DUESSELDORF, Germany, Jan 14 (AFP) - A German nurse has admitted starving her three year-old daughter to death, decapitating her, cutting up the body and hiding it in plastic bags for two years on her balcony, police said Friday.
The 26 year-old woman, whose identity was not immediately released, had made the admission to her husband after investigators searched her apartment Wednesday, police said.
Police described the crime as "especially appalling and almost unimaginable." The woman, now in police custody, was apparently sane, according to prosecutor Ralf Herrenbrueck.
She told investigators her daughter had begun to refuse to eat from November 2002 onwards, so she stopped feeding her. "I noticed that my daughter was dying," she told police.
When the child died, the mother kept the body under her bed for some days before decapitating it in order to place it in a plastic container. She then cut the body into pieces in her bath and placed the parts in bags on her balcony.
Police said neighbours had complained of a dreadful smell from the apartment.
The woman's husband, who moved out of the family home 11 months after the child's death, told police he had had no inkling of what happened.
He said that after a while he had given up asking where his daughter was because he was frightened of arguing with his wife, who had given varying accounts to explain the disappearance.
The couple have a second daughter aged four who has been taken into care by social services.
fan/jfs/da
Germany-crime
01/14/2005 19:05 GMT - AFP