Frenchwoman faces murder trial over freezer babies

A woman suspected of killing three of her children at birth and storing two of the bodies in a freezer will be tried for their murder, French judicial authorities said yesterday.

Véronique Courjault, who has been in custody since October 2006, is expected to go on trial later this year in the western city of Tours.

At a hearing yesterday, the examining judge dropped charges against her husband Jean-Louis, who had been investigated for complicity in the murders, his lawyer said.

Mrs Courjault, 39, is alleged to have given birth to two children while the family were living in Seoul, South Korea, and to have killed both infants, storing their bodies in a freezer in their apartment.

Police say she has admitted killing a third child in France.

The gruesome killings, known as the "freezer babies" case, shocked France and received heavy press coverage.

They came to light in July 2006 when Mr Courjault contacted South Korean police to say he had discovered the corpses in the freezer after returning from an overseas business trip.

His wife was on holiday in France at the time and he joined her there shortly after reporting the discovery of the bodies. They did not return to South Korea.

The couple, who have two other children, initially denied being the babies' parents, despite a Korean DNA test. The results were later confirmed by a second test in France which led judicial authorities there to investigate the case.

Mrs Courjault later admitted to French police that she killed two babies in Seoul, as well as a third child whose body she cremated in France before she and her husband moved to South Korea in 2002, a police source said at the time of her arrest.

She said she had hidden the pregnancies from her husband and had killed the babies because they were unwanted, according to the source.

Psychological tests determined that she suffered from a medically recognised condition in which a woman denies pregnancy and in extreme cases may kill her baby after the birth.

Mrs Courjault could face life imprisonment if convicted of the murders.