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It had been three days since Sabine d'arden had been ripped off of her bike and transported in a dirty van to a run down house and then chained to a bed by her neck. The first few days of captivity were a blur. Her kidnapper explained that he worked for a dangerous man who wanted to take revenge on Sabine's father, who was a police officer. He said his boss wanted to kill her to get back at her father, but that he was going to disobey this boss in order to save her life, but that they needed to
hide her away. On the day, he led her downstairs to her new home. It was a basement cellar hidden behind a trap door. It was seven feet long and three feet wide, with a ceiling of only about five feet in height. There was no natural light, and it was damp and cold. Sabine was in a very dark place.
A psychopath is somebody who understands emotions.
And I told them it is a very exceptional that somebody abducts two children at the same time.
Would have been the yell of it in nineteen six, but my god, it was just a beginning.
I think Belgium was a paralyzed for perverts in those days.
Welcome to la monstre. I'm your host, Matt Graves. On June twenty fourth, nineteen ninety five, two young girls went missing in the province of Liege and Belgium. Two months later, two more young girls went missing in the province of West Flanders on the Belgian coast. In May of the following year, Sabine Darden was abducted in Tournee, and then in August Letitia de Les went missing from Bertrich. We know a lot about Sabine's experiences based on letters and
a journal found where she was held. Her kidnapper encouraged her to write letters to her parents, which he promised to get to them. Sadly, it was just a ploy to get her to believe that he was protecting her from an imaginary, big bad boss and to better understand to manipulate her The innocence of Sabine's letters is heartbreaking. They were openly published years later, so I decided to share parts of them in this episode. Here is an excerpt of one of these letters, read by a young
girl the same age as Sabine at the time. Recording this take was upsetting in and of itself. The youth and innocence of a twelve year old is something to be cherished and nurtured. It's crushing to imagine Sabine writing these letters in the hope of reaching out to those she loved. Just hearing a recording of her words as difficult. Listener discretion is advised. Parts of them have been shortened and adjusted. In translation from French.
Dear Mommy, Daddy, Nanny, Sophie, Sebastian, Sam, Tiffi and all the rest of the family. I asked the man who's keeping me if I could write you again, because Mommy's birthday is approaching. In Sophie Sam's too, I'm so so sad I can't wish you a happy birthday and give you a big kiss and maybe even offer you a present. Unfortunately, that's not possible, and if I came home, we'd all be killed. And I don't want that. I'd rather write
you from here instead of being at home dead. The man who's keeping me told me his friend gave mommy my last letter, and after reading it, you said, I should be sure to watch myself well and learn to like what the man does to me, and to be nice to him, because if he gets angry with me, he could give me to the bad man, who would hurt me and kill me. By the way, did you eat the radishes? If you want to replant them? There is some seed left in the docker's shoe box in
my room. The food I get here is disgusting. There's never any sauce or seasoning. Almost all the food he gives me is expired, he says. The expiry date on the label is the cell date. Everything I get is the generic brand. But Hey drinks real coke and eats real nutella. If he has to leave or has visitors, I have to stay locked in the basement, sometimes for several days without any meals. When he left for five days, he gave me some expired chocolate from nineteen ninety three.
It tasted old, but I ate it anyways. Hope you're thinking of me. I miss you and adore you all very much.
The letters from Sabine are long and detailed. I left out the parts about the repeated assaults she experienced at the hands of this monster. In early August, he locked her into the basement and said he'd be back soon with a new friend for her. On August tenth, nineteen ninety six, after several days with solitude in the dark and damp dungeon, he opened the trap door and told Sabine her new friend was there. He led her to
the same upstairs room where she'd been placed after being abducted. There, to Sabine's horror, was another girl in a drug induced haze, chained to the bed. It was her new future cellmate, Letitia Dalaise. You'll remember from the last episode that a sixth girl, Leticia d Lais, went missing on August eighth, nineteen ninety six, from the village of Bertrie in the
south of Belgium. The King's Prosecutor Michel Bourlat, along with investigating Judge Conrad, and police, were furiously working on tracking down a lead that uncovered from interviews. In Bertrie, two separate witnesses reported seeing a suspicious looking van near where Letitia was last seen, and by chance one of the witnesses was able to recall the van well, even remembering
the first three letters of the license plate. He thought the van was a Renault traffique and a license plate began with fr R. They quickly ran a search of all Renault vehicles in Belgium with a license plate starting with f r R, and the query gave them seventy seven hits. Only one of these seventy seven Renault vehicles was a traffique model. It was registered to a man
from the town of Charlewais named Mark de True. During my interview with the former King's prosecutor, Michel Boulet, he talked me through how it went down from there.
