on Dutro by this point. By the point that Julie and Melissa went missing, they had a fucking file on him. This should have been the first place they looked for them. Oh, seriously, two children go missing,

the first people you're looking at are sex offenders in the area, are people with a past record. Especially when they have a lodger fucking being a police informant for them but i think for me this starts to raise questions about why they were really keeping tabs on mark to true was it to keep an eye on what he was doing because they thought he was a potential risk or were they keeping track on him to protect him it is bizarre it's this kind of case that makes people err on the side of conspiracy more than anything because when you're presented with the facts of the case like

this and you're just like how but obviously it's very easy with hindsight to be like oh it's so obvious but i i feel like in this case it was so obvious so why why didn't they do anything and it only gets worse if you're thinking oh like, like they're being very conspiracy minded about this, just you wait, just you wait, because seriously, it gets worse and worse. And if by the end of this, you still don't think that there was some sort of cover up to hide what was really happening, please get in touch and tell us why. Because I'd love to know, maybe like, I'm just being too quick to judge. I don't know. So Renée Michaud, a big dog at the gendarmerie, even searched Dutroux's house when Julie and Melissa were being held there. Dutroux had been

involved in some car theft and local police had requested to search his house. But before they could, the gendarmes ran to the judge to say, don't send the local police, send us. We're looking into Dutroux as part of an ongoing investigation, so we want to go in. The judge accepted this and allowed the gendarmes to go in instead of the local police. René Machaud conducted the search and even took a locksmith with him. They went down into the cellar of the house. The dungeon was attached to the cellar, hidden behind a false wall. They didn't find the dungeon, but in the cellar they found chains, vaginal creams and a gynecological speculum. For a man with a history of abduction and rape, I'm going to say those are probably

red flags. I think unless you are a gynecologist that practices from your home, if you have a vaginal speculum in your house, there's something wrong with you. I'm just going to put that out there. 100%. I just think that combination of things are red flags no matter who owns them. Even if you're like a fucking amateur gynecologist, why have you got chains? Don't need those. I really hope that amateur gynecologists do not exist. I really hope. The only thing I can think you would need chains for is like when you're having a smear test

and you're desperately accidentally scooting up the chair because you can't. To get away from them. My friend at work was telling me about a recent smear test. I won't name her, but this is 100% true. She said as she was having it done, she was just shuffling back up the chair. It's just like an automatic thing that happens. And apparently the nurse was like, darling, you're scooting away from me. Relax relax i'm going to need you to relax yeah oh it's hideous no one needs these things no one needs these things in their house absolutely not but everyone does need to go and get a smear test so go and get one absolutely go get a smear test and also you're like a gynecologist who practices from their house

would you go see a gynecologist that practiced out of their house? Absolutely fucking not. Exactly. That isn't a job that exists in the marketplace. In the vagina marketplace, there are no home office gynecologists. No one needs to have a gynecological speculum in their house. No. Absolutely not. When I come to power, that's going to be my first decree. No gynecological speculums in your house. I don't know why they're being sold for people to buy. You don't need to buy one. You should have a medical license to be able to buy one, I think. So, get this.

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So, as if that wasn't bad enough. So when they're in the house, the locksmith even claimed to have heard the voices of children. And the locksmith said when he asked Rene Michaud if he'd heard them too, Michaud shouted silence and the voices stopped. Why is Michaud shouting silence? I think it's like because he admitted to having heard the voices too. So it was like you were shouting at the locksmith to be quiet, but then the voices also stopped. So was he yelling silence to tell the locksmith to be quiet or was he yelling silence to tell the girls to be quiet? Or did he know that they were there? Exactly. Exactly. Silence.

Jacuzzi.nee michaud the locksmith said that he was convinced the voices were coming from inside the house the call is coming from inside the house i can't handle this it's it's tense i'm genuinely scared so the locksmith was convinced that the voices were coming from inside the house but michaud told him that they were coming from the street outside. The locksmith said that he told René they should search the house, just in case. But apparently, René Michaud told him that he was the gendarme there and that they were leaving. René then went back and told the authorities that Dutreux was no longer under suspicion. So let's consolidate that for a second.

They go in the house, hear children, the voices stop, the locksmith is convinced that they're inside the house. And Michaud's just like, well, I think you'll find that I am the policeman here. So we are leaving. Suspect. And we know that this all happened because the locksmith went home and told his wife everything. And she later gave a statement about this. God, can you imagine? Oh, yeah. How was your day? Well, I'm pretty sure I heard some children under the floorboards in a house.

But I think I'm just going to not say anything. In a house owned by a fucking sex offender. Then I was yelled at and we bent back. And now apparently that sex offender is no longer under suspicion. Fucking go back, locksmith. That's your job. You can break into that house. Go back and save them.

