Mum who murdered eight of her newborn babies as ‘a form of contraception’ is jailed

A French woman who murdered eight of her newborn babies has been sent to prison for nine years.

Dominique Cottrez, 51, had told a court in Douai, in Northern France, that she viewed the infanticide as a ‘means of contraception’.

During a week-long trial, she claimed she had all of the children with her own father, and was too scared to go to a doctor to obtain a more conventional form of birth control.

Cottrez had faced life in prison for her crimes, with the Prosecutor General calling for a minimum 18 years term but Cottrez claimed diminished responsibility, and was in floods of tears as she received the relatively light sentence.

After deliberating for five hours, a jury of nine people did not accept that the first infanticide had been premeditated.

They also agreed that Cottrez had a "diminished mental capacity".

The 20 stone former nursing assistant has already served five years on remand, and could be released within the year.

Her obesity had made the pregnancies undetectable, even to her late husband and two adult daughters.

Cottrez said: ‘Each time, I hoped the good Lord would give me a miracle’.

"Like someone would tell me, 'Look, you're pregnant.'

"Maybe then I would have said something, it would have triggered something in me and I would have had treatment."

Cottrez insisted that her father first started a romance when she was just eight, and sex between them carried on for years.

Douai Assizes heard how Cottrez's secret relationship continued long after she got married, and that she loved her father, farmer Oscar Lempereur, more than her husband, Pierre-Marie Cottrez.

Cottrez denied eight counts of first-degree murder, telling the investigating judge she never considered an abortion because she was ‘scared of doctors’.

Instead, killing became a "means of contraception" and her obesity allowed her to hide her pregnancies from her husband, other family neighbours, friends and neighbours.

Leonard Meriaux, who bought Cottrez's family home in 2010, told the court he first found a tiny corpse "while digging up the garden" next to duck pond.

The police were called, and they found another body in the garden, and then six more ‘wrapped in black bin bags’ in the garage of the property.

 

Cottrez, who is now a grandmother, confessed to what had happened during a police interview, providing a full account of the worst infanticide case in France’s history.

Despite the scandal, her two grown up daughters have stood by her, describing her as "the best mother there is".

Showing extraordinary support, Emeline and Virginia - who both have young children of their own - said in a joint statement that she was a "model mother who supported us at all times".

Emeline, 27, actually lived with the self-confessed killer in Villers-au-Tertre, along with her now seven-year-old son.

Virginia said: "We do wonder how she accepted her two grandchildren while all this was going on, but we will be there for our mother."

Testing in fact revealed that all of the dead infants were fathered by her husband, Pierre-Marie Cottrez. Some of the children were born while he was away for business.

One of her lawyers, Frank Berton, said: "She was prisoner to a downward psychological spiral.

"For her, these children had no identity, they were just the results of an incestuous relationship with her father."

Yves Crespin, the lawyer for an anti-child abuse group who were involved in the prosecution, said: "This is not a case of pregnancy denial, it's the denial of a child.

"Mrs. Cottrez used murder as a means of contraception."

The killings took place in the northern village of Villers-au-Tertre, near Lille, between 1989 and 2007.

Post mortems carried out on the dead babies showed no sign of the babies being wounded, suggesting they were suffocated in seconds.

In March 2010 Frenchwoman Celine Lesage, 38, was given a 15-year prison sentence after admitting that she had killed six of her newborn babies, in Rouen. And in 2009 Veronique Courjault, 42, was jailed for eight years for killing three children.