Mother too drunk to remember how nine newborn babies died

A WOMAN suspected of killing nine of her newborn children told German investigators she gave birth to them in secret, but cannot remember how they died because she was always drunk during labour, officials said yesterday.

The 39-year-old woman, identified only as Sabine H, was arrested on Sunday on suspicion of manslaughter after police found the nine tiny bodies in flower pots and a fish tank in a village near the Polish border.

Investigators said the woman cracked under interrogation but it remained unclear how, why or by whom the children were killed in what is believed to be Germany’s worst infanticide.

“She says she can’t remember how they were killed because she drank heavily when the contractions began,” prosecutor Annette Bargenda said.

She said the woman believed the children were born between 1988 and 1999. In at least seven of the cases, the woman “knows she put a covering over each child.”

“She said she woke or sobered up only after the children were already buried,” Ms Bargenda said.

Police uncovered the bodies after a worker found human bones in the sand-filled fish tank behind the woman’s parents’ house.

The woman, who was arrested at her home in the nearby city of Frankfurt an der Oder, initially denied any knowledge of the containers or their grisly contents, but later talked “extensively” to interrogators, Ms Bargenda said.

She insisted she had given birth to the children alone and in secret, taking advantage of the long absences of her estranged ex-husband, from whom she has been divorced since May.

The woman claimed her ex-husband was the father of all the infants found dead, though police said that was under investigation. Prosecutors said the ex-husband, who lives with the estranged couple’s three adult children, denied any knowledge of the pregnancies.

The case follows the recent discovery of several dead newborns in Germany, including one at a recycling plant and another with its throat cut, as well as arrests in Austria in another grisly case.

German media gave the latest find prominent coverage, with the best-selling Bild newspaper topping its front page with ‘Germany’s most gruesome mother’ next to a picture of Sabine H. The paper suggested the woman had drifted into a dissolute lifestyle after falling out with her husband.

Police said they reported her to social services after intervening in a drunken row at her home in June and seeing a dirty, poorly-clothed child.

Still, officials were at a loss to explain how the pregnancies and the babies’ bodies went unnoticed so long.