YEKATERINBURG, October 23 (Itar-Tass) - Investigators in the Sverdlovsk region finished the probe into the criminal case against a woman who had killed her newborn babies by putting them in a freezer, a prosecutor told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.
The woman gave birth to a boy without medical assistance in the town of Verkhneuralsk in July 2007, wrapped him in a bed sheet, put in a plastic bag and took out onto a balcony. The next morning, she carried the plastic bag to a shop and put it in a freezer there. In 2009, she killed another newborn baby under similar circumstances. "The prosecutor's office of the town of Verkhnyaya Pyshma endorsed the indictment in the criminal case against the woman. She is accused of murder of people in helpless condition with particular cruelty," spokeswoman for the regional prosecutor's office Lidiya Smirnova said.
The motive behind the crime was her inability to raise children due to low income. She had an underage daughter she had to support, according to the investigator. "The woman was found sane," Smirnova said.
On May 14, Tsentralny foodstore personnel found two bodies of infants in a freezer during an inspection. Their mother was found two days later. The infants' bodies had been kept in the freezer five and three years.
The woman if facing up to 20 years in a maximum security prison.
Alexander Shulga, senior aide to the director of the Investigative Committee's regional branch said the suspect had denied the charges.
"The woman claims she was suffering from a psychic shock after childbirth and was not aware of her actions. She does not regard her actions as murder and denies her guilt in the crime," Shulga told Tass.
Meanwhile, prosecutors seek to strip the woman of parental rights. The legal action will be reviewed at the Verkhnyaya Pyshma court.
"We wish to strip the defendant of parental rights. At present, her underage daughter is living with her grandmother," Smirnova said.
Regional ombudswoman Tatyana Merzlyakova told Tass that the tragedy had exposed a wealth of problems related to the prevention of such problems as surrender of child in Russia.
"Nobody talks about its prevention, yet it is one of the answers to the question about how children find themselves in orphanages and why such tragedies as the one we saw in Verkhnyaya Pyshma occurred. I've taken the problem under personal control. We'll work out a concept of opening crisis centers for expectant mothers in a difficult situation, help them find their next of kin and support them," Merzlyakova said.
She noted that the woman who had frozen her babies to death was kept in remand prison # 5 in Yekaterinburg where she was safe from public wrath.