Freezer babies ‘alive at birth’

TWO infants whose bodies were stuffed in a freezer at an Austrian apartment complex where the remains of two other newborns were discovered entombed in cement-filled buckets were alive at birth, authorities said yesterday.

Autopsies performed on the remains of the infants whose bodies were frozen eliminated the possibility that they had been stillborn, said Peter Gruber, a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office in the southern Austrian city of Graz.

“Two of the children were alive at birth,” he said.

A final autopsy report has not yet been completed, Mr Gruber said, adding that further investigations into at least one of the bodies were needed. The autopsies were performed on the two bodies found last week wrapped in plastic and stuffed into a chest freezer shared by tenants of the building.

Police said yesterday that autopsies could not be done on the other two bodies, which were placed in plastic buckets later filled with cement, because they had deteriorated too much.

Authorities have detained the infants’ 32-year-old mother and her 38-year-old male companion on suspicion of murder and disposals, which stunned this usually tranquil alpine country.

Investigators also planned to conduct DNA tests on the woman’s companion to determine if he was the father. Lieutenant Colonel Werner Jud said authorities could not rule out the possibility of finding more bodies on the premises.