The 44-year-old mother has been behind bars in western Germany since January 2013, after her ex-husband found two decomposed baby corpses in the attic of their Ostertimke house in Lower Saxony, in 2012.

She admitted to having given birth to both in 1996 and 2001, then suffocating them and hiding the bodies. During the trial, investigators spoke of a third child, but a lack of evidence saw this dropped from the case.

But nearby authorities in the town of Rotenburg did not give up so easily, and began combing the archives for unidentified dead babies. They found one in the area, discovered in 1988 in a bin in a motorway lay-by in Lower Saxony.

Investigators located the grave and exhumed the corpse in order to analyze its DNA.

The grave had no name and was marked simply with the words In stillem Gedenken – In peaceful remembrance.

Nine months after the ruling, their tests proved that the mother was “without doubt” the woman charged with killing her two children, police said on Wednesday.

It is unclear how the baby died and the mother has strongly denied killing the baby. The case will not be reopened.

DPA/The Local/jcw

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