The bodies of eight babies have been found wrapped in towels and inside plastic bags in an apartment in Germany’s Bavaria state, police said Friday — a gruesome discovery that spurred authorities to hunt for the woman who last lived there as they try to explain why and how this happened.
A woman in the town of Wallenfels called authorities Thursday afternoon after finding one body, said Jurgen Stadter, a police spokesman based about 30 miles west in Coburg.
Authorities went to the apartment and found six additional corpses, Bavarian police said Friday. The same agency reported later in the day on its website that another newborn’s body had been found — and, like the seven others, it was wrapped in a towel and placed in a plastic bag.
Martin Dippold, a state prosecutor in Coburg, did not say exactly where the various babies’ bodies were found, their estimated ages, their presumed cause of death or how long ago they’d likely died.
Yet Dippold did say, “The (bodies) are in poor condition.”
The results of forensic examinations, which could reveal significant information about what happened, aren’t expected back until next week. And no one has been arrested in connection with their deaths.
But authorities are looking intently for the apartment’s most recent occupant, a 45-year-old woman. Dippold said authorities expect this woman is the mother of the babies.
Wallenfels is a town some 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of Nuremberg and 110 miles south of Leipzig. It is in the eastern part of Bavaria, the southeastern German state also known as Bayern that borders the Czech Republic and Austria.
