--- category: Belgium Scandals created: 2026-04-28 location: Bertrix, Belgium relations: - end: 1996-08-15 fn: 2 role: abducted August 9, 1996; freed August 15, 1996 start: 1996-08-09 type: subject_of with: '[[Marc Dutroux]]' summary: Fourteen-year-old abducted at Bertrix on August 9, 1996, whose abduction led, through a witness's memory of three digits of a license plate, to the arrest of Marc Dutroux on August 12. tags: - Person - Belgium - Dutroux updated: 2026-09-22 --- Laetitia Delhez, aged fourteen, was abducted at Bertrix, in the province of Luxembourg, on Friday, August 9, 1996. On Monday, August 12, a witness at Bertrix gave investigators three digits of a license plate; a door-to-door inquiry began at two in the afternoon, and at about five [Marc Dutroux](/people/marc-dutroux/), his wife [Michelle Martin](/people/michelle-martin/) and [Michel Lelievre](/people/michel-lelievre/) were arrested at Charleroi. On August 13 police and gendarmes searched Dutroux's house at 128 rue de Philippeville in Marcinelle with tracker dogs and found nothing. On Thursday, August 15, Dutroux confessed, and on his directions Laetitia and [Sabine Dardenne](/people/sabine-dardenne/) were found alive in the house.[^2] The commission of inquiry observed that "Laetitia was found through the memorization of a license plate number."[^2] On June 17, 2004, the jury at Arlon convicted Dutroux of her abduction, sequestration and rape, Lelièvre of her abduction and sequestration, and Martin of her sequestration. It found that [Jean-Michel Nihoul](/people/jean-michel-nihoul/) had no involvement in the abduction and sequestration of Laetitia, rejecting the "network" thesis argued by the prosecution, the Marchal family and Laetitia's own lawyers.[^3][^4] ### The Abduction and the Captivity The writer S. Dovey wrote that she was taken while waiting at a bus stop after visiting a local festival, by Dutroux with Lelièvre's help, and subdued with chloroform in a white van; that the witness saw the van circle twice and noted the plate as PBX 688, a vehicle linked to Nihoul's company [ASCO](/organizations/achats-services-commerces/); that she and Sabine had been conditioned with drugs and hypnosis to regard Dutroux as a protector and kissed him when they came out of the cellar; that the cellar had been built in 1993 with the help of [Claude Thirault](/people/claude-thirault/); that more than twenty calls passed between Dutroux and Nihoul around her abduction; and that at the trial she testified to the roles of Martin and Lelièvre, while Lelièvre spoke of orders from Nihoul and of Dutroux's boasts of obtaining girls in Slovakia.[^1] The cellar was the one in which [Julie Lejeune](/people/julie-lejeune/) and [Melissa Russo](/people/melissa-russo/) had been held. [^1]: Dovey, S. *Eye of the Chickenhawk.* Thehotstar, 2023. Its full plate number conflicts with the commission's statement that the witness gave three digits, and its date for Dutroux's arrest (August 13, 1996) is contradicted by the commission's chronology. Sole source for the passages so cited. [^2]: 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, p. 112 and the chronology of August 1996, pp. 264-266; translated from the French. https://www.dekamer.be/FLWB/PDF/49/0713/49K0713006.pdf [^3]: "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/ [^4]: "Notorious child rapist-murderer convicted." NBC News and Associated Press, June 17, 2004. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna5233011