farrell
01-06-2009, 07:43 PM
7:29am UK, Tuesday December 02, 2008
A German mother has been jailed for killing two of her baby daughters and storing their bodies in the family freezer for up to 20 years.
Monika Halbe's horrific crimes were only discovered when her teenage son found a corpse while searching for a pizza.
She was not tried in connection with the body of a third baby girl, also found in the freezer, because she died more than 20 years ago meaning the case had expired.
Incredibly Halbe's husband and three grown-up children were unaware of the pregnancies.
Halbe, 44, told her lawyers that she kept the children in the freezer because she "wanted to have the babies near her".
She killed them - between 1986 and 2007 - by suffocating them or through neglect, the court was told.
She was jailed for four years and three months after she was found guilty of the manslaughter of two of the babies at Siegen state court.
Prosecutors had demanded eight-and-a-half years.
Halbe admitted hiding the children at the house in Wenden, northwest of Frankfurt, but denied killing them.
Her lawyer Andreas Bartholome asked that his client be acquitted or given a suspended jail sentence.
He said Halbe, who already had three children, did not want the babies, was terrified of doctors and was an alcoholic.
"She was not afraid of the babies being found," Mr Bartholome said.
A German mother has been jailed for killing two of her baby daughters and storing their bodies in the family freezer for up to 20 years.
Monika Halbe's horrific crimes were only discovered when her teenage son found a corpse while searching for a pizza.
She was not tried in connection with the body of a third baby girl, also found in the freezer, because she died more than 20 years ago meaning the case had expired.
Incredibly Halbe's husband and three grown-up children were unaware of the pregnancies.
Halbe, 44, told her lawyers that she kept the children in the freezer because she "wanted to have the babies near her".
She killed them - between 1986 and 2007 - by suffocating them or through neglect, the court was told.
She was jailed for four years and three months after she was found guilty of the manslaughter of two of the babies at Siegen state court.
Prosecutors had demanded eight-and-a-half years.
Halbe admitted hiding the children at the house in Wenden, northwest of Frankfurt, but denied killing them.
Her lawyer Andreas Bartholome asked that his client be acquitted or given a suspended jail sentence.
He said Halbe, who already had three children, did not want the babies, was terrified of doctors and was an alcoholic.
"She was not afraid of the babies being found," Mr Bartholome said.