If this was a movie, that would be the third act, wouldn't it? The revenge of the locksmith. And he was right to be suspicious because the voices in the house had been Julie and Melissa and three months later, they would be found dead. That's so heartbreaking. Fucking unbelievable. Julie and Melissa were missing. This was the biggest news in Belgium at the time.

René Michaud was a senior investigator in what we can consider to be the equivalent of the FBI. And he walked out of that house without finding those two girls. How is that even possible? I honestly don't know but renee michelle said after you know after this all came out that not rescuing julia melissa that day would haunt him for the rest of his life yeah i fucking bet but no i find that really fucking hard to believe considering what else happened that day because michelle went in that house also found a load of tapes he took those tapes but told everyone for a long time

that they just didn't have the right kind of tape player to watch the videos. What was it? Fucking Betamax? Like, what do you mean you have the wrong kind of tape player? I honestly don't know. I honestly don't know what he meant by that. But eventually, I'm guessing someone was like, we have every kind of tape player you need. We're the fucking gendarmerie.

Like, what's your problem? So eventually, he seems to have found... We can literally just go to Argos and get you on me. Someone just throws a catalogue at him. But like somehow he eventually manages to find a way to watch them. But after doing so, he marks them all as unimportant. So they were disregarded from the investigation. And it wasn't until four years later that they were watched by

other investigators. And guess what? They seem pretty fucking important to me. Because one video showed Mark Dutro literally building the cell and building the ventilation system to the cell. He's filming it all. He's filming himself building the fucking cell. And it gets better because the other video showed Marc Dutro raping a girl. And the other was full of child pornography. And there was also a video of recordings of the emotional TV appeals that had been made by the parents of Julie and Melissa. I mean, please tell me, what exactly was missing here for Renée Michaud? What here hadn't seemed important enough? That's mind-blowing. In light of findings like this, and given that at the time the whole of Belgium was looking for these kids,

and that the gendarmes knew of Dutroux's past, how did he slip through their fingers time and again? It really does start to feel like Marc Dutroux was being protected. They even had Dutroux under surveillance. In August 1995, so when Anne and Effia went missing, the Gendarmerie had a surveillance operation called Othello in place on Marc Dutroux. They had a camera in front of his house that was in place the night Effia and Anne went missing. But apparently the police said that the cameras they had outside his house the house he'd brought the girls back to the house his mother had informed them she thought he was holding two girls captive in turned on at 8 a.m and off at 6 p.m you know like prime crime committing time that makes if you are surveilling a person of interest in an abduction

case, you're not going to be like, okay, please do all of your dastardly deeds between the hours of 8am and 6pm. That is madness. Absolutely. I could believe it more if they were off between 8am and 6pm. Are you fucking kidding me? That is such a load of bullshit they're not stupid this cannot be put down to ineptitude i don't believe it this is too much it is i just i can't i can't fathom that and i really feel like i'm gonna say this again i really feel like they weren't tracking him to find evidence of what he was doing i feel like they were just keeping an eye on him you're right it sort of feels like they knew exactly what he was doing they were just making an eye on him. You're right. It sort of feels like they knew exactly what he was doing. They were just making sure that no one else knew.

Exactly. So the gendarmes, despite all this, were apparently so concerned with Dutroux. They had three other informants involved, all of whom confirmed and corroborated our old friend Claude Thriot's claims. So the gendarmes had a fuckload of information, I think it's safe to say, on Marc Dutro. They had Claude Thriot's information that he had been giving them. They had all this video evidence, apparently. They had the letter.

All of that. But when in the summer of 1995, when girls had started to vanish across Belgium, they didn't share any of this information with other police forces why even if you want to say the claim of they didn't want to share that information with local police and like local police forces why wouldn't they get involved i mean maybe i'm wrong but i would assume that if you are dealing with a crime in a localised area and you're stuck, surely the next logical step is to go wider geographically and see if there's any correlation. And they don't do that.

I also think there is an element of jurisdiction battles between these police forces. Oh, there always is. They weren't sharing information. They weren't passing any information along. They weren't asking for help. They weren't sharing information. They weren't passing any information along. They weren't asking for help. They weren't linking cases. Again, it's like, is that just fuck-ups? Or was this people purposefully not collaborating?

