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In this house near Gdansk, the police found three baby corpses
Photo: Adam Warzawa / dpa
Shocking find in Poland: In the basement of a neglected single-family house in Pomerania, the police have found the bodies of three newborns. A 20-year-old woman and her 54-year-old father were arrested, the public prosecutor's office in Gdansk announced on Saturday. The woman is being investigated for incest and two counts of murder of newborns, while the man is being investigated for two counts of incest and three counts of murder of newborns. He is also said to have had an incest relationship with another daughter. According to reports in the Polish media, one of the infants found is from this relationship.
Already on Friday evening, the police had found two dead newborns in the village of Czerniki, southwest of Gdansk. "They were buried in the basement. There was no floor there, but tamped clay so that they could be dug up. The bodies were in various stages of decomposition," a spokesman for the prosecutor's office told the portal of the Polish tabloid "Fact". On Saturday morning, investigators found the third dead infant. On Saturday evening, the police were still at the scene and were looking for possible more baby bodies, as the PAP news agency reported.
"They walked hand in hand"
According to media reports, father and daughter had lived together as a couple for years. "She called him Piotr, by his first name. They walked hand in hand. A few months ago, he shaved her bald head so that the other boys wouldn't run after her," a woman from the neighboring village told "Fakt". In a video of the news portal it can be seen that the family apparently lived in a neglected and almost dilapidated house.
The work colleagues had suspected some time ago that the woman had been pregnant, the anonymous witness reported. She wore loose clothes and apparently wanted to hide her belly. Three weeks ago, she took a vacation. When she returned to work after a week, she looked exhausted, but rejected questions about a child. Someone then informed the social welfare office, whose employees turned to the police.
ktz/dpa