09:01 16/06/2015
Helsinki - A Finnish court on Monday sentenced a 36-year-old
woman to life in prison for killing her five newborns between 2005 and
2013 and hiding them in a freezer.
The Oulu district court in
western Finland found the woman guilty of five counts of murder and five
counts of disturbing the peace of the dead for failing to give the
babies proper burials.
"The homicides took place by leaving the
newborns without care and warmth... Clearly this measure... caused
particular agony to the babies," the court said in its ruling.
The woman, who has a 14-year-old son, had pleaded innocent and said the babies were all stillborn.
But
the court ruled on the basis of dental examinations that at least some
of the babies had lived for up to four days before dying in a bucket
where she had left them.
The horrific crimes were discovered in
June 2014 when neighbours began to complain of a bad smell in the
apartment building where a new couple had moved in.
It was soon discovered that the woman had dumped the babies' bodies in garbage bags in the building's cellar.
Previously
she had managed to hide the bodies by keeping them in a freezer in her
old apartment but there was no longer room for a freezer in the new
apartment.
Court documents showed she had hid her pregnancies
under loose clothing, and gave birth to the babies at home without
anyone's knowledge.
District prosecutor Sari Kemppainen told AFP that all of the babies were born full-term or nearly full-term.
The
fathers of the first two babies were not identified, but in 2010 she
married a man and got pregnant a third time. She later told him she had
suffered a miscarriage.
The husband went on to father two more
babies, but was unaware of his wife's pregnancies or crimes. He
petitioned for divorce immediately after the bodies were discovered.
When questioned by police, the mother was unable to explain why she had opted to keep, and not bury, the bodies.
A life sentence in Finland usually amounts to about 12 years behind bars.
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