News: Mom arrested after killing eight infants

A woman on trial in one of Germany’s worst infanticide cases, involving eight dead babies, has confessed to killing several of them but said she could not remember how many.

The 45-year-old woman, identified as Andrea G, was charged with four of the murders after the babies’ remains were found wrapped in towels and plastic bags last year.

Asked on Tuesday how many of the eight she confessed to killing, G’s defence lawyer, Till Wagler, said: “It could have been two, three or four.”

Prosecutors were unable to pursue murder charges for the other four infants as one was found to have been stillborn and three were so badly decomposed it was unclear whether they were viable at birth.

The remains were uncovered in G’s apartment in the Bavarian town of Wallenfels.

The woman’s estranged husband, Johann G, 55, is charged with complicity for failing to stop the killings between 2003 and 2013.

In her confession, read out by her lawyer on Tuesday, the mother said she had given birth to each of the eight babies at home alone and had wrapped each child in a hand towel.She would promptly suffocate any baby that moved or cried, then place the body in a plastic bag or containers and hide it in the apartment, said Wagler.

The pair had each brought two children into the marriage, and the couple conceived three more surviving children together, the court heard.

Even though they did not want any more children, they used no contraceptives. State prosecutors in their charge sheet said her actions showed “sexual egoism, indifference and callousness”.

They added: “She sought simply to remain sexually active without any thought about the consequences or the value of a newborn child.”

Taking the stand on Tuesday, her now estranged husband described the mother as a chronic liar and compulsive shopper who stole from her mother and her children.

He said he moved out in October, a month before police uncovered the babies’ remains in their apartment after being alerted by a nearby resident.

In Germany, murder carries a sentence of 15 years’ prison, while complicity carries a minimum of three years. A verdict is expected next Wednesday.

Germany has been shocked by several infanticide cases in recent years. In May a woman was sentenced to 44 months in prison for killing two of her children and hiding their remains in a freezer.

In October 2013, construction workers in Bavaria found the remains of two babies, dead since the 1980s. And in 2008 a 42-year-old woman was convicted of killing eight of her newborn babies and hiding their bodies in buckets, flowerpots and an old fish tank.