In any case, six months passed since the disappearance of Julie and Melissa, and hope began to fade. Four girls had disappeared that summer in Belgium, and more were to come. In May 1996, so the following summer, the disappearances began again. Twelve-year-old Sabine Dardenne was riding to school on her bicycle, as she did every day when she vanished. This was now the fifth high-profile young girl to go missing in Belgium. Ten weeks passed with Sabine missing,

and still again the police were saying that they had no idea and that they had no leads. Then yet another girl vanished. Letitia Dele was 14 when she was snatched off the street in broad daylight as she walked home. Letitia's disappearance now took the count to six missing girls. And if you're wondering why there was such a gap, so why Julie, Melissa, Anne and Effie all went missing in a short time span in the summer of 1995, but then there was a big gap before Dutroux struck again in the summer of 1996, it's because Dutroux was jailed towards the end of 1995 until March 1996 for car theft. This was when René Michaud had searched his house. So they don't mind arresting him for car theft. That's fine. I feel like that's local police who've just caught him on car theft and put him in jail. But like the missing persons unit, the gendarmerie, they're the ones not doing anything. So now with six missing girls,

investigator Michel de Moulin was called in as they expanded the search. And a new judge, Jean-Marc Conorot, was put in place to conduct the investigation. These two men quickly became pretty much the only two heroes we see from law enforcement on this case. They acted quickly, and within a few days, they had found two witnesses who came forward to say that they had seen an odd vehicle in the area when Letitia disappeared. It was a white van and they were even able to provide a partial license plate. Using this, de Moulin found the man it belonged to. It was 40-year-old Marc Dutreau, a man with a previous conviction for abduction and rape.

De Moulin brought in Dutreau immediately. They also brought in his partner, Michel Martin, and their known associate, a man named Lallievre. During questioning, Dutreau said, I don't know anything, to basically every question they asked. By now, Letitia had been missing for six days, and Demoulin knew that time was everything. Luckily for him, Martin and Lalièvre both caved almost immediately and told police how they had abducted Letitia. Martin threw it all on Dutreux saying that she was ashamed of what her husband had been doing and that she hadn't been able to stop him because she was terrified of him. Not the first time we've seen that one, is it? The police tell Dutreux that they know everything and they demand that he tell them where Letitia was.

But they weren't prepared for Dutroux's response. He told them that he'd give them two girls instead. And as he said this, he tilted his head at a missing persons poster of Sabine Dardin that had been stuck up behind Demoulin's head. Demoulin was shocked. He said that he didn't even know about Sabine, that it that had been stuck up behind de Moulin's head. De Moulin was shocked. He said that he didn't even know about Sabine, that it had been months before and a different police force had been in charge and managing that case. Again, it just seems crazy. You're investigating a case of a missing girl and another girl of roughly the same age. They were just two years apart. They were 12 and 14. Disappeared two months before,

and no connection had been made. Dutroux knew at this point that he'd been caught. So he took the police to a house in Massenel, a grim suburb in the heart of Belgium's industrial decay. He told them that the girls were inside, and the police went in hardly daring to believe it. But there they were. In a tiny, filthy dungeon in the basement, they found Letitia. And incredibly, they also found Sabine. Letitia had been missing for six days, and Sabine had been missing for 80 days. The girls were exhausted, starving, and terrified. The video footage of them being brought out of the house and bundled into a car is remarkable. They looked so skinny, confused, and terrified. It was the first time either of the girls had seen daylight since their abductions.

There was also so much footage of the families and the girls reuniting, and they're just bawling as they see each other again. The reunion really was something incredible, especially for little Sabine. Dutroux had told the girls that their families didn't want to see them anymore, and being children, they had believed him. This discovery gave the parents of the other missing girls some hope, because Dutroux had seven houses, and if Sabine was still alive, maybe they all were. Conrad, the newly appointed judge working on this case,

called for all the missing children cases to be shared and Dumoulin and his team started to try and link them to find any other survivors. This finally led them to Julie and Melissa and what had happened to these two little eight-year-old girls was heartbreaking. The police found their bodies buried in the backyard of one of Dutroux's houses. They had seemingly starved to death when Dutroux's houses. They had seemingly starved to death when Dutroux had been imprisoned for car theft for four months. He said that he had left his wife, Michelle Martin, to feed them, but she told police that she had been too scared to go down into the dungeon. So she had just pushed a bag of food through the tiny door of the dungeon and left

them. But the girls had been chained to their beds so they couldn't reach the food and had just slowly starved to death what we can definitely say in this case whatever happened is that michelle is not innocent in this story oh absolutely fucking not and we see this loads and there's always going to be people saying that you know if you're married to a person like this obviously you have sustained a level of abuse. But what it makes me think of is it makes me think of Colleen Stan. That whole power relationship between, God, what was his name? Cameron Hooker.

