Despite the muggy summer weather, the young woman wears a warm jacket, as if she would like to have a thick protective cover around her.

As if she couldn't accept what was being said in the courtroom.

Nicole D. does not defend herself against the accusation that is made against her in the Darmstadt Regional Court.

According to prosecutor Eva Heid, the 26-year-old woman bathed her 13-month-old son in her apartment in Rüsselsheim on a Saturday in October and put him to bed wrapped in diapers and then left him to his own devices.

According to the indictment, the toddler remained in the nursery without food or liquid and died there after a few days, maybe even a week.

Jan Schiefenhoevel

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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In a statement read by her defense attorney Christian Kunath, the accused admitted on the first day of the trial on Thursday that she had left her son Etienne alone and no longer cared for him.

To this day, she can't explain it.

The mother finally dialed the emergency number herself when the child was no longer alive.

Terrifying images

On Friday, the second day of the hearing, the coroner who examined the child's body has the floor.

What Stefanie Plenzig recited in sober words creates frightening images of a dying small child that a mother would hardly be able to bear.

The doctor describes the emaciated little body, speaks of an "old man's face", a sunken face in which the eyes have sunken in the eye sockets, and wrinkles on the neck.

The skin was sore under the diaper.

The examination of the internal organs speak for malnutrition.

The medical examiner assumes thirst as the cause of death, but she cannot determine the exact time of death.

All in all, the result of the examination of the corpse fits the testimony of the accused.

The feeling of hunger and thirst must have been tormenting for the little boy, as the expert explains.

The child must have screamed before it got weaker and weaker.

Eventually, the circulation became so weak that the boy fell unconscious.

The presiding judge Volker Wagner asks, wants to know whether the child could have woken up again, perhaps because of the pain in the sore skin.

The testimony of a police officer who answered the emergency call gives an idea of ​​how desperate Nicole D. must have been after the child's death.

The woman kept saying, "I'm a bad person, a bad mother."