A mother arrested for allegedly killing her two newborn babies and storing their bodies in a home refrigerator was referred to the prosecution for possible indictment, police said Friday.
The woman in her 30s was apprehended last week for allegedly strangling her two babies to death shortly after their births in 2018 and 2019, respectively, and keeping their bodies in a refrigerator in her apartment in Suwon, 30 kilometers south of Seoul.
A court issued an arrest warrant for her on infanticide charges last Friday.
The Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency forwarded the suspect to the prosecution on the charges of murder and concealing of a corpse early Friday.
The woman appeared in front of the Suwon Nambu Police Station at 9:11 a.m. to be escorted to the prosecutors' office, but she declined to comment when reporters asked her for the motive of the crime.
The referral came a day after police decided to apply the murder charges, which can be punished much more severely, instead of the infanticide charges, saying the murders were committed after some time had passed since the children's births, and that the same crime was acted out for two consecutive years. Infanticide charges are applied in cases where a mother kills a baby during or immediately after birth.
The Criminal Act stipulates a prison term of up to 10 years for those convicted of infanticide, and the death penalty, life sentence or an imprisonment of at least five years for those convicted of murder.
Police also booked the woman's husband on charges of being an accessory to her murders, changing his status from witness to suspect Thursday, but decided not to refer him to prosecutors, citing a lack of clear evidence.
Earlier, police decided not to reveal the identity of the suspect, pointing to concerns of secondary damage being done to the rest of the family.
The woman admitted to killing the infants due to economic hardships while raising three children but told police she had lied to her husband, telling him she had two abortions. (Yonhap)
