SHOCKING: Nurse Murder's EIGHT Of Her Babies As A Result Of A Long-term Relationship With Her Father

In tears: Dominique Cottrez's trial finally got underway in the northern city of Douai today after she was accused of multiple counts of first-degree murder of minors

Dominique Cottrez, 51, has admitted killing her eight newborn babies but she says she was trying to conceal an affair with her own father.

Bodies were discovered by chance when new tenants moved into the family property in Villers-au-Tertre, near Lille, France. Grandmother faces life in jail if she is found guilty of first degree murders.

In court: Dominique Cottrez (seated) is accused of suffocating eight of her newborn babies has gone on trial after telling investigators that the children were the result of a long, incestuous relationship with her father

A French nurse accused of suffocating eight of her newborn babies has gone on trial after telling investigators that the children were the result of a long, incestuous relationship with her father.

The worst infanticide case in modern French history stunned the country when the babies were discovered in the family garden in Villers-au-Tertre, near Lille in 2010.

Family: The 20 stone nurse's obesity hid the pregnancies, which went unnoticed by her husband Pierre-Marie Cottrez (left) and the couple's two daughters Emeline and Virginia

Dominique Cottrez's trial finally got underway in the northern city of Douai today after she was accused of multiple counts of first-degree murder of minors. The 51-year-old grandmother faces spending the rest of her life in prison if she is found guilty.

From 1989 to 2007 Cottrez killed eight of her newborn children, burying two of them in her back garden and keeping the other six in plastic bin bags inside the family home.

Macabre: An excavator combed the garden of Cottrez' house, where two babies' remains were found in 2010

The 20 stone nurse's obesity hid the pregnancies, which went unnoticed by her husband Pierre-Marie and their children.

Cottrez claims that she fell pregnant with the children as a result of having a long incestuous 'affair' with her father, farmer Oscar Lempereur, which she says began when she was a child.

Back in 2010, when the bodies of the eight newborns were first discovered, Cottrez's two daughters paid tribute to their mother as 'the best their is' in an extraordinary show of support.

Emeline and Virginie Cottrez called Dominique a 'model mother who supported us at all times'.

Emeline, now aged 27, actually lived with the self-confessed killer of eight babies at the family home in Villers-au-Tertre, near Lille, along with her son.

Initially it was claimed that Cottrez had 'systematically' killed the babies simply because she did not want any more children but did not want to see a doctor about contraception.


Despite completing eight pregnancies, Cottrez has insisted that her husband, Pierre-Marie knew absolutely nothing about them. He was initially under suspicion of concealing the corpses, and failing to report the crimes, but was later freed because of lack of evidence.

In one of the worst cases of infanticide in recent history, Cottrez confessed to the killings after the eight corpses were found by ‘sheer chance’, said Mr Valliant.

The new owners of a house the Cottrez family lived in until 1991 were digging a duck pond when they found the remains of two of the babies in hermetically sealed bags.

Police forensics experts were called in, and six more bodies were found in the family’s new house just half a mile away.

Post mortems carried out on the dead babies have shown no sign of the babies being wounded, suggesting they were suffocated in seconds.