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German police search for woman after discovery of dead babies
German police search for woman after discovery of eight dead babies
(about 9 hours later)
German police are searching for a 45-year-old woman after discovering the decomposing corpses of about seven newborn babies in a house in Bavaria.
German police said on Friday they had found the bodies of eight babies in an apartment in the state of Bavaria, in what could be one of the country’s worst infanticide cases.
The bodies were in such a bad state of decay that forensic experts said it was impossible to be precise about how many had been found.
A 45-year-old woman believed to be the children’s mother was later arrested, along with a 55-year-old man, local police said.
The alarm was raised by a neighbour in the town of Wallenfels on Thursday. After finding one corpse, the neighbour called an ambulance. A doctor subsequently discovered further corpses.
Police in the small town of Wallenfels said they were alerted on Thursday by a resident who found an infant’s body in the apartment.
It is believed that the sought woman – identified only as Andrea G – is the mother of the babies, although police said they had no confirmation of this. “We’re at least searching for her as if she were the mother of the children,” a police spokeswoman said.
When officers arrived, they uncovered several other bodies, wrapped in hand towels and placed in plastic bags.
The spokeswoman said postmortems were being carried out on the remains, and the results – including how the babies died, their ages and sexes – would probably be known early next week.
Forensic examinations of the corpses, police said, could take time “due to the poor condition” of some bodies, with no result expected before early next week.
The bodies were discovered locked in a disused sauna-turned-store cupboard, wrapped in towels and airtight plastic bags, the spokeswoman said.
The bodies were discovered locked in a disused sauna-turned-store cupboard, the spokeswoman said.
Germany has seen a string of infanticide cases over the last decade, which have raised questions about whether support for women and families is sufficient, and why women who may need help over issues of pregnancy and motherhood are not seeking it.
German daily newspaper Bild reported that a former resident of the apartment had lived there with her husband for 18 years, and that the couple had three children. But the woman also had four other children from other relationships, it said, adding that she had sought to hide her frequent pregnancies.
Andrea G had lived in the house for 18 years and is believed to be the owner of the property. Shocked residents of Wallenfels, which has a population of 2,800, told German media that she had often been pregnant, but that had not attracted any suspicion as she was a “good and caring mother” to her other children.
It quoted an unnamed source saying the woman had had four miscarriages.
Wallenfell’s mayor, Jens Korn, told Focus magazine: “I’m completely flabbergasted. We are a small, lively community with 2,800 residents, all of whom know each other. We are very distraught, and are of course all asking each other: might we have done something? Might we have helped in some way?”
She moved out in late September after a row with her husband, Bild said, adding that while drunk, the woman had spoken of hiding babies’ bodies at home.
He told Bavarian Broadcasting that the family – a couple whoboth had children from previous relationships – were “very normal”. The man was deeply involved in the local community; the woman is believed to have worked at the local swimming baths.
The claim was overheard by a neighbour, who began looking for the bodies and alerted police when she made a macabre find, Bild said.
A media throng gathered outside the whitewashed house on Friday, where children’s paper cutouts could be seen in the windows, and a Santa Claus figure by the door. Neighbours said the woman had left at the end of September, and they believed she had moved in with a new partner. Police said they had so far been unable to find her in her new home.
The suspect reportedly worked at a newspaper kiosk, and in the summer as a swimming-pool lifeguard.
The police spokeswoman said that owing to the state and number of the corpses it would “take some time” to reach any conclusions. A criminal investigation has been launched involving scores of police officers. “There are still many people we need to speak to and lots of searches that need to be carried out,” the spokeswoman said.
A neighbour described her as a “nice person” who took good care of her children, according to newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. From the street, cheery children’s artwork could be seen taped to the apartment windows.
A neighbour told the tabloid Bild that the scenes of the dead bodies were so appalling, “we will never ever divulge what we have seen here”.
Germany has seen a string of infanticide cases in Germany over the last decade which have raised questions about whether support for women and families is sufficient, and why women who may need help over issues of pregnancy and motherhood are not seeking it
The Wallenfells discovery is just the latest of many cases involving attempts to cover up infanticide. In July 2005 the corpses of nine babies were discovered in Brieskow-Finkenheerd, in the state of Brandenburg. The mother, who had four other children, was an alcoholic and had given birth to the babies between 1988 and 1998. She had killed them through neglect and buried their remains in plant pots. She was later sentenced to 15 years in prison for murder.
The mayor of Wallenfels, Jens Korn, expressed shock at the discovery, telling news channel N24 that “this little town where everyone knows each other is asking: ‘Could we have done something?’.”
In March 2013 a mother in the state of Schleswig Holstein was sentenced to nine years in prison for murdering five babies immediately after birth. One of the dead was found in a paper recycling plant in 2006; another the following year in a car park. The woman was not arrested until 2012, when a DNA test confirmed she was the babies’ mother. She subsequently showed police where she had hidden three more in her cellar.
He told Bavarian Broadcasting that the family – a couple who both had children from previous relationships – were “very normal”. The man was deeply involved in the local community.
In 2009 four dead babies were discovered in a block of flats in Berlin. Their mother had jumped to her death from the house months before.
Germany has seen several infanticide cases in recent years.
There are no official statistics on infanticide in Germany, but the children’s charity Terre des Hommes says its own research showed at least 202 newborns were killed between 2006 and 2014.
In May, a woman was sentenced to 44 months in prison for killing two of her children and hiding them in a freezer.
In October 2013, in Bavaria, construction workers found the bodies of two babies, dead since the 1980s.
And in 2008, a 42-year-old woman was convicted of killing eight of her newborn babies, then hiding their bodies in buckets, flower pots and an old fish tank.
Some parts of the country use “baby hatches” to enable women to hand newborns over to the authorities in complete anonymity, in the hope that this will reduce cases of infanticide.
Some parts of the country use “baby hatches” to enable women to hand newborns over to the authorities in complete anonymity, in the hope that this will reduce cases of infanticide.
