Police investigating Belgium's most notorious pedophile murder case traced a collection of child pornography to a Florida man who was arrested on in 2000 on charges of operating an online child pornography site. Wayne Camolli was arrested on child pornography charges after customs and other federal agents obtained a warrant to search his home and seized a computer and numerous videocassette tapes. The home was filled with so much rotting garbage, trash and cat feces that the agents had to borrow oxygen masks and hazardous materials suits from the county fire department to carry out the search. Acting on information from the Belgians, US investigators e-mailed Camolli and were given access to an online bulletin board allegedly run from Camolli's home computer and containing a large amount of child pornography. According to Reuters, the child porn that the Belgians traced to Florida was seized from Felix DeConinck, a suspect in the kidnapping and molestation of a 14-year-old girl. DeConinck in turn had links to Marc Dutroux, a convicted child rapist who is awaiting trial on charges of abducting, raping, torturing and murdering four young girls in Belgium in 1996. Two other victims were found drugged and abused but still alive in a makeshift dungeon in one of several houses he owned. US officials could not elaborate on the connection between DeConinck and Dutroux, but said they were part of the same “child pornography, molestation and murder investigation” in Belgium.
Dutroux, 47, went on trial March 1, 2004, on the charges of kidnapping and raping the six girls and killing four of them in a case that traumatized Belgium and discredited its police and judiciary. Local media have dubbed the trial of Dutroux, the country's trial of the century. The former electrician kept the girls in cells in his basement. He has admitted abducting and confining them in the mid-1990's, but denied killing them. He was sentenced to the maximum sentence, life imprisonment. His ex-wife, Michelle Martin, was sentenced to 30 years for her role int he girls' kidnappings and deaths.
(Belgium)