'Babies found in flowerpots'
2005-08-02 13:22
Berlin - A German mother accused of killing nine of her newborn babies over nearly two decades has told investigators that she cannot remember all of the births, police said on Tuesday.
In a case that shocked the country and raised troubling questions about social cohesion in a depressed corner of ex-communist east Germany, Sabine H, 39, stands accused of murdering the infants soon after giving birth to them between 1998 and 2004.
Spokesperson Peter Salender of the police in the city of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder on the Polish border said she had shown severe memory gaps during questioning, remembering the births of some of the children but unable to recall others.
"We are going to need a long time to interrogate her," he said.
Salender said she had neither admitted to nor denied the charges against her, which were filed late on Monday.
"We are gradually getting a picture of what happened," he said.
An acquaintance of Sabine H's sister and brother-in-law discovered tiny human bones in an old aquarium on Sunday in a shed he was asked to clear out in the town of Brieskow-Finkenheerd, about 10km south of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder.
He alerted police, who then unearthed the remains of eight other babies hidden in flowerboxes and pots in the shed and in buckets buried under sand and dirt.
Police resumed the search of the grounds on Tuesday ahead of a police news conference scheduled for 12:00.
Media reports said that Sabine H, who is the mother of four living children aged 20, 19, 18 and one and a half, is pregnant again.
"We are checking into that," Salender said.
Neighbours said Sabine, who usually wore her dark hair in a ponytail, usually gave them a friendly smile when she saw them but generally kept to herself.
Authorities expressed horror at what appears to be the worst case of child murder in German post-war history.
"We are faced with a crime whose scope, in my memory, we have never seen in the history of the federal republic," said Brandenburg state interior minister Joerg Schoenbohm.
"We must ask ourselves how this unbelievable crime remained hidden all these years."