Post-mortems begin on Austrian freezer babies

Authorities today began performing post-mortems on two of the four murdered infants whose bodies were found at an apartment complex in the southern Austrian city of Graz.

The post-mortems were being done on the two bodies found last week wrapped in plastic and stuffed into a freezer shared by tenants of the building. Police said yesterday that post-mortems could not be done on the other two bodies, which were entombed in plastic buckets 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 in the murders and disposals, which stunned the usually tranquil alpine country.

“We hope that we can still determine the exact cause of death,” said Peter Roll of Graz’s judicial medical institute, who was overseeing the forensic probe.

Investigators were also conducting DNA tests on the woman’s companion to determine if he was the father.

Austrian television quoted police Lt. Col. Werner Jud as saying authorities could not rule out the possibility of finding more bodies on the premises of the apartment complex in Graz, about 120 miles south of Vienna.

Jud said police were checking two previous homes where the unidentified mother lived to ensure no other bodies were hidden there.