Girls Starved to Death in Suspected Sex Ring

BRUSSELS — Two 8-year-old girls, whose bodies were unearthed by Belgian police as part of a growing child sex scandal, starved to death in captivity, investigators said Sunday.

Discovery of the remains Saturday brought to seven the number of dead girls found after a series of disappearances in Belgium dating to 1989. Six other children are still missing, and two girls were rescued alive Thursday from a makeshift dungeon near Charleroi.

The abductions are believed to be related to an alleged child pornography ring in which six people have been detained after raids on several houses.

Prosecutor Michel Bourlet told a news conference Sunday that police had pooled the files on all 15 victims after one of the men arrested led them to the two girls’ corpses and confessed to more kidnappings.

Bourlet said Marc Dutroux, 39, an electrician, told investigators that Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, who disappeared together in June 1995 after going out to play together near their homes, died of starvation in early 1996.

Bourlet said Dutroux, who was detained by police on unrelated charges in December, said he returned home upon his release in February to find one of the girls dead and the other on the brink of death. Their bodies were found along with that of an adult, identified by police as a former associate of Dutroux.

Belgian police resumed their gruesome search for bodies Sunday in and around several houses owned by Dutroux, including the terraced house near Charleroi where Julie and Melissa’s bodies were found and the scene of Thursday’s dramatic rescue of Laetitia Delheze, 14, and Sabine Dardenne, 12, from a makeshift concrete dungeon.

The kidnapped girls were rescued after Dutroux showed police a hidden entrance to the underground prison that police had missed on two previous visits to the house. Both girls had been sexually abused.