In March of 2013, a German court convicted a woman of manslaughter and sentenced her to ONLY nine years in prison for killing five of her newborn babies on different occasions. German authorities officially stated that the 28-year-old woman was systematically murdering her infants shortly after giving birth to them, either at home or in the woods, and hiding their bodies because she worried about her husband leaving her if she had any more children. This was also the main reason she wouldn't tell anyone about being pregnant, including her husband, who told police that he knew nothing about the pregnancies and was shocked that his wife managed to keep them secret. Police found the first infant's body dumped in a paper sorting station in 2006 about nine miles away from the town of Husum, where the woman lived. In 2007, the second child was found in a parking area off a regional highway, also about the same distance from Husum but in a different direction.

After reading news reports that DNA results had confirmed that the two children had the same parents, the woman then decided not to dispose the other bodies in public places. She hid the next three infants — whose existence authorities were unaware of until the woman's confession — in boxes in the basement of the building where she lived. The bodies have now been recovered and autopsies have been performed, but forensic experts have not yet been able to determine the causes or dates of their deaths.