Couple are arrested after five dead babies are found in cardboard boxes in France

By PERKIN AMALARAJ, FOREIGN NEWS REPORTER Published: 01:13, 30 July 2026 | Updated: 01:14, 30 July 2026 A French couple have been arrested after the bodies of five infants were found in cardboard boxes in their home.  The remains were found in boxes at a home in the town of Orange, in France's southeastern Provence region, on Monday, a day after the 32-year-old woman gave birth to a healthy boy at home before being taken to hospital. The man and his wife, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had been arguing about what was in the boxes just a day after she had given birth following a pregnancy she denied.  Local media reported this was the third time she had denied being pregnant.   But after she began suffering from abdominal pains, she went to hospital while her husband stayed behind and looked inside.  An investigating source previously told the Daily Mail that he 'looked inside the cardboard boxes they had been arguing over – that's when he found the five dead babies'. They added: 'All the foetuses were decomposing, and had been around for quite a while.' He called the police, who are now investigating the incident. French police seals affixed to the door of an appartment in Orange, southern France, on July 28, 2026, after the bodies of five deceased infants were discovered The horrifying discoveries were made at a house in the French town of Orange in the Provence region on Monday morning The couple also had two children aged eight and nine, who have been taken in by relatives. The newborn was placed with social services, the prosecutor's office said. Medical examinations will determine the exact nature of the remains, as well as the circumstances and date of their deaths.   Florent Jean, a neighbour, told Le Parisien that the couple were 'charming people' who had moved into the building around two years ago and whose children attended a local primary school.  After she saw emergency services arrive for the mother, she asked herself: 'Is she pregnant? That's impossible, she's so thin.' Florent added that the woman would 'pick up the children from school at lunchtime to eat', while the man would 'go to work in the morning and come back in the evening.' The Orange horror has drawn parallels with the Dominique Cottrez multiple murder case. Cottrez, a 45-year-old nursing assistant from northern France, confessed to killing her eight newborn children at birth and hiding their bodies. The so-called 'house of horror' in Villers-au-Tertre was used to hide the bodies over almost 20 years. Cottrez committed the murders between 1989 and 2006, by suffocating eight of her children shortly after giving birth. The entrance to a building in Orange, Vaucluse department, southeastern France, 28 July 2026 An apartment in Orange, southern France, on July 28, 2026, after the bodies of five deceased infants were discovered Cottrez was able to conceal her pregnancies from her husband and doctor due to being overweight, according to prosecution evidence. In July 2010, two of the bodies were discovered in plastic bags by new owners working in the garden of Cottrez's old house.  When police contacted her, she immediately admitted that the bodies belonged to two infants she had given birth to. She also told police that six more infants' bodies were hidden in the garage. In July 2015, Cottrez was found guilty of eight counts of infanticide and sentenced to a total of nine years in prison. In March, a French court jailed a 44-year-old woman for 25 years over the deaths of two of her new-born babies, who police found in the family freezer.  And in 2018, a court sentenced a woman with a depressive and sometimes violent husband to eight years in prison for drowning five of her new-born babies and freezing their bodies.