Cases closed: Stacy and Nathalie, Dutroux’s second relationship in Liège

Christelle, her friend, says that they have been together for six months and that they went to a sale together on June 9 in the late afternoon. Abdallah Ait Oud bought cocaine which he went to eat at a friend’s house. Then he drove around the area and approached the podium. At 2am, the end of Christelle’s shift, he didn’t come to pick her up. He surprised the young woman. Around 6:30 am, she went to Ait Oud’s home; he responded by leaning out his window and telling her the police wanted him.

On Sunday June 11, 2006, the Liège public prosecutor’s office launched an appeal for the potential kidnapper. Then, the next day, he broadcast images of a suspect identified as the attendant’s friend. And the unexpected happens. On June 13, Abdallah Ait Oud handed himself over to the police, as if he was afraid of nothing. “Since I didn’t do anything with these two kids, I told myself I had to go to the police immediately.“, he said.

That same evening, a forensic doctor noted scratches on Ait Oud’s arms. They were with brambles, he answers. The man also has scratch marks on his back, caused by rubbing against a wall.

Abdallah Ait Oud talks about his weekend. Yes, he was at the Les Armuriers cafe on the afternoon of Friday 9th June. He argued with Christelle, he said, had a few drinks and went to his friend Bob’s house. He then says that he returned to the cafe. “I drank too much, threw up and went home“, he continues, neglecting an essential program of the evening. Saturday, Sunday and Monday, he goes around town. He wants to see Christelle and tries to return to her house from the back, going through an empty lot covered in brambles.This would explain the scrapes and scratches He says he thought he wanted to steal gasoline and a car.on loan” to an acquaintance, but, he says again, he does not know about the little girls, who are nowhere to be found.

But, not for lack of finding them. Between the Meuse and the dune, between expressways and neck streets, the Saint-Léonard area is raked. We look for Stacy and Nathalie in the river, in Ait Oud’s house, in the words he exchanges with his partner, an undercover police officer…

On June 28, the shocking truth ended 17 days of false hope. Mid-morning, Stacy’s body is found under the cover of a hole near where he disappeared. Around 3pm, Nathalie’s body was found a little further away.

Science at the service of research

The Liège public prosecutor’s office confirms that the little girls were strangled and that the bodies were hidden in a water collector that runs alongside the railway. So much for watching them; the rest are scientific portions that are particularly valuable in this case.

Therefore, the analysis of water flow makes it possible to find out when the bodies were put there, ie on the night of June 10 to 11 around 5 in the morning, more than 24 hours after the disappearance. By this time, the flow rate had decreased significantly. This observation is demonstrated by a providential witness. A homeless man claims to have seen Ait Oud in the area at a very early hour. Was it a coincidence?

Then, the autopsy of the two small groups will greatly reduce the chance component. For 10 hours, 22 experts collected the smallest thing that the water would not be deleted. And these clues are many. On the little girls’ clothes, many textile fibers of foreign origin have the same inscription as the clothes from Ait Oud that were given to the police after being washed. These threads are burned like on the suspect’s jeans. Experts also identify red threads coming from a blanket belonging to Christelle, Abdallah’s friend.

He tries to explain himself. “I helped the children get on the podium, so I touched them“, he says. Scientists, for their part, talk about intense communication, and amateur videos of the evening show that the children were alone. A metal bar helped them to the podium climb

The plants also talk. Abdallah Ait Oud may have washed his clothes, but we found grass coming from the railway in his trouser pockets and in the siphon of his sink. Next to it are several brambles. This explains the scratches and scrapes that were marked on his body. Witnesses also say that on the evening of June 9, Abdallah Ait Oud spoke several times to very young girls. He suggested that they look for turtles with him. The accusation elements are gathering, but the family of Abdallah Ait Oud still supports him and the main person still denies it.

Staying in the bodies in the water does not allow traces of sperm to be found anymore. But the DNA still provides one last crucial element: these are indeed two of Stacy’s hairs that were in Ait Oud’s pants.

