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Freezer kids 'not stillborn'
06/06/2005 16:41 - (SA)
Graz - Two infants whose bodies were stuffed in a freezer at an apartment complex, where the remains of two other newborns were discovered entombed in cement-filled buckets were alive at birth, said authorities on Monday.
Peter Gruber, a spokesperson for the prosecutor's office in Graz said, autopsies performed on the remains of the infants whose bodies were frozen, eliminated the possibility that they had been stillborn.
He said: "Two of the children were alive at birth."
Gruber said a final autopsy report had not yet been completed, adding that further investigations into at least one of the bodies were needed.
It was reported that the autopsies were performed on Monday on the two bodies found last week, wrapped in plastic and stuffed into a chest freezer, shared by tenants of the building.
Mom, lover held for kids murder
Police said on Sunday that autopsies could not be done on the other two bodies, which were placed in plastic buckets later filled with cement, because they had deteriorated too much.
Authorities had detained the infants' 32-year-old mother and her 38-year-old male companion on suspicion of murder in the slayings and disposals, which stunned this usually tranquil alpine country.
Peter Roll of Graz's judicial medical institute said: "We hope that we can still determine the exact cause of death."
Investigators also planned to conduct DNA tests on the woman's companion to determine if he was the father.
Austrian television quoted 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 200km south of Vienna.
Cops probe pregnancies
Jud said police were checking two previous homes, where the unidentified mother lived to ensure no other bodies were hidden there.
Jud said: "We are trying to determine the woman's past. Where did she live? Who were her acquaintances? Did anybody know about the pregnancies? These are the questions we're trying to answer."
Siegfried Koeppel, a police official in charge of the murder investigation, said the woman would not say during questioning how many babies she had.
Koeppel said that while the two bodies sealed in cement could not be autopsied, a coroner was able to determine that the remains bore no signs of fractured bones.
The woman's companion had insisted he was unaware of the pregnancies and played no role in either the slayings or the disposal of the bodies, but authorities said they didn't believe it was possible because of the sheer number of births. The two lived together for eight years.
If tried and convicted of murder, the woman theoretically could face at least 10 years in prison, Austria's minimum standard sentence for homicide. Austria had no death penalty.
- AP
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