The mother of eight newborn babies whose corpses were found in a village in northern France has admitted to killing them.
Dominique Cottrez, a 46-year-old care worker, has been formally placed under investigation and remains in police custody, prosecutor Eric Vaillant told a packed press conference in the town of Douai, south of Lille, this afternoon. Her husband, Pierre-Marie Cottrez, has been freed.
Ms Cottrez, the mother of two adult daughters, "quickly admitted" to investigators that she suffocated the eight newborn babies whose remains were found at two homes in the village of Villers-au-Tertre this week.
"She explained that she didn't want more children and that she didn't want to see a doctor to avail of contraception," Mr Vaillant said. He explained that the precise dates of each child's death had not been confirmed, but "there were births between 1989 and 2006 or 2007".
The father, a carpenter and local councillor, had indicated "that he wasn't aware" of what had happened, and was freed without charge, Mr Vaillant said. Ms Cottrez also told police her husband was not aware of her pregnancies or the deaths.
Mr Vaillant said police were still looking for other bodies, but Ms Cottrez had said there were no more. Psychological tests were being conducted to assess her criminal responsibility.
"This is an out-of-the-ordinary case given the number of newborns," said Mr Vaillant. "We are trying to understand what happened."
In Villers-au-Tertre, a quiet village some 15 km from Douai, locals said they were shocked and upset by the news. The couple were well known locally - he as a sociable carpenter who served as a town councillor, she as a care worker who was born and raised in the village.
One local resident, a professional cartoonist who has lived here all his life, said he knew the woman casually since they attended the local school together as children.
"She is very shy. A small woman, and she had weight problems. I used to pass her in the car, but she didn't really go out much for the past year and a half,” he said. "Personally I thought maybe they were having some problems between themselves, like everyone does, like all couples."
He said the couple - who have two daughters in their 20s and two grandchildren – recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. They had moved from her family's farmhouse to a newer home at the other end of the village almost two years ago.
"I saw him last Saturday, but I haven't seen her in a long time," the man said as he collected his post today. "She was a care assistant and used to visit elderly people in the area - very nice, kind. He is sociable, involved with the local council, and...he did a lot of odd jobs for people - putting windows in and that sort of thing.”
At the house where the couple lived on Sentier du Pré - a nondescript residential cul de sac turned into a bustling thoroughfare by the scores of journalists passing through - blankets had been thrown over the front gates to obscure outsiders' view of the garage where police found six corpses in recent days.
Bemused by the public glare on their small village but careful to keep their distance, many locals declined to speak to reporters. "I couldn't say anything about them," said an elderly woman whose house backs onto Sentier du Pré . "I'm very shocked. I heard about it on the television last night, and the house is behind me. It's incredible. Like her neighbours, the woman declined to give her name.
"It's a small village, as you can see," she added.
France has had a series of high-profile cases in recent years in which parents have killed their newborn babies. One mother, Céline Lesage, was sentenced to 15 years in prison last March for suffocating or strangling six of her newborn babies between 2000 and 2007.
Her crimes came to light in October 2007 when the father of one of the dead babies discovered a decomposing corpse in a rubbish bag in their cellar in the Manche department in northwestern France.
Mrs Lesage (38) confessed to concealing the pregnancies, then giving birth alone before strangling two infants and suffocating four others. She told the court that she could not explain why she had killed the babies.
Another woman, Véronique Courjault, was released from prison last May, having been convicted for killing three of her newborn children between 1999 and 2003. Ms Courjault’s husband found two of the corpses in a freezer while the couple were living in Seoul, South Korea.
There have also been similar cases in Germany. In one, a woman was convicted of manslaughter in 2006 and sentenced to the maximum 15 years in prison for killing eight of her newborn babies and burying them in flower pots and a fish tank in the garden of her parents’ home near the German-Polish border.