Michel Piro

Michel Piro, a Charleroi businessman, ran a small zoo and the bar La Terrasse at Nalinnes with his wife, Véronique Laurent.¹² In 1996 he proposed holding a meal at his establishment for the benefit of Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, the girls abducted by Marc Dutroux, and, according to the testimony later heard at Dutroux's trial, told 21 different people that he would also make revelations about the case. He was shot dead a few days after saying so, in December 1996.¹²³

Laurent was convicted by the assize court of Hainaut of having ordered her husband's killing, following a marital dispute, and was held at Mons prison. The two alleged killers, both French, were tried in France and acquitted for lack of proof.¹²

At Dutroux's trial in Arlon in April 2004, Laurent appeared in handcuffs. Asked whether she thought her husband had been killed because he was about to make revelations about the Julie and Mélissa case, she answered: "Je ne le pense pas." She said she had seen Jean-Michel Nihoul several times between 1988 and 1991 in the bar she ran, "four or five times" at La Terrasse, but not Dutroux or Bernard Weinstein. Thirteen witnesses testified that Piro had spoken of revelations, though not all of them drew a causal link; he had confided their content to no one.¹²