A German mother admitted some responsibility Tuesday in the deaths of nine of her new-born babies over a 16-year period but said she could recall few details as she had been drinking at the time.
In a case that shocked the country and raised troubling questions about social cohesion in a depressed corner of ex-Communist eastern Germany, Sabine H., 39, stands accused of murdering the infants soon after giving birth to them between 1998 and 2004.
State prosecutor Anette Bargenda in Frankfurt-an-der-Oder on the Polish border told a televised news conference that "the accused said she gave birth to the children alone and without any help".
The mother had "only given vague information" on the deaths of the children and said that she only remembered the first two births specifically because she had been drunk during all the others to dull the pain of her contractions.
Bargenda said the mother had then hidden the corpses in flower pots on her balcony and had even moved house several times with them before storing them in a shed belonging to relatives in Brieskow-Finkenheerd, about 10 kilometers (six miles) south of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder.
She said Sabine H. had appeared to be relieved and "happy that the case was discovered". Investigators are now using DNA testing to determine whether, as the suspect claimed, all the children were fathered by her estranged husband.
The mother said he was unaware of any of the pregnancies and had often lived apart from her before their divorce became final in May.
Police spokesman Peter Salender said she had initially shown severe memory gaps during questioning, remembering the births of some of the infants but unable to recall others.
"We are going to need a long time to interrogate her," he said. "We are gradually getting a picture of what happened."
An acquaintance of Sabine H.'s sister and brother-in-law discovered tiny human bones in an old aquarium Sunday in the family shed after being asked to clear it out.
He alerted police, who then unearthed the remains of eight other babies hidden in flower boxes and pots in the shed and in buckets buried under sand and dirt.
Police officers with sniffer dogs were searching the grounds and the woman's apartment Tuesday while detectives questioned neighbours and relatives.
Media reports said that Sabine H., who is the mother of four living children aged 20, 19, 18 and one and a half, is pregnant again.
"We are checking into that," a police spokesman said.
She bore the three oldest children while married to her first husband Oliver, who according to the mass-selling Bild newspaper was active in the East German Stasi secret police.
A friend of Sabine's told Bild that the nine subsequent babies were fathered by various men, some of whom were one-night stands she met at a local bar, which would contradict what Sabine told police.
Two years ago, she was evicted from her home in Frankfurt-an-der-Oder and lived in a trailer in Brieskow-Finkenheerd, on the property where the babies' remains were found.
She then met a new boyfriend, Bernd, and moved with him back to Frankfurt. He is the father of her young daughter Isabell, who has been in foster care for three months, and told Bild he knew nothing about her previous life.
Neighbours said Sabine, who usually wore her dark hair in a ponytail, gave them a friendly smile when she saw them but generally kept herself to herself.
Sabine trained as a dental hygienist but has been unemployed for several years. Bernd told Berlin's daily Tagesspiegel that the two of them lived on the dole and liked to drink.
Authorities expressed horror at what appears to be the worst case of infanticide in German post-war history.
"We are faced with a crime whose scope, in my memory, we have never seen in the history of the federal republic," said Brandenburg state interior minister Joerg Schoenbohm.
"We must ask ourselves how this unbelievable crime remained hidden all these years."
Comments
Comments are closed.