Dutch woman held after remains of three babies found
Police said they searched the woman’s house in a rural village in the north and found four suitcases in the attic, three of which contained the remains of babies. It is not yet known what is in the fourth suitcase.
Police say suspicions were raised when a resident alerted police, saying there was uncertainty about the births. The woman had said she gave the children up for adoption, but later confessed to putting their bodies in suitcases.
“She could not give a plausible explanation over the pregnancies and the babies that were born.
“She was then arrested on August 4 in consultation with the public prosecution as a suspect and a search was conducted in the parental home,” police commissioner Wim van Essen said at a news conference.
It is not yet clear whether the babies were born alive, Leeuwarden prosecutor Annette Bronsvoort told the same news conference, held at the Leeuwarden court.
“It is terrible, the village is in shock,” said a local resident in the village of Nij Beets, about 140km northeast of Amsterdam, who declined to be named.
“The woman is very well-known in the village,” he added by telephone.
The police commissioner said the woman’s parents, who live at the same address, had been moved out of the house while the police search continued.
They say they were not aware of the pregnancies and are not suspects in the case, police said.
“This event has had an enormous impact in the community,” Francisca Ravestein, the local regional mayor said.
“It affects us very deeply,” said one local businessman.
Last month, a 47-year-old French woman confessed to suffocating eight of her new-born babies and hiding their bodies.
