Chief of missing persons unit looks back on 30 years of investigations
The Federal Police Missing Persons Unit marks its 30th anniversary on Thursday. Shortly before his retirement, Commissioner Alain Remue looks back on its origins in the midst of the Marc Dutroux affair, a shocking case that led to the complete restructuring of Belgium's police forces and judicial system.
The unit was created in the summer of 1995, after a series of disturbing disappearances shook the country. Two children and two teenagers went missing – eight-year-olds Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo in Grâce-Hollogne in June, and 17-year-old An Marchal and 19-year-old Eefje Lambrecks in Ostend in August.
The bodies of all four victims were found the following year. They had been abducted and raped by serial killer Marc Dutroux.
No experience
“I had just passed the exam to become an officer,” Remue recalls in an interview with Belga. “The Justice minister at the time, Stefaan De Clerck, was under enormous media, political and public pressure. He wrote to the gendarmerie, asking for action to be taken.”
The memo landed in the gendarmerie’s offices. “My major asked me if I was interested in the disappearances. I had no experience in the field and no one really knew what we were getting ourselves into.”
An action plan was proposed to De Clerck and on 4 September 1995, the Missing Persons Unit was officially set up with five officers.
“We spent the autumn developing our method,” says Remue. “Lacking experience, we mainly exchanged ideas with colleagues who had worked on the cases of Julie, Melissa, An and Eefje, as well as other cases.”
"The Justice minister at the time was under enormous media, political and public pressure"
On 3 May 1996, the unit began working its first case when two-year-old Liam Vanden Branden disappeared in Mechelen. The boy has never been found.
Three weeks later, 12-year-old Sabine Dardenne was abducted in Tournai. Laetitia Delhez, 14, was kidnapped in Bertrix on 9 August. Dutroux was arrested on 13 August 1996 and two days later, Sabine and Laetitia were found alive in a cellar in his house in Marcinelle, a district of Charleroi.
Public outrage
Dutroux was jailed for life in 2004. He was convicted of the murder of An and Eefje, as well as kidnapping and rape, while his wife, Michelle Martin, was convicted of allowing Julie and Mélissa to starve to death.
The case, and public outrage over mishandling of the investigation by police and the judiciary, led to the complete restructuring of the country's police and justice system.
Among the changes were the establishment of a unified police force and the creation of the Child Focus foundation, dedicated to missing and sexually exploited children.
“For us, it all really started at that moment,” says Remue. “As a result of that case, the country understood the importance of providing the resources to investigate worrying disappearances.”
Although the unit’s resources have evolved considerably over the past 30 years, “the core of our mission has remained the same: to find missing persons or to give a name to an unidentified body”, Remue says.
"As a result of that case, the country understood the importance of providing the resources to investigate worrying disappearances"
The unit now has 17 members of staff. Criminal cases of disappearances of children represent only about 1 per cent of the cases it investigates, “but they are inevitably the most publicised”, he says. The vast majority of cases involve people with dementia, deaths by suicide or accidents.
Of the 32,000 cases handled in three decades, around 97 per cent have been solved. Remue: “That's an excellent rate, but it also means that 760 families are still waiting for answers.”
Alain Remue pictured during a 2023 investigation into the disappearance of Nathalie Geijsbregts. The 10-year-old went missing on her way to school in Flemish Brabant on 26 February 1991 and has not been seen since © BELGA PHOTO JONAS ROOSENS
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