Mother who made up incest story jailed for suffocating eight babies

A woman has been jailed for nine years in France after being convicted of suffocating eight of her newborn babies to death. Married Dominique Cottrez, 51, originally told investigators she feared she had the children from a long, incestuous relationship with her dad. But tests showed her husband Pierre-Marie Cottrez had in fact fathered the babies and in a dramatic turnaround she admitted in court on Monday she had made up the story. After five hours of deliberation, the jury decided her judgement was impaired at the time of the killings near the Belgian border between 1989 and 2000.

We never pleaded innocence, only distress.

Lawyer Marie-Helene Carlier

They convicted the housewife and former health worker of seven counts of first degree murders and one count of second degree murder for the first infant she killed. Most of the killings took place in her bathroom after she secretly gave birth to the children on towels. Her crimes were uncovered in July 2010 when a new owner moved into her parents’ home in the northern French village of Villers-au-Tertre and found the bodies of two infants wrapped in plastic bags buried in the garden. Police then discovered six other tiny corpses in a tank in the garage of the property.

Europe Eight babies