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VILLERS-AU-TERTRE (France): A French nursing assistant admitted on Thursday suffocating eight of her newborn babies and stashing their tiny bodies in plastic bags in a quiet village, officials said.
Dominique Cottrez, 45, was charged with the murders after telling police "she did not want any more children and did not want to see a doctor to get contraception," said local prosecutor Eric Vaillant.
Cottrez's husband Pierre-Marie Cottrez, also 45, was freed after denying any knowledge of the killings which came to light when police found skeletal remains wrapped in plastic at two village addresses.
His wife, whose heavy build appears to have concealed the pregnancies from acquaintances, now faces trial and life imprisonment.
Investigators said she had confessed to suffocating the babies shortly after birth and concealing the bodies from her husband. The father told officers he had never suspected his wife was pregnant.
In past cases in France some defendants have said they were in denial about their pregnancies and not fully responsible for their actions, but Vaillant said Cottrez had admitted to being "perfectly aware" of her condition.
Stunned residents of the pair's quiet village of Villers-au-Tertre in northern France put flowers and candles outside the two houses where police had found the infants' bodies over the previous few days.
Prosecutors described it as the worst case of infanticide in recent French history, following a string of similar cases in which isolated and troubled mothers disposed of their newborns.
The suspects were brought before a magistrate in the nearby town of Douai to hear the charges.
Pierre-Marie Cottrez worked as a carpenter and was a respected member of the council in Villers-au-Tertre, a 620-strong community.
"He's on his third term in office. He used to volunteer in the community. He's a respectable man," local mayor Patrick Mercier told reporters.
Mercier said the councillor's wife was a more withdrawn person who rarely took part in village life. He said she had a weight problem which might be the reason why any pregnancies had passed unnoticed.
"No-one was aware of anything at all," said the shocked mayor.
The pair were arrested on Tuesday and questioned all day Wednesday while police used sniffer dogs to search two addresses after the new owners of a home found the bones of two infants while digging in their garden.
The house previously belonged to the parents of the arrested woman.
Search teams then headed on to the couple's current home in another part of the village, where six more sets of remains were found inside the building, a local councillor told reporters.
Gendarmes were deployed outside one of the houses where the bodies were found, and sealed off the entrance to the macabre scene with plastic sheeting.
"I'm thinking of all the children in the world. I'm thinking of all the children who didn't ask to be born and were thrown out a few hours later," said local priest Father Robert Meignotte.
"I'm very upset. I baptise five children every Sunday in the 17 villages of the parish. You don't just throw children out like that in a big bag. It's incomprehensible," he said.
"I'm still in shock," said a former mayor of Villers-au-Tertre, Daniel Collignon, describing the village as a very calm and rural place and echoing the sentiments of many local people.
The couple had lived in the village for 15 years and had two grown-up daughters who have children themselves. Neither showed any sign of unusual behaviour, local residents said.
The incident follows a string of similar cases in France.
Earlier this year a mother was convicted of killing six of her newborn children and hiding them in the cellar of her house in northwestern France.
Another notorious recent case was of a mother who was jailed in June last year for smothering two boys born in secret at her expatriate home in South Korea, and a third child born in France, and hiding them in a freezer.
ruines the day to read this kind of stuff
