BRUSSELS – Hungarian-born clergyman Andras Pandy, nicknamed the „diabolical pastor“, was jailed for life on Wednesday for the macabre sex murders of two wives and four children in a case that riveted Belgium. Pandy‘s eldest daughter Agnes, 44, received a 21-year prison sentence for helping her father kill her mother, stepmother, one sister and two brothers, slice up their bodies and dissolve them

in caustic acid. No trace of the bodies has been found. Presiding judge Karel Demyttenaere said the two had „very dangerous, antisocial personalities“ and showed no respect for their victims, whom they had murdered in a cruel manner.

After deliberating for seven hours, a jury on Tuesday found Pandy, 74, guilty on six counts of premeditated murder. It also convicted him of raping three of his daughters. „It‘s a logical sentence,“ Pandy‘s lawyer Hein Diependaele said. „There‘s little else the jury could do, given the nature of the convictions.“ In Belgium, the jury deliberates on the sentence with the judge. The lighter sentence for Agnes took into account her claims that she had come under psychological pressure from Pandy and was sexually abused by him. She was absent when Pandy killed her sister. „Twenty one years is and remains a long time,“ Walter Muls, Agnes‘s lawyer, told reporters after the ruling. „The blow hit her very hard.“

During the two-week trial, Pandy lashed out against the „witch trial“ and compared himself to Alfred Dreyfus, victim of France‘s most famous miscarriage of justice. The Protestant minister and his daughter were found guilty of using hammers and a gun to slay the six victims. Pandy, who was arrested and questioned about the disappearance of his relatives in 1997, has always dismissed the charges against him, claiming his family were alive and well somewhere in Hungary. He said he was in touch with them „through angels“. The case against the Pandys was largely based on Agnes‘s November 1997 confession. Controversial to the end, Pandy told the court minutes before it retired to deliberate on his sentence that the trial had seen the triumph of „fallacy“ over „authenticity“. Reuters