Husband finds ᴅᴇᴀᴅ babies in boxes ‘after argument with wife’

A husband found the remains of five babies stuffed into cardboard boxes after he got into an argument with his wife over what was in them. 

The horrifying discoveries were made at a house in the French town of Orange in the Provence region on Monday morning. 

The man and his 32-year-old 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.

An investigating source told the Daily Mail that he ‘looked inside the cardboard boxes they had been arguing over – that’s when he found the five ᴅᴇᴀᴅ 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. The couple, who have two other living children, aged eight and twelve, beyond the newborn, are now involved in the enquiry opened by Carpentras prosecutor’s office.

Medical examinations will determine the exact nature of the remains, as well as the circumstances and date of their deaths. 

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 first forensic examinations, including autopsies, will be carried out on Wednesday.  

There have been no arrests in connection with the case yet.

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 ᴀssistant 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.

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.

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

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.