Mother pleads guilty in Austria to murdering her four children

A woman accused of the killing her five children and then putting some of them in her freezer pleaded guilty in Austria to four counts of murder at the start of her trial Tuesday. Her companion, charged with killing four of the children, pleaded innocent.

Photo: Mother pleads guilty in Austria to murdering her four children

The two were charged in June after police discovered the bodies of two newborns in a basement freezer of an apartment complex in southern Austria and the remains of two more entombed in paint buckets filled with cement.

Autopsies performed on the remains indicated that the two infants found in the freezer were still alive when put inside, wrapped in plastic bags.

"I feel guilty of killing my four children," the 33-year-old woman, who was unidentified according to Austrian custom, told the court. But she denied killing a fifth shortly after birth, despite testimony by neighbors of an additional pregnancy.

The woman's companion, 39, has insisted he was unaware of the pregnancies and played no role in either the slayings or the disposal of the bodies, but authorities say they do not believe it was possible because of the sheer number of births. The two lived together for eight years, reports the AP.

D.M.