March 27, 2013
AMBERIEU, France (AFP) - A 32-year-old Frenchwoman has admitting drowning two of her own new-born children, a prosecutor said Tuesday after infant corpses were found in a freezer at her home.
The woman, identified as Ms C., has been in custody since Sunday, when her partner called officers to the house in the small town of Amberieu in eastern France after discovering one of the frozen bodies.
"She has said that she killed the two babies by drowning and that both of them were born alive," the prosecutor in charge of the case, Denis Mondon, told reporters.
The babies were both boys and died in autumn 2011 and autumn 2012 respectively, according to the woman's confession, the prosecutor said.
If autopsies confirm that the babies were drowned alive, Ms C. will be charged with aggravated murder as she had a previous conviction for infanticide.
She was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2005 for killing a baby she had given birth to in 2002 after a concealed pregnancy. Having been held for three years
before her trial, she ended up serving eight years of her sentence before being released in 2010.
In that case, the woman's mother was convicted of helping her daughter to dispose of the body, which was placed in a sack and dumped in an derelict house.
Neighbours described Ms. C as cheerful and amiable and said she had a young son.
By coincidence, details of the macabre freezer case emerged on the same day that the corpse of a baby aged less than one week was discovered by a dog in a flower bed at Pantin in the suburbs of Paris.
