"It's bad that i killed five children," the 29-year-old said in a broken voice at the start of the manslaughter trial before the jury chamber on monday. In her comprehensive confession, she largely confirmed what she had told the police.
According to the indictment she killed the children between march 2006 and spring 2012. She allegedly suffocated two of the children and killed two others with scissors. She stuffed leaves into the mouth of a fifth baby. The first dead infant, a girl, was found in a paper sorting plant in march 2006, the body of a small boy a year later in a plastic bag in a parking lot, also in schleswig-holstein.
Then three more children were born, two in the forest and one in the bathtub in the family's husum apartment, he said. The woman hid these bodies in the basement of the house. The woman herself led investigators to the remains when she surrendered to police in september 2012 after taking a saliva test.
Not a day goes by that she doesn't ask herself why she did this to the children, the accused reported. According to her, she does not remember the acts exactly. "These are just single pictures, i don't know anymore what i did with the children or how or when," said the woman, who still has two elementary school-aged children.
There wasn't much to say about the pregnancies, the 29-year-old said. She did not feel that her belly was getting bigger, nor did she feel any movement of the unborn child. "I pushed that away, and so i just wasn't pregnant."
Nobody around her knew that she had been pregnant again after the first two children, the woman said. She could not confide in her husband or anyone else. There has never been any talk about contraception. In her first interrogation, the woman had explained that she had been afraid of a separation from her husband. After two children, he did not want any more children. She did not renew this statement in court.
The man is a witness in the case, but he did not appear on the first day of the trial. He told his lawyer that he would be present at his planned examination as a witness on 18 september. Marz will not testify, which he is allowed to do as an officer. As a result, the court granted his request not to appear.
The mother of the accused testified in court that she had never thought that her daughter could expect another child. She did not realize that the defendant was pregnant again. "I looked at many pictures and only with the knowledge of now found a picture where she might have been pregnant."The 53-year-old also said that the defendant had not told her about her first pregnancy. She saw it by chance. Her daughter, who was 18 at the time, had first denied it, but ten days later the child had already been born.
She could not explain why her daughter had not told anyone about the pregnancies and had killed the newborns. In recent years, she has always seen her as a happy woman and an absolutely loving mother, the witness said.