Oh, well done. Between Cameron Hooker and his wife, or sorry, Max Power, she was so glad that Colleen was there because it meant she wasn't getting fucked up anymore. Absolutely. And I think there probably is an element of that here but i really think that is the worst part of this story that not only did these girls starve to death they starved to death being able to see food they just couldn't reach it absolutely michelle

martin i really feel like she's like a myra or like a rose west she knew what was going on she was she's involved in the videos that they find. She's filming him raping these girls. Oh, yeah, definitely. She's getting off on it. She is as sadistic as he was. And I just feel like there's no way in any of this that she can make an excuse that she's innocent. She was even worse. Yes, she's a mother.

They had kids. They had three kids. She was also a primary school teacher. Oh, my fucking life. I know. I will say, though, primary school teachers are the ones that get know i will say though primary school school teachers are the ones that get the most fucked up on the weekend have you ever been at a party and there's just like someone who is off their tits and you're like oh so what do you do they're like oh fucking

year one math year one math key stage two it's a tough fucking job if i had to run around with kids all day i would probably be fucking drunk all the time as well but I probably would draw a line at fucking murdering them in a sex dungeon yeah that's true there's a difference between uh partying hard on a Saturday night and uh keeping children in your basement yeah let's just make that clear so I think it's fair to say that absolutely she is just as responsible as Detroit's for what happened because as Saru said in the tapes she's the one holding the camera she She's helping him build the dungeon. And she also let Julie and Melissa starve to death because, oh, you're too scared to go in there. You're too scared. Come on. Even if she'd been as afraid of the dungeon and of Dutroux as she claimed, she could have anonymously turned

him in when he was in jail by the sound of it there's the people surveilling him all the time but she didn't she just left little girls in her basement down there to die and carried on with her life like nothing was happening this is the other point though that i do wonder that people make the case at least michelle rousseau's parents make the case of why they don't believe that Mark Dutro was acting alone. Because when he was in jail, they think somebody else was involved, keeping Michelle Martin quiet, keeping those girls in check. Because they were like, even if she'd pushed the food down there,

it's not totally apparent when they died. Mark Dutro was leading police to crime scenes, but others were still missing. So Conorott and the team now working on the case requested the help of the British team that had investigated our buddies Fred and Rose West. A week after, this team arrived in Belgium and they found Anne and Effie. And this truly is one of the most horrifying parts of this case. They found Anne and Effie's bodies buried in a house in a nearby town. Their autopsies revealed that they had been drugged, wrapped in plastic and buried alive. Imagine. I think that's probably my number one worst way to go being buried alive. Yeah. Imagine they come round after the drugs wear off, they're

wrapped in plastic and they've been buried alive okay mark detroit they explain away how he has seven houses by saying they're from the profits of his crimes their aunt and nephew were found in another one of his houses buried in the back garden a different house how has an unemployed electrician got seven houses yeah that doesn't make any sense where's that money coming from why is no one investigating that like Like, where's their inland revenue? Like, who's looking into that? Really fucking dodgy. So now all six girls that we know about have been found.

And people were angry. They wanted answers. Dutroux was labelled a perverted psychopath. And police went about building a profile of this man who had become known as Le Monstre de Belgique or the Beast of Belgium. So let's look back at Dutroux's childhood and the classic, classic, classic upbringing we see of yet another psychopath. Dutroux was born in Ixelles in Brussels in 1956 and he grew up in a village called Aubay in the Charleroi region of Belgium. His parents were Janine and Victor, and they are just the typical parents we see in the lives of violent psychopaths. Janine was your classic super dominant mother, and Victor was an incredibly aggressive father. They brought

Dutroux and his five siblings up in a violent and loveless home. Their mistreatment of their children was sadly common knowledge. Neighbours had even reported how abusive they were to the police. And if in the 50s and 60s you're getting called out for beating your kids too much, well, like, fuck me. Seriously. Yeah, that's got to be a battering, isn't it? Apparently, at the age of five, Dutroux used to walk for an hour and get a train alone to go to school. He was brought up in a cold and abusive home, being told that he wasn't wanted. At 15, he went to a new school where he met a man who we could only find described as an old paedophile, as opposed to the new sexy young paedophile living around the corner.

Like, what a weird term for it. And Dutroux started selling himself to this man. And to be honest, I think this was the first quote-unquote affection he'd ever received in his life. And also, this would have cemented in Dutroux's mind that sex was a commodity to be profited from. At the age of 28, in 1982, Dutroux met Michel Martin. He'd already been married and fathered two children with another woman by this point, but with Martin, it was love. The two married and would go on to have three children of their own.

