• Tuesday, 24 December 2024

Woman gets life for murdering her five children in Germany

Woman gets life for murdering her five children in Germany
A woman from the western Germany city of Solingen received a life sentence on Thursday after being found guilty of the murder of five of her six children, all aged between one and eight years. The court sitting in the city of Wuppertal found no extenuating circumstances. This virtually rules out release for the woman, who is 28, after she has served the normal life term of 15 years. The woman's eldest son survived the woman's actions. During the trial, the prosecution alleged she had first sedated the children and then drowned or suffocated them one at a time. Investigating officers believe that seeing a photo of her husband with a new partner was the incident that motivated the crime, which shocked Germany. She then messaged him that he would not see the children again. The childrens' bodies were discovered in their beds on September 3 last year. The woman insisted that an intruder had broken into her home, tied her up and forced her to send chat messages before murdering the children. Psychiatric experts found no evidence of serious mental illness. Her defence lawyer called for her release on the grounds that doubts remained over whether his client had committed the murders. The court found that Melina, 1, Leonie, 2, Sophie, 3, Timo, 6, and Luca, 8, had been murdered by their mother, who had subsequently thrown herself in front of a train at Dusseldorf central station but survived. She had sent her eldest son, who survived unscathed, to his grandmother.