Belgian policeman haunted by Dutroux error

The policeman involved in a search for kidnapped girls who were abused and killed in Belgium eight years ago said today that he is still haunted by how well the chief suspect hid the children.

Marc Dutroux is on trial with three co-defendants for the kidnap and rape of six girls, four of whom were killed.

Police investigator Rene Michaux went looking for two of the children in Dutroux’ basement but failed to find the door in the cellar that led to a small room where the children were held.

He even heard children’s voices but thought they came from the street outside, he testified.

He said his inability to find the two girls would haunt him “till the day I die.”

“If I had to do it again, I would not find the hiding place,” he said at the trial in Arlon.

Relatives of the victims were distressed by the testimony.

“That is really worrying,” said Jean-Denis Lejeune, whose daughter Julie is believed to have starved to death together with a friend in a basement room of Dutroux’ home. ”Daring to admit it is even worse,” he said.

In a parliamentary inquiry into the Dutroux case, Michaux’s search for the girls featured prominently as a prime example of how an investigation should not be conducted.

At the trial, Dutroux has testified he was abducting girls for a criminal network that was to have used them in prostitution rings around Europe.

Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, both eight, are believed to have starved to death in Dutroux’ basement in 1996 while he was in jail for four months for a car theft and his wife neglected to feed the girls.

Two others – Eefje Lambrecks, aged 19, and An Marchal, aged 17 – were killed in 1996. Their bodies were unearthed from Dutroux's back garden

Two other girls were rescued from the cell in Dutroux’s house after he was arrested.