Friday, June 03, 2005
Evil creeps through the world
It seems that the latest Evil (yes,with a capital E) has left its mark in Austria.
- The bodies of four slain infants have been found at an apartment complex in southern Austria - two stuffed in a basement freezer, one entombed in a paint bucket filled with concrete and one in a plastic bag beneath debris in a garden shed, police said Friday.
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The gruesome discoveries began Monday when a resident of the multifamily apartment block went to the basement to get ice cream for his children from a chest freezer shared by the building's occupants, Graz's Kleine Zeitung newspaper reported Friday. The stunned tenant discovered the dead baby, wrapped in a plastic bag, in the freezer and called police.
The authorities found a second baby at the bottom of the freezer, hidden beneath meat and vegetables.
Specially trained police dogs led investigators to the third body - a newborn girl - in a paint bucket that had been filled with concrete to conceal the remains, state broadcaster ORF reported.
Police searching the house and an adjacent garden shed Friday for clues to the killings came across the fourth body, wrapped in a plastic bag beneath a pile of debris in the shed, officials said.
- The infants' 32-year-old mother confessed to killing them out of despair over her inability to pay the bills and the fear that having children might drive away her longtime male partner, investigators told the Austria Press Agency.
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Although police initially kept open the possibility that the infants may have been stillborn, evidence at the scene quickly pointed to the newborns' slayings before being hidden, police said.
- Her partner allegedly told police he was unaware of her pregnancies and insisted he played no role in either the slayings or the hiding of the bodies.