Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents Read Free Page A

parents would kill me.’ But, when detectives arrived on the scene, she phoned her father, who told her not to talk to anyone.
    At the medical centre, she told staff that she was frightened and asked ‘what will happen to me?’ and ‘what’s going to become of me?’ She said that she had menstruated regularly and had no idea that she was pregnant. Ironically, women who are in denial about an impending birth are apparently more likely to menstruate each month, even if it’s only very light bleeding or spotting, proof of the mind’s effect on the flesh.
    Indicted for manslaughter, Stephanie Wernick moved to a different college and began a new relationship whilst she awaited trial. Her lawyer insisted that she have psychiatric treatment, and two psychologists admitted that she had poor motivation and very little insight into what she’d done.
    At her trial, she wept continuously and was allegedly too distraught to testify in her own defence. Her attorneys said that she’d had a brief psychotic episode during which she’d disposed of the child but that she’d then returned to normal. The prosecution said that she was immoral, that the birth of the child was inconvenient and that she was a shallow and sociopathic young woman who thought only of her own comfort. They noted that she was fearless and seemed incapable of remorse. Found guilty, she was sentenced to one to four years in jail.
SABINE HILSCHINZ
    It’s easy to feel sympathy for the pregnant girl who is afraid to tell her parents that she’s been sexually active. She kills and disposes of the infant in a desperate attempt to keep their love.She may even fear physical reprisals if she admits to her condition – as a teenager, Rose West (now in prison for aiding her serial-killer husband) was battered by her father when she told him that she was pregnant by her lover, Fred.
    But occasionally a woman will commit repeated acts of infanticide, using it as a kind of retrospective contraception. She’s willing to cause pain, however fleeting, to infant after infant rather than use birth control or remain celibate. Understandably, the law judges such women more harshly than the tell-no-one teenager and sentences them accordingly.
    Sabine Hilschinz grew up in East Germany, the product of a housewife mother and railwayman father. She married a police cadet called Oliver who later enrolled in the Stasi, the Ministry for State Security. Sabine herself trained as a dental nurse though she had an IQ of 120, which is university-level. The couple had three children together and she was originally devoted to them.
    But Oliver’s work took him away from home for weeks at a time and Sabine couldn’t cope with the demands of motherhood. Bored and lonely, she regularly went drinking by herself, leaving her little ones at home alone. Soon her social drinking had escalated into alcoholism and she spent much of her life in a vodka-induced haze. The German authorities, who were monitoring the family, became so alarmed at the children’s failure to thrive that they eventually took all three into care.
SERIAL MURDER
    In October 1987, Sabine found that she was pregnant by one of the men that she’d brought home after a night at the pub. She told no one of her condition, concealing it by wearing increasingly baggy clothes. Oliver noted that she was gaining weight, but they’d agreed not to have further children (and it’snot clear if they were still having sex together) so it didn’t occur to him that she might be expecting again. In May 1988, she awoke in the marital bed next to her snoring husband and realised that she was going into labour. Tiptoeing into the bathroom, she gave birth over the toilet and let the baby drown in the water. Meanwhile, her oblivious spouse remained fast asleep next door. Sabine cut the umbilical cord and put the tiny corpse into a plastic bag before placing it in a large plant pot and covering it with soil. She put herbs in the pot and set it on