Monsieur the agent van Rillard ran a search in his computer and several names come back, one of which was a certain to True. I asked, who's this guy? He was someone very interesting and had been under surveillance for a year then by the Gendarmerie of Challerroois, and we set up a meeting that evening with the first Sergeant Michaud and two officers from challah Wah who were going to bring more information about the suspect and their surveillance operation.
At eight pm, I was there and the three officers from shallow Wah arrived with a relatively large case file, and mister Michaud tells us that they have a lot of suspicions about Du True, who'd already been sentenced to thirteen years of prison for abduction, rape and sequestration of miners, got out of prison two years ago and had apparently solicited people to help him abduct young girls and imprison them in hiding places he was building at his home.
Shit we.
I said, that's great. What's he doing in Bertree where a young girl just disappeared? An operation was set in motion right away at nine pm. The investigating judge set it up with a gendarmerie. It's after nine pm and we can execute a warrant without obvious offense at night. There's no obvious offense at this point. There are clues that it could be true, but there is no obvious offense.
We can't make an arrest just based on suspicion between sunset and sunrise, but there's nothing preventing us from surveilling him. At three am, all of the addresses of Du Tru are under surveillanced.
True owned several rundown properties which he'd managed to accumulate over time. Judicial authorities and police moved as quickly as they could. When they found the name Mark de True and checked his records, they knew he was a strong suspect. The Gendarmerie of Charlewas had a huge file on to True and it was obvious that he could be a perpetrator. His file included other possible accomplices, including his wife Miche Martin, and friends Michel Lelievre and a french Man named Bernard Weinstein.
Michel Martin was de Tru's wife or second wife, i should say. In my interview with the King's prosecutor, he refers to her as Martin. Michel Lo Lievre was a friend of Dtruz, or more like a lackey who was strung out on drugs and did odd jobs for the True. In the interview, he's referred to as Li Lievre. Bernard Weinstein was another friend of Dtruz, or more like an associate who worked with him on various criminal enterprises. Weinstein was a hardened criminal from France with a very long
rap sheet. It was now three am on August thirteenth, nineteen ninety six, four days after Letitia had gone missing. Julie, Melissa, Anne, Effia and Sabine were all still missing as well. Police had all of Dtru's properties under surveillance, but they couldn't move in for arrest until after sunrise because of an arcane Belgian law proclies luting warrants to be served at night.
During surveillance, they believe that Marked True as well as two of his possible accomplices were all together at a property registered to his wife, Michelle Martin, in the town of Sarce Labuisier. As the sun rose, they applied for a warrant to search the property.
I'm a modernie.
At one point we got information from sar Labuisier that d True, Martin, and the Lievre were all three there at the residence of Martin, I think with a famous Renault traffic that was the object of multiple consistent witness testimony. You, Judge Conrad, said, Okay, let's go exercise the warrants, make the arrests and bring them in.
Police rushed into the residence in Sarce Labuisier on August thirteenth and arrested the three suspects. The True was thirty nine years old with thick, dark hair and a mustache. He kept us cool and submitted to the arrest. Martin de True's wife was thirty six. Underneath her long blonde banks, her eyes looked vacant and wary, and Lolievre to Truz Lackey was twenty five years old with greasy hair, and
he looked strung out on drugs. As police brought them into the local station for interrogation, other officers searched the van in residence. They'd heard rumors from an informant that the True had tried to hire others to help him build hidden chambers in his home, but the police's search turned up nothing, and without more concrete evidence of a crime, police could only hold them for twenty four hours, so
time was of the essence. At the station, one police team was interrogating to True while another was interviewing his Lackey Lolievre, but the wife, Martin, was just sitting there and no one was interrogating her, and Boulet grew frustrated.
The police team, with Inspector de Moulain, took Mark d True in for interrogation. Lollievre was interrogated by another team from enough Chateau, and Martin was held in waiting until one of those teams would be free to interrogate her. I told Captain Deneux, who was in charge of this operation in Charlerois, that there was another team of judicial
police there, so let's use them to interrogate Martin. I only had twenty four hours to hold these people, and they moaned about the judicial police always arriving at the eleventh hour, and I said, listen, as the King's prosecutor, I'm the one who decides here, okay. I told them they had to give Martin to another officer who was available,
and the gendarmes started complaining, et cetera, et cetera. Moreover, just after having this altercation with an officer of the Gendarmerie, I walked up to the window and see a guy leaving the station and I said, who's that and someone said it was the Lievre and I asked, is he leaving?
Yes?
They said the enough shot to investigators didn't think he'd done anything wrong. And then Commander Law arrived, who had been questioning neighbors at detru'z house in Marceinelle and Detruz neighbors had said that they saw the True arrive home in the van on Friday night together with Michelle the olive skinned guy, and I said, who's Michelle the olive skinned guy, and they said, oh, that's Michelle Lilievre, and I said, well, he just fucked off out the door.