I think when Dutroux met Martin, he quickly realised that she was the kind of woman who would be able to give him everything he longed for. And he was not wrong, because in 1985, both Dutreux and Martin were arrested and sent to prison for the abduction and rape of five women. Dutreux had been sentenced to 13 years, but was released after just six. And on his release, he had almost immediately begun planning for his next victim. The investigators even spoke to Sabine to build their profile. Sabine had been in Dutroux's clutches for 80 days and survived, so her testimony was invaluable. She told them that the day he had abducted her, he had taken her to his house, drugged her, taken her upstairs,

and chained her to a bed. Dutroux had told Sabine that she had been kidnapped for ransom, but that her parents had refused to pay. So he had been told by the gang who had ordered the kidnapping to execute her. This starts to sound really, really similar again to the whole Cameron Hooker, um, Colleen Stan story. And he told Sabine that because he was a nice man, that he wasn't going to execute her. And instead he was going to save her. He said that by not killing her as he'd been ordered to do, he was taking a huge risk. And he told her that she was going to have to stay locked up in the house

in case the people who had ordered him to kill her found her. Exactly like Cameron Hooker. That's exactly what he did to Lisa. Just build like everything outside of that house is fear and danger and trying to kill you. And this like perverse subversion of like who he is as her abductor, but turns into her savior. That's exactly what he does. And he even tells Sabine that she should consider herself lucky that he was helping her because the rest of the gang would not have been so nice. Dutroux also told Sabine that in exchange for this protection,

she should give him something in return. He raped Sabine repeatedly over the 80 days he held her captive. He kept Sabine locked up in that cellar dungeon that was just three foot wide and nine foot long and five foot tall. That's barely one metre by three metres by 1.5. I wouldn't be able to stand up straight in that cellar. I'm five foot two. You're quite a metres by 1.5. I wouldn't be able to stand

up straight in that cellar. I'm five foot two. You're quite a small person. Yes, and I wouldn't be able to. I'd just be bent double at the BFG. I'm a tall lady. And until Letitia was kidnapped almost two months later, Sabine had been totally alone, locked in that cell with no electricity or heating and only given mouldy food to eat. And the abuse that she suffered is so heartbreaking. Sabine kept a diary, and in there she would draw crosses whenever Dutroux raped her. One cross meant it hurt. Two crosses meant it hurt badly. But the physical violence wasn't enough for Dutroux. He let Sabine write letters to her parents and promised to send them. Twelve-year-old Sabine wrote, I promise to be less selfish, lend my things more, be more helpful, be better tempered.

I'm sure you'll find that I have changed. She's like bargaining for her life with her parents that she thinks don't care about her anymore. And of course, Marc Dutroux didn't send these letters. He read them and undoubtedly got off on them. But Sabine wrote again and again, each time becoming more desperate. In one of her later letters, she pleads with her parents, please think long and hard about what I've said. I can't carry on like this much longer. I mean, fucking hell, that's a lot. That's a lot. because she's obviously thinking that Jutru is sending these letters and that she's thinking her parents just aren't replying to them because that's what he tells her as a child she's obviously going to take the fact that nobody came to look for her or

came to rescue her as a sign of what Mark Jutru was telling her because he was telling her that her family didn't love her anymore and that they didn't care about her or want her back and like we said before as a child she believed him he really fucked sabine and leticia up and he was proud of the level of control he managed to gain over them exactly like colleen stan like i don't know if if you go back and listen to the colleen stan episode cameron hooker had such a level of control over colleen that she was allowed to go for jogs around the block because he knew she would come back that's the level of control that we're seeing and they're children as well so they're going to be easier to break down when he had taken the police to show them the cell where they had found the girls it was clear that he was proud of his work fucking of course he is because

he's like oh you want one i've got two like he really is he just thinks he's like it's a secret as well it's like yeah being sat there being investigated for the disappearance of letitia knew it knowing that he had also had sabine while a poster of sabine sat behind the detective's head and the detective didn't even realize they were linked oh this is the ultimate for someone like him so not not only is he proud of his work, he's proud that the girls are scared. They didn't come out running to the police. They stayed exactly where they were, huddled in a corner. Mark Dutro had to go in and coax them out, telling them that it was okay.

And when they come out, they're like hugging him and they kiss him to say thank you. It's disgusting. Ugh. hugging him and they kiss him to say thank you. It's disgusting. And as the story surfaced and the public discovered what had happened, there was widespread horror as people realized that the police could have arrested Dutroux long ago. They had his name, like we said before, two weeks after the disappearance of Julie and Melissa. That is the local police and missing persons that were investigating. The gendarmerie, as we know, had his name well before that. The abductions of Anne and Effia, Sabine and Letitia were totally avoidable.

