Читать книгу Parents Who Kill - Shocking True Stories of The World's Most Evil Parents - Carol Anne Davis - Страница 17

In October 1987, Sabine found that she was pregnant by one of the men that she’d brought home after a night at the pub. She told no one of her condition, concealing it by wearing increasingly baggy clothes. Oliver noted that she was gaining weight, but they’d agreed not to have further children (and it’s not clear if they were still having sex together) so it didn’t occur to him that she might be expecting again. In May 1988, she awoke in the marital bed next to her snoring husband and realised that she was going into labour. Tiptoeing into the bathroom, she gave birth over the toilet and let the baby drown in the water. Meanwhile, her oblivious spouse remained fast asleep next door. Sabine cut the umbilical cord and put the tiny corpse into a plastic bag before placing it in a large plant pot and covering it with soil. She put herbs in the pot and set it on their apartment balcony.

Three years later, in 1992, she gave birth to another illegitimate child, this time in a hotel room. She left the baby to die, brought it home in her suitcase, wrapped it in a plastic bag and hid it inside another large flowerpot which she seeded with herbs and placed alongside the previous pot.

The following year, she had another secret birth and concealed the corpse in an empty fish tank in her garage, topping it up with sand. The next year, she gave birth again and put the corpse into a large paint can. She hid another of her unwanted babies in a bucket and covered it with clods of earth. She got pregnant every year until she had secretly given birth to, and disposed of, nine newborns, the last being born in 1998.

Eventually the mother from hell moved house. Lacking room for all of the makeshift coffins, she took them to her mother Eva’s house in Brandenburg and stored them in the older woman’s shed. In the same timeframe she left Oliver and started a long-term relationship with an older gentleman called Johann, giving birth to his baby daughter. He found her to be an exemplary mother and a loving common law wife.

But Sabine’s previous less-than-motherly actions were about to catch up with her as, in 2005, Eva decided to spring-clean her shed and garden. Too old to wrestle with heavy plant pots and a fish tank filled with sand, she paid a younger neighbour to clear the place. To his horror, he found nine tiny skeletons and called the police. They arrested the 39-year-old and asked her why she hadn’t used contraception. She explained that, after disposing of the first baby, she’d realised that a gynaecologist would know that she’d recently given birth and might ask questions about the child’s whereabouts, so she’d avoided any contact with the medical profession. She failed to explain why she hadn’t opted for celibacy or for a non-procreative form of sex.

Police broke the news to her husband, who was so shocked that he vomited, telling them that she’d grown – and presumably used – herbs from the plant pots containing the corpses. A pathologist confirmed that all nine infants had died within minutes of birth.

In June 2006, Sabine appeared at Frankfurt-on-Oder court, charged with the manslaughter of eight of the nine babies. Because of Germany’s statute of limitations, she couldn’t be charged with the death of the first child as it had died in 1989.

Sabine declined to give evidence but had previously told her lawyer that she’d only murdered one of the infants, leaving several of the others to die of neglect. She said that the babies were fathered by her husband, Oliver, and that she’d hidden the pregnancies from him because he didn’t want any more children. But no one who knew her believed this as she’d brought numerous men back from bars and clubs whilst Oliver was working away from home. He said that he’d noticed she had a weight problem – but it obviously hadn’t occurred to him that she’d get pregnant again when she’d been so bad at motherhood originally that all three of her children had been taken into care.

Sabine Hilschinz was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Her lawyers appealed, but in April 2008 a German court upheld her sentence, noting that she appeared to have been fully aware of her actions and the consequences if she was caught.