At that point all of the police again started looking for Lollievre, who was now walking around freely in Charlewaugh. We found him an hour later at the train station, trying to flee to Slovakia.
Needless to say, it was a bumpy start to the arrest, with different police forces interviewing suspects in the same case and making uncoordinated decisions, but fortunately Prosecutor Boulat was there to knock their heads together. After recapturing lo Lievre, the True, his wife, Martin, and Lilliere were all being questioned separately by interrogation teams. All of them denied any involvement right from the beginning. De True was questioned for five hours
and admitted nothing. They left him alone in the interrogation room for a few hours and then came back and continued questioning him for another three hours until three am, but he stuck to his story. The next morning, Judge Conrad indicted to True for the disappearance of Letitia. Nonetheless, meanwhilel Lievre was still being questioned and was suffering from heroin withdrawal. One can't help but think that the police used this to their advantage to get Li Lievre to talk.
In any case, he finally cracked and admitted that he and a True had abducted Letitian bare Tree. This gave police what they needed to continue holding and interrogating the three suspects beyond twenty four hours, but the clock was still ticking because Letitia was still unaccounted for. Lalievre vehemently insisted that he didn't know what happened to Letitia and that he just dropped her off with the True at his house in Charlewaugh. As soon as that's the team
responsible for interrogating the True learned ofl Lievre's confession. Sergeant Michelle du Moulain and his partner Jean Laboule, took another crack at the True. After a long search, I was able to track down Michelle du Moulain, and he agreed to discuss the case. The recording is poor, so it will fade out and you'll hear a translation.
I was the most experienced investigator in the team, so they asked me to take the lead on interrogating to True. I proceeded like I usually do with suspects. I asked him a lot of questions in order to get to know him about his life, who did he live with, what was his house like, and so on, to get an idea about his personality. And I realized at one point that he was a vain person and he needed to be recognized in to be respected for what he was,
so I worked with that as well. The first time, I questioned him from three point fifteen until around eight thirty pm, and then took a break for about two hours, and then I questioned him again from around eleven one pm to four o'clock in the morning, and then he said he had indeed heard about Letitia's disappearance, but he had nothing to do with it. He'd seen her and she'd actually gotten into his van at one point, but that he let her go.
With multiple witnesses having identified his van, the True must have felt he had to admit something in order to remain credible. By the end of a second interview, it was four am and de Moulain was breathing down to Truth's neck, so he decided to share some crumbs. Hear the Truth's actual words from transcripts of this interview read by an interpreter.
I saw a cute girl. She was wearing a skimpy summer outfit, and when she passed by, I said hello. She was interested in my van and I told her to jump in, and she sat down next to me. We jetted a bait and I asked her ah, and she said she was fifteen.
Years old or something like that.
She said she was sped up and had family problems. I could see she was open and easy. She wasn't afraid. When I found out her age, I was disappointed and decided I didn't want to have any troubles.
And then she left.
And the next day, on the fifteenth of August, I was waiting for him with all of the elements, and I interrogated him. Actually it wasn't even an interrogation. I demonstrated to him that he was the author of the kidnapping, and I squeezed him squeezed him, squeezed him, and to avoid making him loose face in front of me, I brought him along so he could admit it and to take control. He said quote, it's not one girl I'm
going to give you, but two girls. And with that in his mind, he became superior to me because he was giving me more than what I was asking for. It was a game for him, and he didn't want to tell me where they were. He wanted to hold me in suspense and take me to where he had the girls. He said he wouldn't admit anything then, but that he would go to Marcinelle with me.
To get a deeper understanding of the True's character, I was able to interview a man who spent a lot of time with him, his lawyer, Ronnie Bodwain, My co producer Thomas, and I met with him in his offices in Brussels. After introductions and some chit chat, I asked him about when the True became his client.
From two thousand and three until fourteen, I was his lawyer, which means that I have done the preparation of his court case, the whole court case, and even years after that, I have been in contact with.
Him, okay, and so you were in the thick of it and spend I guess countless hours with your client.
Unfortunately.
Yes, Ronnie is a sprightly man, full of the energetic confidence he'd want to have in your corner when facing an uphill battle. I asked him to give his opinion on a mental state of Mark the True.