And even the deaths of Julie and Melissa were totally avoidable because the house had been fucking searched while they were inside, alive. No one needed to die in this case. How had Mark Dutro escaped again and again? Honestly, like the question at the heart of all of this was, was it ignorance and ineptitude or was it something more? Yeah, fuck up or cover up. The eternal question. Absolutely. But given everything that happened and everything we're going to go on to tell you, I just feel like Dutro really seems to have been being protected.

Dutroux himself in jail claimed that he was just a small part of a much larger paedophile network that stretched to the highest levels of Belgian society. It is encouraging that it's not just British MPs that are at it, they're all at it. Oh, absolutely. And can we just, yeah, just acknowledge the fact that this happens and has been proven to happen all over the world.

Why are we acting like this couldn't possibly be the case? So Jean-Marc Conorat, the judge, stepped things up after the arrest of Dutreux and went after all of Dutreux's known associates. This led him to a man called Michel Nihoul. And this guy is very interesting indeed. He was a very rich businessman who was known to throw sex parties and had a reputation for blackmailing high power people with threats of incriminating tapes. And it didn't end there. The investigating team also made public appeals for more information and about 11 witnesses came forward who were all called ex-witnesses. One of these witnesses was a woman named Regina Loof. Regina Loof saw Mark Dutroux

on TV and she couldn't believe her eyes. Regina was now a 38-year-old mother of four but she recognised Nihoul and Dutroux from her teens. Regina told investigators how, from the age of 12, she'd been given by her parents to a family friend, Tony van der Burgat from Antwerp. And they looked the other way, while this Tony sold her into sex slavery. Regina said that Tony would collect her from school and take her away for weekends to sex parties where men would rape her and that Tony and the other men who ran these parties would secretly film them

for blackmail purposes. Regina even listed the names of the men she said had been there, including judges and one of the country's most powerful politicians. At first, the investigator Rudy Hoskins, who had been tasked with following up on Regina's claims, said he was sceptical. She was saying so many crazy things that he said he just found it really hard to believe. He admitted that at first, he thought that she was just unwell. Regina herself accepted that her story was hard to believe, but the thing is, she was able to provide details. Regina detailed the houses and the areas where she'd been taken with other children to entertain the guests. And as if raping children wasn't bad enough, Regina made it clear that this entertainment was not just sex.

It involved sadism, torture, and even murder. And again, Regina described in great detail the places, the victims and the ways that some had even been killed. In particular, Regina was able to provide police with incredibly detailed information about the unsolved murder of a 15-year-old girl named Christine Van Heese, whose body had been found in 1984 on a disused farm. The details Regina gave were all in the police files. Regina was able to accurately say how Christine had been killed and how she'd been bound. Some of the information Regina knew had never been made public. This information persuaded police that there was more to Regina's story than a crazy attention-seeking woman trying to capitalize on recent child

murders. So Rudy and the team, led by our judge extraordinaire Conorott, started to investigate, and 29 people were arrested, including gendarmes, police officials, and businessmen. And then it all stopped. In October 1996, Judge Jean-Marc Conorot was sacked and the investigation was immediately stopped. The Ministry of Justice claimed that Conorot had been removed because he had gone to a charity dinner in aid of one of the victims and because of that he couldn't possibly be an impartial judge. All right, this is a really super common thing for judges and police officials to do, and in no way would it warrant a judge being pulled from a case like this. And even if it was,

why would the investigation be stopped? Surely you can just replace the judge with another one. You don't just call the whole thing off. So Rudy Hoskins, the investigator leading on Regina Loof's claims, was totally at a loss for why he too was immediately told to stop all of his investigations. The families and the public had put all their faith in Jean-Marc Conorot and his removal from the investigation and the dismantling of the case that had been gathering momentum completely destroyed public confidence. And so on the 20th of October 1996, public outrage exploded into a demonstration that would later go on to be dubbed the White March. It was the biggest march of its time since the Nuremberg rallies. And what's really interesting about this is there was no

real publicity for the march. And there was definitely no social media at the time to spread the word. But still, 300,000 people dressed in white and took to the streets of Brussels and demand justice from a government that they now saw as deeply corrupt. People walked out of their jobs. Factories around the country were left abandoned. Towns were brought to a total standstill as train drivers walked away. Firefighters even took their hoses and turned them on government buildings to symbolise how the people were demanding the corruption of their government be cleansed. The scenes from the march, as we said at the start of the show, are honestly so incredibly moving. Sabine, she's 12

