A man has discovered the remains of five babies crammed into cardboard boxes at his home in France's Provence region on Monday, July 29. The man and his wife cannot be identified for legal reasons.
Discovery after argument
The couple had been arguing over the contents of the boxes just one day after the woman gave birth following a pregnancy she had concealed. This marked the third occasion she had hidden being pregnant, according to media reports.
The woman started experiencing stomach pains and was taken to hospital while her husband remained at home. According to reports from the Daily Mail, a source revealed the man "looked inside the cardboard boxes they had been arguing over – that's when he found the five dead babies". The source said they were all "decomposing, and had been around for quite a while".
Police investigation
The husband alerted police who are now probing the incident. The couple have three surviving children, aged eight, twelve and the newborn.
Medical examinations will establish the precise nature of the remains, along with the circumstances and date of their deaths, with the first forensic examinations, including post-mortems carried out today (Wednesday, July 29). No arrests have been made in connection with the case.
Comparisons to other cases
The case has drawn comparisons to several other newborn murder cases in the country. In March, a French court sentenced a 44-year-old woman to 25 years over the deaths of two of her newborn babies, who police discovered in the family freezer. In 2018, a court handed down an eight-year prison sentence to a woman for drowning five of her newborn babies and storing their bodies in a freezer. In 2015, a 45-year-old care worker from northern France admitted to murdering her eight newborns at birth and concealing their bodies. The killings took place between 1989 and 2006, with the woman suffocating eight of her children moments after delivery.
