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'How could no one see?'
03/08/2005 14:51 - (SA)
Berlin - Police investigating the suspected worst case of infanticide in German post-war history said they were searching on Wednesday for further possible remains, days after the discovery of nine dead newborns.
Officers with sniffer dogs were combing the property in the eastern town of Brieskow-Finkenheerd, where the tiny bones of the nine infants were unearthed on Sunday, as well as former apartments of their mother, who has been charged in their deaths.
A police spokesperson in the city of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder on the Polish border, where the 39-year-old suspect identified by as Sabine H lived, said they were focusing on a flat in the nearby city of Eisenhuettenstadt.
Mom 'only has spotty memories'
The public prosecutor's office said the mother was still being questioned after telling investigators she had only spotty memories of giving birth to the children, while heavily intoxicated between 1988 and 1999 and leaving at least one to die under a blanket.
Sabine H, who said her estranged husband whom she finally divorced in May fathered all the children, said she stored the corpses in flower boxes and pots on her balcony before depositing them in a family shed.
Pathologists were still trying to determine the infants' cause of death.
Authorities had initially said the births had taken place over a 16-year period, but new findings from the mothers' interrogation revealed a nearly unbroken cycle of pregnancies and deaths.
Investigators were also speaking with acquaintances and relatives of the suspect, who was also the mother of four living children.
Small human bones found
An acquaintance of Sabine H's sister and brother-in-law discovered the small human bones in an old aquarium on Sunday in the family shed after being asked to clear it out.
He told the police, who then uncovered the remains of eight other babies hidden in flower boxes and pots in the shed and in buckets buried under sand and earth.
State interior minister Joerg Schoenbohm blamed the legacy of communist East Germany, saying it had broken down societal structures leading citizens to turn a blind eye to violence and suffering.
He said: "This unbelievable indifference is what strikes me the most.
"I cannot understand how no one saw that this woman was in a critical situation and needed help. What were the parents doing, the neighbours?"
- AFP
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