German mother gets life sentence for killing her five children
- Christiane K. was found guilty of drowning or smothering the children in the bath last year
- Prosecutors said the 28-year-old acted out of anger after seeing a photo of her estranged husband with a new girlfriend
A German court sentenced a woman to life in jail on Thursday for killing five of her six children, in a case prosecutors described as particularly “malicious”.
The 28-year-old mother, identified only as Christiane K., was found guilty of drowning or smothering the children in the bath in September 2020.
The bodies of her three daughters – aged one, two and three – and two sons aged six and eight were found lying on their beds, each wrapped in a towel, at the family flat in the city of Solingen.
The woman then attempted suicide by throwing herself in front of a train at Düsseldorf station, but she was rescued and did not suffer life-threatening injuries.
Her sixth child, a boy who was 11 at the time, survived the grim ordeal because he was in school.
Prosecutors alleged that the mother mixed medication into the children’s breakfast drinks to make them sleepy, before killing them.