In 2010, the bodies of two newborns led to the discovery of the worst case of infanticide in modern French history. The Daily News reports that 51-year-old Dominique Cottrez hid her pregnancies from her husband, Pierre-Marie, and suffocated her eight newborns between 1989 and 2007.
As LifeNews previously reported, the bodies of the two infants were found wrapped in plastic bags by the new owners of a house in the village of Villers-au-Tertre, near Lille, where Cottrez once lived. Police tracked the previous occupants to another house in the area where they found the bodies of six more children hidden at that property. Initially, Cottrez, who has two grown daughters with her husband, was said to have been “systematically killing her babies since 1988” because she didn’t want more children.
However, now Cottrez has revealed that her pregnancies were the result of an incestuous affair she was having with her father. Unbelievably, Cottrez’s adult children, Emeline and Virginie, stood by their mother’s side despite the murder charges. In fact, Cottrez is currently living with her daughters who describe her as a “model mother who supported us at all times”. They also claim that they thought the bad odor from the babies’ remains came from their pet, the garbage or even their father’s feet.
Cottrez’s trial started today in the city of Douai and if found guilty, Cottrez could face life in prison.
…The nurse has now revealed that the children were the result of a long incestuous affair with her own father that she didn’t want to come to light.
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Despite completing eight pregnancies, Cottrez has insisted that her husband knew absolutely nothing about them. He was initially under suspicion of concealing the corpses, and failing to report the crimes, but was later freed because of lack of evidence.
In one of the worst cases of infanticide in recent history, Cottrez confessed to the killings after the eight corpses were found by ‘sheer chance’, said Mr Valliant.
The new owners of a house the Cottrez family lived in until 1991 were digging a duck pond when they found the remains of two of the babies in hermetically sealed bags.
Police forensics experts were called in, and six more bodies were found in the family’s new house just half a mile away. Post mortems carried out on the dead babies have shown no sign of the babies being wounded, suggesting they were suffocated in seconds.
