Michelle Martin

Michelle Martin was the wife of Marc Dutroux and one of his accomplices. Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, both eight, were abducted at Grâce-Hollogne on June 24, 1995, and held in a concealed cell in the cellar of Dutroux's house at Marcinelle.¹ While Dutroux was in prison on a separate charge from December 13, 1995, to March 20, 1996, the two girls starved to death; Martin testified that she had been too frightened to go into the cellar to feed them.¹² She was arrested with Dutroux and Michel Lelievre on August 12, 1996.¹

On June 17, 2004, the jury at Arlon convicted her of taking part in a criminal association engaged in abducting and sequestering children, and of the sequestration of Laetitia Delhez, Sabine Dardenne, An Marchal, Eefje Lambrecks, Melissa and Julie, with the aggravating circumstance for Julie and Melissa that their detention was accompanied by torture causing death, and for some counts of death threats. She was also convicted of the rape of Yancka Mackova, having admitted putting the antipsychotic Haldol in the young woman's food. The jury rejected her defense that she had committed no positive act of participation.³ She was sentenced to 30 years.⁴ Martin apologized to the court for not feeding Julie and Melissa. Dutroux accused Jean-Michel Nihoul of being his link to a ring kidnapping girls in eastern Europe for prostitution, a scenario the prosecutors said they had found no evidence for; the jury acquitted Nihoul of the abduction charges and adopted the view that Dutroux had acted as an isolated predator.²³

Martin was granted early release in 2012 after serving 16 years and moved to a convent. She was released without conditions in August 2022.⁴