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“Her conduct must be denounced,” Thompson said, before sentencing her to serve four consecutive two-year terms, plus two more, of six and 12 months each. He subtracted eight months from that total for time served, plus another year to prevent the sentence, he said, from being “unduly long or harsh.”

Photo by Trevor Hagan/The Canadian Press

The case, which carried on for more than 30 months after Giesbrecht’s arrest, nonetheless left many questions unanswered. Indeed, the central mysteries remain. There’s no conclusion, no catharsis — not yet — just a jumble of terrible details and facts.

Giesbrecht, according to Thompson’s ruling, concealed six pregnancies over an unknown period of years. She carried each to full term or close to it, without her husband or best friend discovering the truth.

DNA evidence linked all six infants to Giesbrecht and her husband. She also had 11 therapeutic abortions and gave birth to two children — one in 1997 and one in 2002 — that she raised along with her husband.

After giving birth to each of the six infants, Giesbretch took steps to dispose of them. She stuffed several in white kitchen garbage bags, wrapped them in towels and tote bags and jammed them in blue plastic bins, along with toys and baby clothes — “an infant-sized long-sleeved shirt,” a pair of “size four Scooby Doo underwear.” She eventually stored them all in a storage locker she rented using her maiden name.

One body was found encased in concrete. The remains had largely liquefied, but “an impression of the body remained in the hardened disc.” The sixth was sealed in some kind of white powder, “leaving it hard and mummified.” The placenta was found in a plastic bag underneath.