The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Melissa Russo.md

category	tags	summary	born	died	location	relations	created	updated
Belgium Scandals	Person Belgium Dutroux	Eight-year-old abducted with Julie Lejeune near her family's house at Grâce-Hollogne on June 24, 1995; she starved in Marc Dutroux's cellar and her body was found at Sars-la-Buissière on August 17, 1996.	1987	1996	Grâce-Hollogne, Belgium	type with role start end fn subject_of Marc Dutroux abducted June 24, 1995; body found August 17, 1996 1995-06-24 1996-08-17 2	2026-04-28	2026-09-22

Melissa Russo, aged eight, was abducted with her friend Julie Lejeune on Saturday, June 24, 1995, between five and seven in the evening, from the fields beside her family's house at Grâce-Hollogne, near Liège.¹² The gendarmerie had passed information on Marc Dutroux as a suspect between its Charleroi and Liège units from July 7, 1995, and a confidential report of August 10, 1995, recorded an informant's account that Dutroux sold girls for 100,000 to 150,000 francs and had described the work in his cellars as hiding places for abducted children. The surveillance of Dutroux, Operation Othello, led by the gendarme Rene Michaux, did not find the girls.³¹

The two were held in a concealed cell in the cellar of Dutroux's house at Marcinelle, Belgium. When Dutroux was arrested on December 13, 1995, in a separate matter, the gendarmerie searched his houses and reported that the cellar work had no connection with "the fitting out of transit cells for the abduction of children." He was released on March 20, 1996. The girls starved to death during his imprisonment; his wife, Michelle Martin, testified that she had been too afraid to go downstairs to feed them.¹⁴ Their bodies were found at Sars-la-Buissière on August 17, 1996, five days after the arrest of Dutroux, Martin and Michel Lelievre and two days after the rescue of Sabine Dardenne and Laetitia Delhez.¹

On June 17, 2004, the jury at Arlon convicted Dutroux of the abduction of Julie and Melissa and Martin of their sequestration with torture causing death, and acquitted Jean-Michel Nihoul of the abduction charges, adopting the investigating judge Jacques Langlois's view that Dutroux had acted as an isolated predator.⁴⁵

The Cellar and the Searches

The cellar was said to have been built in 1993 with the help of Claude Thirault under the guise of drainage work, with soundproofed cells behind shelving. During the searches of December 1995 officers were said to have heard cries from the cellar, confirmed by a locksmith, and to have attributed them to outside sources; items seized, including videotapes, a speculum, chains and chloroform, were said to have been returned to Martin unexamined. The Othello team was said to have eliminated Dutroux as a suspect in January 1996 and to have missed the abduction of An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks on August 22, 1995, while he was under surveillance. White vans registered to Nihoul's company Achats Services Commerces were said to have been used to transport victims, more than twenty calls between Nihoul and Dutroux to have been made around the Delhez abduction, and payments to have reached accounts of Dutroux in several European countries. The bodies were described as showing trauma beyond starvation, and a letter from Dutroux to Julie's father as saying the abduction served an organized "snuff orgy." The removal of Judge Jean-Marc Connerotte in October 1996 was followed by the White March; Justice Minister Melchior Wathelet had approved Dutroux's release in 1992.³

Footnotes

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1. Chambre des Représentants de Belgique. Enquête parlementaire sur la manière dont l'enquête, dans ses volets policiers et judiciaires, a été menée dans l'affaire Dutroux-Nihoul et consorts, rapport, Doc. 713/6-96/97, April 18, 1997, pp. 47-48, table 4, and the chronologies of December 1995, March 1996 and August 1996; translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0713/49K0713006.pdf ↩︎

2. Planchar, Roland. "Arlon, 22 juin 2004, l'épilogue..." La Libre Belgique, June 22, 2005. https://www.lalibre.be/belgique/2005/06/22/arlon-22-juin-2004-lepilogue-BW2M2Z52HRFRFJL4PLKBLTDEHE/ ↩︎

3. Dovey, S. Eye of the Chickenhawk. Thehotstar, 2023. Sole source for the passages so cited. Its account of the abduction (July 22, 1995, from Charleroi, "for over a year" of captivity), Dutroux's arrest (August 13, 1996) and the exhumation (September 16, 1996) is contradicted by the commission's chronology and is not repeated here. ↩︎

4. "Notorious child rapist-murderer convicted." NBC News and Associated Press, June 17, 2004. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna5233011 ↩︎

5. "Nihoul acquitté pour les enlèvements." La Dernière Heure, June 17, 2004; translated from the French. https://www.dhnet.be/actu/faits/2004/06/17/nihoul-acquitte-pour-les-enlevements-MF73NPYQVBC25I2Y6P54BXIQDA/ ↩︎