Remains discovered on two different properties in village in northern France
A 45-year-old French woman named Dominique Cottrez has been charged with killing eight of her babies after the remains of two children were found wrapped in plastic bags by the new owners of a house in the village of Villers-au-Tertre, near Lille. Police tracked the previous occupants to another house just half a mile away, where they found the bodies of six more children hidden at that property. Cottrez, who has two grown daughters with her husband Pierre-Marie, is said to have been “systematically killing her babies since 1988.” According to Le Figaro, two of the bodies discovered had been hidden in the first house for more than 20 years. If convicted, she faces 15 years in prison in what has become France’s worst-ever case of infanticide. Pierre-Marie Cottrez has been questioned but no charges have been laid against him.