FULL TEXT: Paris – President Georges Pompidou is thinking
about pardoning a woman who with her husband killed five of their newborn
babies so their other three children could have a better life.
Pompidou said last week he was considering clemency for
Marie-Antoinette Thien, 38, who was sentenced in December [1970] to five years
in prison. Her husband, Rene, 43, a factory worker, got 10 years.
The jurors who convicted the Thiens wrote Poimpidou that the
three remaining children – Gabriel, 17, Marie-Claude, 15, and Eric, 22 months –
needed their mother.
The couple grew up in poverty and in recent years lived in
an isolated neighborhood near Gigny, in the Rhone valley.
Social workers investigated after getting reports that Mrs.
Thien had been pregnant considerably more times than there were Thien children
growing up. Remains of three infants were found buried in the garden.
The mother told the nine men on the jury – all fathers –
that she and her husband killed five babies “in order to give happiness to the
older ones, so they would not have a childhood like ours.
After the trial the jurors worried about the surviving
children, who had been sent to live with other families. They talked with
Gabriel and Marie-Claude, then wrote to Pompidou urging clemency for the
mother.
“We don’t disavow the verdict,” they said. “. . . Our
initiative aims only . . . at avoiding the addition of indirect – pitiable – victims
to all that has already happened.”
“The family lived completely isolated, without any news or
information of any kind,” said one juror. “If they had only known about
abortion.”
[Rodney Angove (AP), “Parents Killed Five Babies to Give
Others ‘Better Life’,” Independent (Long Beach, Ca.), Jan. 28, 1971, p. 15]
***
The same syndicated article – without the byline: [“Mother
Who Killed Five Babies May Get Pardon,” Orlando Evening Star World (Fl.), Jan.
13, 1971, p. 3-A]
[159-12/31/20]
***
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