Austrian police find bodies of newborns in freezer

Police in Austria said today they discovered the bodies of several newborn children in the freezer of an apartment building in the south of the country, and issued a warrant for the arrest of a woman suspected in the deaths.

The bodies were found in the freezer in Graz, about 120 miles south of Vienna, Austrian television reported. Authorities approved an arrest warrant, and a manhunt was under way for the 32-year-old suspect, police said.

It was unclear how many bodies the freezer contained or what the ages of the infants were.

Graz’s Kleine Zeitung newspaper reported today that one of the bodies had been discovered on Monday by a resident of a multi-family apartment block when the person opened a freezer shared by the building’s occupants.

The newspaper said at least one more body was found, and Austrian television quoted investigators as saying police were trying to determine whether the infants had been stillborn or killed before their bodies were placed in the freezer.

Post mortems were held, but results had not been released as of this morning, officials said.

The Austria Press Agency cited unidentified police officials as saying investigators who examined the initial evidence at the scene suspected the infants had been killed before the remains were frozen.