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Infanticide Shock

Police Discover Eight Dead Children

Germany is trying to make sense of two shocking finds: the corpses of five children in Schleswig-Holstein and three babies in Saxony. Both cases appear to be infanticide.

On the night of Dec. 5, German children typically put out their boots in anticipation of a nocturnal visit from the gift-giver St. Nicholas. This year, however, Dec. 5 brought surprises of a much more sinister nature to Germany.

Gruesome reports came in from Darry in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein and Plauen in the state of Saxony in eastern Germany. In Darry, a village of 450, the corpses of five young brothers were found; in the eastern town of Plauen, police discovered the two dead babies of a 28-year-old mother who had already been arrested last week after the discovery of the corpse of a child. While the cases are unrelated, the murders appear to be the work of the respective mothers.

"I haven't encountered a case like this in my entire career," senior state prosecutor Uwe Wick told SPIEGEL ONLINE in Darry. According to a police spokeswoman, it was the mother that tipped authorities off about the crime in Darry. She confided in a doctor who then contacted police. The corpses were found in the woman's single-family brick house on Wednesday afternoon.

Investigators were unwilling to confirm speculation that the mother had poisoned the children with pills before suffocating them with plastic bags. The time of death remains unknown but is thought to have been between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

"Based on what we know so far," a police spokesman told SPIEGEL ONLINE, "the motive is to be found in the mother's psychiatric illness." The 31-year-old woman who moved to Darry three months ago has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital and is, according to the state prosecutor, not yet fit for interrogation. On Thursday, she admitted to a doctor in the facility that she had killed the children with sleeping tablets. Wick said that she would remain in psychiatric care indefinitely. She is to be brought before a district judge on Thursday afternoon.

Local child protection authorities are said to have been observing the family for a while, as the children looked neglected and staff at their primary school had reported that they were coming to school without jackets or lunch.

The five young boys, aged three to nine, are said to have had two different fathers -- one in Berlin, the other in Schleswig Holstein -- neither of whom have commented on the case.

With no evident psychiatric illness or motive, the mother in Plauen presents a more perplexing case. 28-year old Susann F. was not the subject of local suspicion. In the pub next to her apartment building, regulars told SPIEGEL ONLINE, "She was very nice," and described the woman as attractive and always well-dressed.

Susann F. gave birth to her daughter Celine in 2002 in a local hospital, so the authorities were aware of the child's existence. In a routine procedure, the mother was summoned recently by school authorities to organize Celine's entrance into kindergarten. When the mother didn't show up for the appointment, school authorities notified the police. They found Celine's corpse in a suitcase in a relative's apartment last week.

On Wednesday, shortly after Susann F. was released from custody, police found a second baby's corpse, this time on a balcony. As the mother was being arrested again, a third dead baby was found in a freezer. Susann F. now faces three counts of manslaughter. Police have not ruled out the possibility of further finds.

Susann F. has denied responsibility for the deaths. She claims that the three babies all died suddenly, shortly after their births -- the second and third of which took place in private in 2004 and 2005. Susann F has moved nine times in recent years; investigators suspect she has taken the corpses with her each time.

In addition to the three dead babies, she is mother to two living sons -- one and seven years old respectively -- who have now been placed in the custody of relatives.

Autopsies of the five corpses in Darry and the three in Plauen are being conducted on Thursday.

Berlin's Senator of the Interior, Ehrhart Körting of the Social Democrats, expressed shock at the tragedies. "I'm appalled. But it would be dishonest to pretend that such things can be prevented politically."

nmb/dpa/AP

With reporting by Florian Gathmann and Jörg Diehl