In January 2007, Ait Oud asked to undergo a lie detector test. The conclusion is clear: he is lying.

Stacy and Nathalie, replicas of Julie and Melissa

The trial of Abdallah Ait Oud opened on May 26, 2008 before the Liège Assize Court. His emotional side does not escape from anyone. Stacy and Nathalie are a bit like Julie and Mélissa: two little girls torn from childhood, kidnapped, soiled, left for dead. In the box, said a man like a psychopath. And then, of course with access to the legal calendar, Stéphane Goux is in charge of the Court, as he had already presided over the Dutroux trial.

In the Saint-Léonard area, where the events took place, the mood is heavy. We would like to forget, we would rather erase this cursed clearance sale of 2006; so we chase away the journalists who are back in this working class community and who are opening wounds again. But everyone is asking the same question: would Abdallah speak Ait Oud?

For 2 years, the man has denied the charges against him. Despite the overwhelming evidence that accuses him, despite his past and his famous image.dangerous“, in spite of the twenty interrogations to which he was subject, he held his ground.”not me”he said. “The police are coming after me rather than looking for the real culprit. Whoever did this is a monster“, he says.

On the morning of May 26, it was a man with a determined look who entered the box. He does not look at the families of the victims who took the seat in the front row. He listens attentively to the prosecution, giving several details to the court, but he seems deaf when the president questions him about what happened in June 2006. The accused is asked repeat the questions and explain all the evidence. The reason he put his pants in the kitchen sink next to the dirty dishes is because they were stained with vomit, he says. Yes, he shaved his hair straight after the fact, but it was a regular routine,”every 2 or 3 days“, he specifies. Regarding his new sneakers that the police never found, he says that he left them somewhere, because the bag they were in was too loud!

On the evening of June 3rd, we saw a strange procession. The members of the court, the lawyers, the police, Nathalie’s mother and the accused make their way through the tall grass on the railway line. The court went to the scene of the tragedy to see the geography of the place and estimate the distances. Ait Oud suffers insults from local residents, without word, without expression. There is still a question: did Stacy and Nathalie die where their bodies were found, or were they buried in the gutter after their death? The silence of the accused answers this question.

The condemned man collapses

On Tuesday June 11, 2008, after three hours of deliberation, the jury answered “oh” to most of the 23 questions asked of him. Yes, Abdallah Ait Oud is guilty of killing Stacy and little Nathalie beforehand after kidnapping, torturing and raping them.

The answers are revealed in the silence. The accused does not light. We are then at question 18: “Did Nathalie’s kidnapping cause her death?“This is one of the rare questions to which there is no answer. At that moment, Ait Oud, stiff in her pink shirt, seems to bend in two. Fear runs through the could it be an escape attempt?He finds himself facing the horror of what he has done, his mind refuses to accept it since he denied it until then“, he said.

The accused was quickly evacuated and examined by Dr. Boxho, the same person who reported a few days earlier the findings of abuse of the two little girls.

The next day, Ait Oud returned for a short sentencing hearing. The Attorney General asks for the maximum, while Ait Oud’s lawyer does not plead, according to the wishes of his client, who, the day before, was on one trip finally declared innocent. “The past, I am ashamed of it. The past ruined my life and destroyed me. But here I am innocent“, he said. Without convincing the judges, who sentenced them to life imprisonment with 10 years of employment at the government. Ait Oud takes it, without showing any other emotions rather than impatience to be completed.

Court over these horrors? Not quite. In the following two weeks, Abdallah Ait Oud appealed to the Court of Cassation. He mentions the unfavorable climate which, according to him, prevailed during the trial. It is rejected. In May 2009, he turned to the European Court of Human Rights. He denies the lack of motivation for the judgement, without an application procedure and a media campaign that would have been criticized before the judgement. In vain, his appeal came too late!

Surprisingly, he found an unexpected friend in the person of Catherine Dizier, Nathalie’s mother. She believes that Ait Oud cannot have committed these atrocities alone and that there are still too many gray areas in the case. But if there are no new and important elements, this sad affair is definitively closed.