Mother Massacre: Celine Lesage Murdered Six Newborns, Kept Bodies in Plastic Bags

COUTANCES, France (CBS/AP) French mother Celine Lesage admitted to killing six of her newborn babies and stuffing their bodies in plastic bags then storing them in her basement.

The horrifying admission came during the opening of her trial in northwest France.

Asked if the babies were stillborn or born alive, she responded simply, "They were alive."

Lesage was arrested in 2007 after her partner at the time, Luc Margueritte, discovered the corpses in plastic garbage bags in the basement of their apartment building in Valognes, a town near the Atlantic coast.

The children were born between 2000 and 2007. Five of them were from a previous lover. The sixth was from Margueritte.

Prosecutor Michel Garrandaux said Lesage brought the five corpses with her when she moved in with Margueritte, but he didn't know until he found the bodies in the basement.

During questioning by investigators, Lesage acknowledged strangling two of the newborns and suffocating four others, according to judicial documents.

She does have a 14-year-old son.

If convicted, Lesage faces life in prison.

Lesage's case follows other equally disturbing cases in Europe. Last  year, another French woman was convicted of murdering three of her newborn babies and storing them in her freezer. In Germany in 2006, a woman was convicted of murdering eight newborn babies and burying them in her parent's garden.