Lochats,
Gironde, France – On March 20, 2015, Ramona Hernandez-Canete, 37, was arrested
after one of her teenage children discovered a baby’s body inside a freezer bag
in a laundry basket.
Her
husband, Juan Carlos Hernandez-Canete, called the police after the body was
found. He told investigators he had not known his wife was pregnant on the five
occasions between 2005 and 2015, despite the pregnancies reaching full term.
Neighbors were also in the dark about the pregnancies. Her obesity allowed her
to disguise her state. A autopsy showed that the baby, a boy, had been born
alive 48 hours earlier. A police search of the couple’s home turned up the
bodies of four more newborn infants in a freezer. Both were arrested, the wife
charged with infaniticide, the husband was charged for failing to report a
crime (later dropped).
The
trial of Ramona began March 19, 2018 in the Assises Court of the Gironde. Her
attorney claimed she was maniuplated by her husband, who was “possessive and
jealous. The trial ended on the 20th with a guilty conviction and a sentence of
eight years in prison. Until the trial
she claimed to have no memory of the killings. Yet at trial confessed that she
had drowned her babies, all born viable, after giving birth in the bath, before
freezing them but said, until his trial, not to really remember the events.
***
SOURCES:
Affaire des cinq infanticides en
Gironde: La mère condamnée à 8 ans de prison, 20 minutes (France), 23/03/18
Kim Willsher, French woman admits killing five
newborn babies, Guardian (London),
19 Mar 2018
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For more cases of this type, see Serial Baby-Killer Moms.
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