Mother sentenced over baby deaths
July 20, 2016
The regional court in Coburg, northern Bavaria, on Wednesday sentenced the 45-year-old woman to 14 years jail for four counts of homicide. The woman stood accused of killing several of her newborn children over a number of years.
The corpses of eight infants were discovered in November 2015, in a house the couple had lived in. The bodies had been wrapped in towels and were decaying.
The prosecution had requested a life sentence on four counts of murder and a declaration of the gravity of the offense. Three of the corpses were so severely decomposed that prosecutors could not establish with certainty whether the babies had been born alive or not. One of the babies appeared to have been stillborn.
The woman's husband, the father of the children, was acquitted on charges of accessory to murder.
At the time the bodies were discovered, the mayor of Wallenfels, Jens Korn, was reported by German news website Focus Online as saying the small, close-knit community was "very emotional" over the incident.
se/kms (AFP, dpa)