years old. She'd just gone through the worst thing anybody could go through. She even had the strength to address the crowd and thank them for coming. This bit, honestly, it did really get to me. Someone even left a note on Anne Marshall's grave the next day that her father found, which read, It was a good day yesterday, Anne. To appease a clearly angry public, a parliamentary inquiry was launched. But if anyone thought it would bring them answers, it didn't. The report just said that there was no evidence of a protected, powerful paedophile ring operating in Belgium

that Mark Dutroux was a part of. But simply, there had been many failings by the police in the handling of this case that Dutroux had profited from. The recommendation made by the report was that police reform was needed, and I don't think it did much to quell anyone's anger. Though, scream as they might for justice, the people of Belgium and the victims, and their families, would have to wait another eight years before Mark Dutroux was brought to trial. In 2004, the trial of Mark Dutroux finally began. It was obvious that Mark Dutroux was guilty. And I think in this case, the trial became much more about whether Dutroux had worked alone

or whether he truly was part of a larger paedophile network, including people in high places. I think most paedophile networks include people in high places, although they're not really networks. It wasn't just Mark Dutroux on trial. It was Belgium's judiciary too. Sabine, who by this point was 20 years old, once again came face to face with the man who had held her captive for 80 days and raped her mercilessly. She asked him why he hadn't just killed her too, but he never replied. Sabine's diary with the crosses for all the times that Dutro had raped her was used in the trial. This case had taken so long to come to trial because all of the investigations and the parliamentary inquiry into the investigation had just held things up.

And honestly, this parliamentary inquiry and that report they came up with, in my opinion, just yielded absolutely nothing of worth anyway. Yes, there were reforms made based on the findings that they had but they halted the investigation into corruption and into the paedophile ring and then dismissed it in the report how is that thorough it's a kangaroo court it was just to to be seen to be doing something they had no intention it was just they there was civil unrest they knew they had to do something they had to be seen to be tackling the issue but they were like how can we do it without revealing what's actually going on we'll shut down the investigation and blame it all on ineptitude and carry on. Back to the trial.

Jean-Marc Conorock testified in court. And this is crazy. The judge that they had removed from this investigation comes to testify. And believe me, he made his feelings on this case very clear. And everything I'm about to tell you, remember, Jean-Marc Conorock was not a crackpot. He was a well-respected judge. That's why he'd been put in charge of this in the first place.

He took the stand and choked back tears in the witness box as he told the court how he had been threatened and how police had told him that murder contracts had been taken out against him and other investigators. He thought this was an attempt to shut him up. But nevertheless, he said that he continued as any magistrate should. Conor also went on to say that never before in Belgium has an investigating judge at the service of the king been subject to such pressure and rarely has so much energy been spent opposing an inquiry.

I think that sums it up perfectly. Also, this is a really interesting part of the story with regards to the trial. Obvious in their absence from court were the families of Julie and Melissa. They had totally lost faith in the entire thing once Conorot had been removed and they said that by the time the trial had come around, they viewed it as little more than a farce and they were not wrong hundreds of samples taken from the cellar things like hair samples and dna samples were never tested why is that what if they had pointed the finger to other

people who were involved like if everyone's so sure that it's just mark dutroux test the dna prove it and that's the thing. Michelle Rousseau's parents were so argumentative about this. They went hard. They were saying, you said that my daughter was raped repeatedly. Where are the results of the DNA samples? And they're saying, we don't need them.

It was Marc Dutro who raped her. Are you fucking serious? The allegations are made that he was selling these girls into a sex pedophile ring and you don't take swabs just to check who else might have raped these girls. It's unbelievable. when they said oh they were tested where are the

results they were inconclusive and guess what when they found michelle rousseau's body the parents had begged to be able to see her and identify her they said no when they said then who will identify her they said mark dutro has identified her. You're kidding. No, fucking serious. Oh my God, that's made me feel sick. No wonder they didn't fucking turn up to this show trial. Someone else who was not in court at the trial was Regina Loof.

She was interviewed by a new team after Rudy Hoskins had been removed and now her story had been dismissed. They told her that she was sick in the head and her character was dragged through the mud. They twisted her to look like a crazy, attention-seeking maniac in the media. So her credibility was totally ripped apart, and there was no way she could be called on

to testify at the trial. But I suppose at least Regina survived because 20 witnesses, that's right, in the eight years it took this case to come to trial, two zero witnesses died in unexplained ways. There was a police informant named Joseph Stepper who said he had explosive information on the Dutroux case. Well, he died two days before he was meant to meet his contact. There was Jean-Paul Tammany who disappeared just before he was meant to meet his contact. There was Jean-Paul Tammany,

who disappeared just before he was meant to talk to the police. He was later found dismembered in a canal. And then there was François Reskins, who said that he had seen Michel Rousseau, but before he could make his statement to a police official, he was killed on a railway line. And Regina Loof said, after all this happened, in Belgium, with this case, if you're a witness, you're either mad like me or you're dead.

