On June 22 2004 MARC DUTROUX was sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of kidnapping, raping and murdering girls. He was arrested in 1996 and his crimes have haunted Belgium ever since. Dutroux was found guilty of kidnapping and raping six girls; two eight-year old girls died of starvation in a dungeon below his house in Charleroi and the bodies of two other girls were dug up in his back yard. They had been drugged, gagged and buried alive. The judge jailed Dutroux' ex-wife Michelle Martin for thirty years and heroin addict Michel Lelievre to twenty-five years for their roles in these crimes. It is believed that Dutroux was part of a large paedophile ring whose members included some influential public figures in Belgian society. But the whole affair begs the question: Why do murder cases on the Continent take so long to come to their conclusions?
MARC PAUL ALAIN DUTROUX: 6 November 1956; Ixelles, Belgium (50N50 004E22); 07.35 am MET (06.35 GMT); Grazia Bordoni, from birth certificate.
MARLON BRANDO, often regarded as the finest actor of his generation, died on the 1st July 2004. Following his success in the original stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire he embarked on a successful film career in such prestige productions as Julius Caesar (as Mark Antony), Guy and Dolls and On The Waterfront, for which he won an Oscar. However, by the time he made Mutiny On The Bounty in 1962, he had alienated many people in the film business with his "prima donna" attitude, and for the next ten years he was box-office poison. In the early 1970s Brando made a successful comeback with The Godfather (winning a second Oscar) and Last Tango In Paris, but many of his later films saw him in small parts for very high fees, e.g. Superman and Apocalypse Now. Problems with family members and his weight hastened his decline. One cannot help feeling that Brando's career never quite fulfilled its early promise.
On the night of 16th May 1990, CHRISTIAN DEVI BRANDO, Marlon's son by his former wife Anna Kashfi, shot dead a Tahitian man named Dag Drollet. The two had been arguing (and drinking) over whether Drollet had been beating Christian's pregnant sister, aged twenty at the time. On January 1991, Christian Brando pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to ten years in prison, although he only served a few years.
>MARLON BRANDO: 3rd April 1924; Omaha, Nebraska (41N17 096W01); 11.00pm CST (4th April 05.00 GMT). The Gauquelin Book of American Charts, from birth certificate.
CHRISTIAN DEVI BRANDO: 11th May 1958; Los Angeles (34N04 118W15); 7.36pm PDT (12th May 02.36 GMT); Frank Clifford quotes birth certificate. (Previously, astrologer Dana Halliday had quoted Brando For Breakfast by Anna Kashfi, Brando p 123, for 7.30pm.)
Last time in this feature, I gave the birth details of Christopher Isherwood who was born one hundred years ago. Another great British writer born in that same year was GRAHAM GREENE. Despair and failure are prime ingredients of his novels, and his protagonists are often faced with moral dilemmas. He called the dominant theme of his books "the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God" and this can be seen as early as 1938 in Brighton Rock with its seedy gangsters and the destruction of innocence. Greene converted to Roman Catholicism in 1926 and spent the rest of his life struggling with his faith; his novels address the agonies and doubts of religion, forever questioning the meaning of good and evil. His works include The Power and the Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948), The Third Man (1950) and The Honorary Consul (1973); these and others were made into successful films. Graham Greene died on 3rd April 1991, having spent much of his life in the South of France. (His younger brother Hugh Carlton-Greene [1910-1987] was Director-general of the BBC, receiving a knighthood in 1964.)
GRAHAM GREENE: 2nd October 1904; Berkhampstead (51N46 000W35); 10.20am GMT. The Life of Graham Greene by N Sherry, "as recorded by mother in his baby book".