Frenchwoman Who Killed All Her Newborns Got Only 9 Years (Paris)

Jul 4, 2015

A demented Frenchwoman who killed all her newborns got only 9 years in prison this week -- hardly more than a year for each of her eight tiny victims. 

The slayings took place over a decade under the noses of family members and neighbors, in a case of serial infanticide that’s now regarded as one of the worst France has ever seen, and which occurred with almost annual predictability.

In fact, when the 51-year-old defendant was first caught for the heartless crime spree, she told police she had lost count of how many infants had been murdered and buried on her former property.

The first of those small corpses was accidentally discovered there when the new owner of Dominque Cottrez’s residence was doing minor excavations in the garden.

Cottrez then confessed to investigators that she began systematically killing her young in 1989 and that the last one had been slain in 2000; further accusing her own father as their parent, in what she falsely claimed was an incestuous relationship that began when she was just a girl.

She’s only recently admitted to slandering the man, undoubtedly in an effort to establish a defense and to garner some sympathy for her repugnant deeds.

That confession, unfortunately, came too late to benefit her much-maligned father who has been dead since 2007.

Cottrez’s strategy appears to have worked though, as evidenced when jurors this week disregarded the advice of prosecutors to sentence her to nearly 20 years in jail, citing the defendant’s mental illness for their surprise leniency.

The visibly relieved Frenchwoman who killed all her newborns had been tried on seven counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder, in a dramatic trial that received nationwide attention.

Her lifelong obesity is said to be the reason that no one, including her husband, neighbors, or physicians were ever aware she was frequently pregnant.

Contraceptives and abortions are legal and sometimes even free in France. But wantonly killing one’s unwanted babies … non.

@EponymousRox

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