Couple Get 15 Years for Killing 5 of Their Babies
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EAST BERLIN — An East German couple were sentenced to 15 years each Monday for killing five of their 10 children shortly after birth and burning four of the bodies in an oven at the father’s workplace.
Magdeburg district court convicted Manfred Fiedler, 40, and his wife Margitta, 37, who have five living sons, on five counts of murder, the state news agency ADN said.
Evidence in the three-week trial showed that the couple, found by psychiatrists to be of below normal intelligence, murdered the babies, all born at home, between 1984 and 1988 by deliberately denying them care and nourishment.
Manfred Fiedler wanted to give the infants away for adoption, but his wife refused and they agreed to kill them, evidence showed.
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