And this is why, again, did this case take eight years to come to trial? Because somebody was busy bumping off all of the witnesses that... Yeah, and in really, like, pantomime-y ways, like on a railway track. There are claims that the mafia are involved with this sex pedophile ring. Dismembered and chucked in a canal? Dead on a railway line? Well, I wouldn't be surprised because by definition, a paedophile ring is organised crime. It has to be.

Absolutely. With this case, there are just so many, many unanswered questions. Was Dutro really acting as a lone predator? Or was he part of a massive, powerful paedophile ring that protected him and the others involved? To be honest, I don't think we'll ever really know. Not with 20 fucking witnesses dead, the rest of them discredited. And, no, judges just getting sacked left, right and centre. But on the 17th of June 2004, after almost a decade since it all began, Mark Dutro was found guilty of the abduction and rape of six girls

and the murder of four. He was sentenced to life. Martin, his wife, was found guilty of conspiracy to kidnap and sentenced to 30 years. Nihal, the rich businessman who was involved with all the recordings and blackmail and whatnot, was found guilty of drug offences but dismissed of having been involved with Dutroux. What I don't get is like who you know who is he really? He's got he's got a record he's on benefits.

Who Dutroux. Why? Yeah. Why is he being so protected? Why if he is the front man of this organization why are they not just throwing him under the bus because he doesn't matter he's not a businessman but i think they are kind of throwing detroit under the bus because nihul is being protected that's true he was the businessman he was the one throwing these parties he was the one involved with all this and this does corroborate what regina says because regina luff maintains to this day and remember she's the one that says she was at those sex parties where detroit was and nih and Nihoul was. She says that Mark Dutroux was just an errand boy. When he was younger, he would just bring cocaine and drugs. Then he started to bring children. But she said that Nihoul was the one who was really running the show. And he is let off with just drugs charges

and totally removed from this whole pedophile situation. Yeah, that's true. And I wonder if Dutroux says in court, you know, like tells the police, yes, I'm part of a larger pedophile ring, but he never gives names. He never gives details. And we know that he knows them because he's allegedly been at these parties. So is he just saying them because better off in jail and everyone thinking you're a pedophile than to be dismembered and chucked in a canal?

Yeah. Whatever the case is, the Belgian police still say to this day that they have no evidence of a paedophile ring in their country and that they have still found no evidence that Mark Dutroux was working with anyone else. But, again, they fucking stopped the investigation. So, of course, they found no more evidence. How could they possibly say,

how could they possibly know that no such network exists? They can't because they stopped the investigation. But that is the claim today. That's what they say. Unbelievable. It's completely unbelievable. This case is completely unbelievable.

I started this case when we decided to research this thinking it was just a straightforward case of another sicko with a sex dungeon. But I think this is so much more. I think it goes much higher than that. I think he had girls in all seven houses. They just found them. Because who's fronting the money for these houses? And the gendarmes, you could be like, why were they watching him to protect him?

Surely they were watching him to gather information. They clearly weren't watching him to gather information because they never fucking did anything with any of the information they gathered. Yeah, and they were only watching him at daytime. If it's why were they watching him to keep tabs on him and protect him? Hello? Like, some of the 29 people

that Conorott's team arrested were gendarmes. They were fucking in this. It's like the Fred and Rose West case. Why was there fucking sex that they never discovered? Because some police officers were going there to fucking rape some of those girls.

This is the same shit. So that's the story of Marc Dutroux and the paedophile network that we'll never know more about. Thanks very much for listening. Yeah, and honestly, there's so much out there to read about this. And there's also a book that has been written by Sabine Dardenne. You should read it. I mean, fucking fucking hell what she went through i can't even begin to imagine so go and have a look at that and please join us

next week when i what are we doing something else please follow us on the social medias on twitter and on instagram at red handed the pod drop into our facebook group and if you would like to support us and help us out making longer episodes that's the key that's our target at the moment it makes it a lot easier for us to do that if you help us out on the Patreon and here are some people who have done that

we've got Jasmine Kiroulis Katia Kurpustin who is my friend and I have never said her name right ever in my life not once sorry Katia Sian Power Liv Vistine-Rorby, Sarah Miller,

Colleen Moore, Mike Kennedy, Beth Wetmore, Just Some Guy, Emma Morrison and Matthew Jarrett. Thank you so much, guys, for your support. It really makes a difference and we're working on it. We will see you next week. See you next week. Bye. Bye. I'm Jake Warren. And in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part,

Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding and this time if all goes plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame industry. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today, I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry.

Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus.