infanticide?

A ‘serial killer’ mother has been jailed for 15 years for murdering six of her newborn children in as many years and hiding their tiny corpses in a cellar.

In one of the worst infanticide cases in history, 38-year-old Frenchwoman Celine Lesage strangled two of her children with a cord and choked four others by placing her finger in their mouths.

‘Yes, I killed the babies,’ she said during cross examination at La Manche Correctional court in Cherbourg, Normandy, yesterday.

With her voice quivering, and in floods of tears, she said: ‘I did it but I can't explain it why I did it.’

Each of the babies had been delivered 'in secret' between August 2000 and September 2007, with Lesage 'putting the babies and their dirty clothes neatly in a sealed plastic bag and hiding them'.

Prosecutors – who described her as a ‘serial killer’ - had sought a 16-year prison sentence for Lesage with no early release before half the term was served, but accepted 15.

Lesage was arrested in 2007 after her partner at the time, Luc Margueritte, discovered the tiny corpses decomposing in plastic garbage bags in the basement of their apartment building in Valognes, south of Cherbourg.

He was the father of the last newborn and a prosecution witness in the case.

Veronique Carre, defending, said: 'The facts of the case are not in dispute, but there is medical and psychological evidence to consider.’

Prosecutor Michel Garrandaux told the court: 'Her attitude was wholly ambivalent. On the one hand she expressed her desire to have children, and then she refused to keep them.'

He said Lesage - a 'modest and otherwise ordinary housewife' who has as surviving son aged 14 who was taken into care after her arrest - had 'no idea' why she had effectively turned into a serial killer.

 

Police outside the building where Celine Lesage hid the bodies of her six babies after she killed them

Among those in the public gallery was Pascal Catherine, her 39-year-old former boyfriend who fathered the first five murdered children.

He was originally arrested for not reporting a crime and hiding the corpses, before his lawyers successfully argued he had thought the babies had been still born or had been aborted.

Lesage and Mr Catherine split up in the spring of 2006 after 15 years living as common law man and wife.

Her horrific secret was uncovered a year later, on October 19, 2007, when a new boyfriend was taken to the decaying corpses by Lesage's teenage son.

Mr Garrandaux said: 'He was led to the cellar by the terrible smell of decomposing corpses and found them wrapped up in their bags.'

Gendarmes were called and Lesage admitted killing all her newborn children, but claimed diminished responsibility.

She told police that she had 'absolutely no explanation' for what she had done and was placed on remand in the nearby city of Caen, Normandy.

Last year, another French mother Veronique Courjault was jailed for eight years for killing three babies.

She was deemed to be suffering from severe psychological problems, which meant she was in denial about being pregnant

 

this case is very simmilar but also very differnt to madayer as she didnt kill them out of revenge but none the less she murderd them . in this case she still left her 14 year old son alive but killed the rest ? and she kept the boddys this would imply poast natal depreshon was the cause to her irational behavour ? where as in madayer she did it out of a mostoros rage witch was caused buy jason leaving her for another woman ! this would create the idea that madayer loved her children where as lesage did not .