Three Dead Babies Found in Coolers of Basement in Berlin

Nellie Bly · #1 05-07-2012, 02:37 AM

BERLIN—German prosecutors said Wednesday they have opened a probe following the grisly discovery of three dead babies in an apartment block and garage rented out to a 40-year-old woman.

Prosecutors and police in the western town of Giessen said two of the small corpses were found Tuesday in camping coolers in the basement of the apartment block during the clearing out of a flat that had been rented to the woman.

A third was found on Wednesday in another cooler in a garage used by her.

“The investigating authorities hope to clarify the exact circumstances of death with an autopsy,” police and prosecutors said in a joint statement.

“Only then will it be possible to provide information on the sex, age, time of death and possibly the cause of death.”

A spokeswoman for the local prosecutor’s office told AFP that as of late Wednesday no arrest warrant had been issued for the woman.

Germany has witnessed several similar cases in recent years, most notably a woman on the Polish border who was jailed for 15 years in 2006 for killing eight of her newborn babies and hiding the remains in flower pots and a fish tank.

And the flower pot/fish tank murderer:

BEIJING, April 8 (Xinhuanet) -- A German woman convicted of killing eight of her babies must serve the maximum 15 years in prison, a court ruled Monday.

Sabine Hilschenz, 42, was convicted in 2006 of killing eight of her newborn babies and burying them in flower pots and a fish tank in the garden of her parents' home near the German-Polish border.

The eight children were born between 1992 and 1998. Hilschenz also was suspected in the death of a ninth child in 1988, but the statute of limitations did not allow for that case to be tried.

After her original conviction on manslaughter charges in a state court in Frankfurt an der Oder, on the Polish border, she was given the maximum 15-year prison sentence.

But the Federal Court of Justice ruled last year that the lower court had not sufficiently considered the possibility of diminished capacity in making its recommendation, and sent the case back for reconsideration.

In its ruling Monday, the court in Frankfurt an der Oder said it found no grounds for the claim of diminished responsibility.

Hilschenz declined to testify at her original trial but said at a hearing this year that she had a serious problem with alcohol in the years when the children were born and could not remember how they died.

Her defense attorney had asked for a revised sentence of less than 10 years in prison.

15 years for 8 babies?!?!?!?!

Picture below of second woman and another article about it.

German Convicted Over Baby Deaths

Sabine Hilschenz said she was too drunk to remember the births
A German woman has been found guilty of the manslaughter of eight of her newborn babies. A ninth baby also died, but too long ago to allow prosecution.
Sabine Hilschenz, 40, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, the maximum jail term the court could give.

The bodies were found buried in a fish tank and in flower pots and buckets in her parents' garden in a village in east Germany, near the Polish border.

It is thought the babies were born and died between 1988 and 1998.
DNA tests had shown that Hilschenz and her ex-husband Oliver were the parents of all nine dead newborns.

'Appeal planned'

A jobless dental assistant, Hilschenz did not give evidence at her trial but had previously told investigators she did not harm the babies, but let them die after giving birth alone.

She said she already had three children, and her husband did not want any more babies.

Hilschenz had originally been charged with murder but the court reduced this to manslaughter before her trial began because it did not feel there was enough proof that she had tried to conceal her crimes.

Prosecutor Anette Bargenda said she planned to study the verdict in detail to see whether the court was right to decide against a murder conviction, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Hilschenz's lawyer said his client would appeal against the verdict .

"We don't know how long the children lived, my client can't remember burying or hiding the children, which brings up the question of whether someone else did it," Matthias Schoeneburg said.

'Could not remember'

Judge Matthias Fuchs told the state court in Frankfurt an der Oder: "We are convinced that the defendant committed manslaughter by neglect in eight cases".

He said Hilschenz committed the crimes because she "feared that her husband would leave her and take the children with him".

Judge Fuchs said the death of her first child in 1988 "formed the basis for what happened later", and she found it gradually easier to allow her other eight babies to die.

The court heard that Hilschenz told police that when she was pregnant for the fourth time, she gave birth to the baby in a toilet and the baby allegedly drowned.

She said she could not remember what happened with her other pregnancies because she had drunk large quantities of alcohol each time she went into labour, and did not know if the babies had been born dead or alive.

Her husband, relatives and neighbours all said they had been unaware of her pregnancies.

The bodies were discovered after a neighbour found human bones while clearing up Hilschenz parents' garage in Brieskow-Finkenheerd, in Brandenburg state.

The case has sparked intense media interest in Germany, with politicians arguing over whether it symbolises the breakdown of family values in depressed areas of the country's formerly communist east.