Village shocked by baby deaths

A gentle arc of eight candles in glass holders - five red, two yellow and one blue - stands before the locked gate of 8 Sentier du Pre.

It is an odd house, with a dull cream front and a sloping roof, as if it was originally a shed. Nothing suggests that this is a house of horrors, except perhaps the maroon labels on the doors and shutters which state: "Gendarmerie seal. Do not open."

This is a pretty and wealthy village, much extended by expensive bungalows for commuters from Douai, Cambrai and other large towns in northern France.

Behind the green garage door at 8 Sentier du Pre ("path of the meadow"), Villers-au-Tertre, gendarmes last weekend found the skeletons of six newborn babies wrapped in plastic bags and hidden beneath an oil tank.

A kilometre away, in the garden of another house, they found the remains of two other newborns. All had been stifled at birth.

Dominique Cottrez, 45 - the woman who planted and cared for the geraniums - admitted to an investigating magistrate yesterday that she had murdered her eight babies between 1989 and 2006 "because she did not want any more children". She was charged with manslaughter.

When she goes for trial, Cottrez, an auxiliary nurse and mum of two "charming" daughters in their 20s, is likely to be branded the worst serial baby killer to appear before a French court.

The investigating magistrate decided to take no action against her husband, Pierre-Marie Cottrez, 45. The public prosecutor had asked for him to be placed under formal investigation for "receiving" the bodies of the babies and hiding the crimes. The magistrate refused.

The carpenter, a much-liked village councillor, and the chairman of the village fete committee, told the magistrate he knew nothing about his eight dead sons.

He said his wife, who is grossly overweight, had never revealed her pregnancies. He had no idea that he was living with a child-murderess until the gendarmes came to the house last Saturday. Dominique Cottrez backed up this account.

For four days, until Wednesday night, the gendarmerie combed the village with dogs and imaging devices without explaining what they were doing.

The first two babies had been found on Saturday in the garden of a house which once belonged to Dominique Cottrez's parents. The new owners were digging a hole to plant a tree and came across a plastic bag containing the tiny bones of what they assumed, at first, were two cats.

They quickly realised they were humans. The other bodies had been hidden in the garage.

Villagers were puzzled by a flurry of gendarmerie activity. Locals assumed the officers must be searching for unexploded weaponry from the 1914-18 war. Villers stands on the edge of the site of the Battle of Cambrai of 1917.

As journalists from a half-dozen nations, 10 television crews and five satellite trucks invaded their village, people were in a state of shock, disbelief and almost of shared guilt.

Chantal, a neighbour in her 40s, said: "Everyone is asking why. And how. They can't understand how this could have happened in a place like this.

"You can't help thinking that someone should have known, or guessed, even though she was a very private woman, almost a recluse."

The eight candles, one for each dead baby, were placed in front of the Cottrezes' house by the local priest. Father Robert Meignotte said: "I am thinking of all the world's children. I am thinking of these little ones who did not ask to be born but were thrown away after a few hours of life. This has touched me very much. I baptise five children every Sunday in the 17 villages in my parish. You don't just throw away children in rubbish bags. How can anyone comprehend that?"

Mayor Patrick Mercier described Pierre-Marie Cottrez as a much-liked man, always ready to help his fellow villagers. "He was in his third term as a councillor. He is a charity worker, someone entirely respectable. His wife did not go out much and participated very little in the life of the commune."

At a crowded press conference in the Palais de Justice in Douai, the nearest large town, the public prosecutor, Eric Vaillant, rejected reports that other babies had been found. Searches would continue, he said, but investigators were inclined to accept Dominique Cottrez's word that there were no more than eight babies.

"We are faced with an affair which goes far beyond normal bounds," he said, adding that the husband was in state of "utter shock".

"It is as if the sky has fallen on his head," he said.

His wife, however, had been calm and had admitted her guilt soon after the couple were arrested. She told investigators she murdered the babies by smothering them soon after they were born.

- THE INDEPENDENT