French mother charged with killing 8 babies released

A French mother charged with killing eight of her newborns was released from prison Thursday under court supervision, according to a judicial source. The source said Dominique Cottrez was released without an electronic bracelet and is required to continue with the mental and psychiatric care she was undergoing while detained. Details on the reasons for her release were not immediately available. The former nursing assistant had been in custody since her newborns' bodies were found hidden in the quiet village of Villers-au-Tertre in northern France in July 2010. She was charged with multiple murders after she admitted to smothering the babies in what is considered the worst case of infanticide in recent French history. Cottrez told an investigating judge last year that her father, who died in 2007, raped her between the ages of eight and 14, as well as several times after she was married, and that she feared the babies were his. She said she had killed the babies because she did not want doctors to find out they were her father's. Last October, investigators ruled that the statute of limitations had not expired, even though a toxicological expert concluded that at least seven of the eight babies had been born more than 10 years before their bodies were found.