Dutch police said today they had arrested a 25-year-old woman on suspicion of killing at least three of her babies over an eight-year period, echoing a similar case in France last month.
Police said they searched the woman's house in a rural village in the north and found four suitcases in the attic, three of which contained the remains of babies. It is not yet known what is in the fourth suitcase.
Police say suspicions were raised when a resident alerted police, saying there was uncertainty about the births. The woman had said she gave the children up for adoption, but later confessed to putting their bodies in suitcases.
"She could not give a plausible explanation over the pregnancies and the babies that were born. She was then arrested on August 4th in consultation with the public prosecution as a suspect and a search was conducted in the parental home," police commissioner Wim van Essen said at a news conference.
It is not yet clear whether the babies were born alive, Leeuwarden prosecutor Annette Bronsvoort told the same news conference.
"It is terrible, the village is in shock," said a local resident in the village of Nij Beets, about 140 km northeast of Amsterdam, who declined to be named.
The police commissioner said the woman's parents, who live at the same address, had been moved out of the house while the police search continued. They say they were not aware of the pregnancies and are not suspects in the case, police said.
"This event has had an enormous impact in the community," Francisca Ravestein, the local regional mayor said.
"It affects us very deeply," said one local businessman, who declined to comment any further.
In 2006, a Dutch woman was sentenced to prison and psychological treatment after she drowned four of her babies after birth.
Last month, a Dominique Cottrez (46) confessed to suffocating eight of her newborn babies in a village in northern France and hiding their bodies.
Last March, Celine Lesage (38) was sentenced to 15 years in prison for suffocating or strangling six of her newborn babies between 2000 and 2007. Her crimes came to light in October 2007 when the father of one of the dead babies discovered a decomposing corpse in a rubbish bag in their cellar in the Manche region of northwestern France.
Another woman, Veronique Courjault, was released from prison last May, having been convicted for killing three of her newborn children between 1999 and 2003. Her husband found two of the corpses in a freezer while the couple were living in Seoul, South Korea.