Babies Found in Freezer of German Family

A woman handed herself in to police yesterday after her teenage son discovered three baby corpses in the family freezer in western Germany.

The 44-year-old, identified only as Monika H, was arrested by police who have charged her with manslaughter in what may be the latest case in a wave of infanticide to hit the country.

Forensic experts in Dortmund were defrosting the babies yesterday. They said they expected to carry out postmortems at the earliest today.

The discovery was made on Saturday when the woman's son went to the freezer in the cellar of the family home in the town of Wenden, near Olpe, to fetch a pizza while his parents were out.

He stumbled across three plastic bags containing what police described as the corpses of newborn babies.

"He realized that most of the food was out of date," said Herbert Finger hut of the Hagen murder investigation department. "He dug down to the bottom of the freezer and stumbled across a bag which was open and through the opening he could see the head and the arm of a baby."

The teenager then found a further two bodies, one of which was wrapped in a tea towel, another in a newspaper dating from 1988. He and his 24-year-old sister, a student, confronted their parents with the find when they returned home.

Monika H and her unnamed 47-year-old husband, an electrician, went to the police station with their daughter. Monika H, who has three children aged between 18 and 24, was said to be in a state of shock and as yet unable to face questioning.

The family said it failed to notice when she had been pregnant in the past. "This is not as far-fetched as it sounds because she had a robust figure," Finger hut said.