According to Atlas Obscura, a bridge in Belgium remains standing as an unintended memorial to the nation's most notorious crime. The L22 bridge near Liège Airport is functionally obsolete—no longer connected to anything on its north side—but stands preserved. On June twenty-fourth, nineteen ninety-five, two seven-year-old girls, Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo, left this bridge to head home and were abducted by Marc Dutroux. The case transformed Belgium: the national gendarmerie was abolished, and Child Focus was created to combat child abductions. Today, the Pont du Souvenir—Bridge of Remembrance—has been retrofitted with license-plate readers and toll detectors, giving it renewed purpose while keeping the memory of Julie and Mélissa alive.

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