If you read the report of doctor Denas. He said, I've done in my career. He was already at the end of his career at the time that he was coming to testify in court about the report that he made on Mark the True, And I said, I've done about four thousands of these expertises, you know, in investigations towards the personality of somebody else, that I never met anybody so close to one hundred percent psychopath. He says, if I have to put something on that, I think
he must be about ninety seven or something, right. But the strange thing is that it is exactly the one thing of feelings that he had left that became his downfall, and that is that pride, right, because there at a certain moment the police commissioner Monsieur de Mulain, who did the investigation, he also got to know through the investigation how Mark the Trux was and you know, it's very silly,
but in fact he challenged him. He said, oh, but you don't know anything about those girls that were abducted. It inverse the rules, and he said, you're trying to make me believe that you know something about them, and Mark the true this pride, you know, overwhelming. He said, oh no, I'm not going to give you one. I'm going to give you another one. And he showed one of the girls what that was on the billboard in
the police station. And suddenly, because they didn't even ask anything to him about the second girl, they didn't even realize that he was involved, Suddenly they had two girls. And that is just by pushing on the one button left where there is some feeling, and that.
Is this pride right.
And I've used the same technique to let him do things that I wanted him to do, because after a while, you learn you know how people are acting. And I had to spend many hours with him, so after while, I was able to find out exactly what this Durmula had found out as well on the personality.
Of my client.
When Da True finally cracked. He agreed to take police where Sabine and Letitia were hidden, but he wouldn't just give them the address. He wanted to stay in control and watch it all happen. Little time was wasted before De True was secreted away from the station to lead a group of gendarmes to his house in Charlewis. He led them down to a basement and walked over to an unassuming shelf along the wall. He revealed that behind it was a trap door that opened up into a
pitch black chamber beneath his house. Police shined their flashlights into the darkness, and what they saw shocked them to their core. Crouched into the corner of a dark and damp dungeon were two naked girls, visibly scared to death of whoever was coming for them. They were so afraid that they refused to move until De True told him it was okay. Remember from Sabine's letter that de True had told her that he was hiding her from a bad man who wanted to kill her.
Give me to the bad man who would hurt me and kill me.
He had told the same story to Letitia, so both girls were frightened to death. When they first saw the police. At approximately six thirty pm on August fifteenth, nineteen ninety six, all of Belgium in the world for that matter, witnessed the surreal scene of Leticia de Les and Sabine Darden emerging into the light after being rescued from De True's House of Horrors in Charlewaugh. It was filmed live by the Belgian TV channel VTM and the footage is both
harrowing and relieving. It wasn't long before or international media picked up the story for the whole world to see.
Twelve year old Sabine dar Den disappeared in May. Letitia Dalais had been missing for only six days. Both were imprisoned into truth makeshift dungeon. Patricia Kelly CNN Brussels.
Letitia emerged first, looking confused and disheveled, followed by a pale and emaciated Sabine, who had spent eighty days in captivity, most of them in the macabre dungeon. The King's prosecutor addressed the nation in a press briefing shortly after the discovery of the girls. A younger version of the man I interviewed Michel Bourlet appeared in a crowded room full of journalists, sitting next to the investigating judge, Jean Marc Conrad.
He was visibly tired with bloodshot eyes, but he also exuded an overwhelming sense of relief.
Gillie Mouspresi the USA Nose.
Later that evening, there were scenes of jubilation and euphoria a Sabine and Letitia were reunited with their families on live television. Most of the country breathed a sigh of relief, and residents in Bertrie spontaneously assembled a bonfire to burn the thousands of missing persons posters of the girls that
had been prepared for distribution. But the parents of the other missing girls, like eight year olds Julie LeJean and Melissa Russo and high schoolers Anne Martial and Effie Alambrics, waited on pens and needles, wondering if their disappearances were also connected to the true news of the sordid dungeon, and testimonies of Sabine and Letitia slowly started to trickle out.
This basement and the crimes committed here have made this house notorious. Every Belgium knows about mark chamber of horrors that they must come here and see for themselves just how desperate and sordid conditions were for the girls held prisoner here. Julia Bremner ITV News Charlois.
The world was about to learn the extent of the horrors of the true and its accomplices. Sabine and letitious rescue was only the beginning of a story that would shark the world and rattle the foundations of Belgium next time on La Montre.
I know I've studied the file, and I've studied, amongst other things, I've studied the relationship between them both, and I'm sure that at that time it was possible for him to do that because he had found literally but also in a figure of speech, a partner in crime.
Should have been Jano beating nineteen eighty six. My gods, it was just a beginning. What happens after he got out of prison is just beyond believing.
Lo Monstra is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Radio, hosted and executive produced by me Matt Graves, produced by Thomas Resimont of Bubble Sound. Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay are executive producers. On the behalf of Tenderfoot TV with producer Makeup and Vanity Set. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers on the behalf of iHeartRadio with producer
Trevor Young. Original music by Jay Ragsdale, Sound design by Cooper Skinner and Thomas Resimont, mixed and mastered by Cooper Skinner. Cover design by Trevor eilerl Monstra includes archival audio from SONYMA, RTBF Archive and CNN Archives. Special thanks to Backmedia and Marketing Station sixteen, Jean Savigna, and the teams at iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. Find us on social media at Monster
Underscore pod. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.