Austrian who killed 4 infants gets life

VIENNA, Austria - A woman who stuffed the bodies of two of her four infants in a freezer and entombed two others in plastic buckets filled with cement was convicted Friday of three counts of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Gertraud Arzberger, 33, was convicted by a court in the southern city of Graz, closing out a macabre crime that stunned Austria when the tiny bodies were recovered last summer. Her live-in companion, 39-year-old Johannes Genser, was convicted as an accessory and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment. Genser had proclaimed his innocence and had insisted he never noticed Arzberger was pregnant. Neighbors, however, had testified that her swollen belly was obvious. The two were charged last June after police discovered the bodies of two newborns in a basement freezer shared by residents of an apartment complex in Graz, about 120 miles south of Vienna, and the remains of two more entombed in paint buckets filled with cement. Autopsies performed on the remains indicated that the two infants found in the freezer were still alive when put inside, wrapped in plastic bags. Autopsies could not be performed on the two newborns whose remains were sealed in cement because they had deteriorated too much. Prosecutors had charged the woman with the slaying of a fifth infant, and neighbors had testified that there was a fifth pregnancy, but the body was never found and Arzberger had denied having a fifth child. She had pleaded guilty to four counts of murder, but was convicted of only three after experts said it was unclear whether one of the babies found in the buckets may have been stillborn. Before the jury returned Friday's verdicts, state's attorney Johannes Winklhofer urged the court to hand down a stiff sentence. "She is a murderer — she killed four babies in a brutal and gruesome fashion," Winklhofer said. Her partner, he said, "knew everything ... she could not hide her condition from the neighbors, and certainly not from her friend." Austria has no death penalty, and the minimum sentence for homicide is 10 years. For months, the case fascinated many in this usually tranquil alpine country. The story broke when a neighbor living in the apartment block went down to the basement to get some ice cream for his children and found two of the bodies beneath frozen meat and vegetables while he was rummaging through the chest freezer. Police sniffer dogs found the others in the concrete-filled pails, which were hidden beneath debris piled up inside a garden shed on the property. Neighbors had described Arzberger, a bookkeeper, as a hard worker who kept a tidy house and a beautiful yard. Prosecutors said Arzberger told investigators she killed the infants out of despair over her inability to pay the bills, and out of fear that having children might drive away Genser, her partner of eight years. Genser, whose lawyer insisted the charges were "pure fiction" in closing arguments Friday, was led from the courtroom in handcuffs after asking Judge Karl Buchgraber if he first could propose marriage to Arzberger. "Can I still offer her my hand?" Genser asked. "No," the judge replied.-AP