A German woman has received a life sentence after being found guilty of murdering five of her six children, all aged between one and eight years.

The court sitting in the city of Wuppertal on Thursday found no extenuating circumstances. 

This virtually rules out release for the 28-year-old woman, from the west German city of Solingen, after she has served the normal life term of 15 years.

The woman’s eldest son survived. During the trial, the prosecution alleged she first sedated the children and then drowned or suffocated them one at a time.

Investigating officers believe that seeing a photo of her husband with a new partner was the incident that motivated the crime, which shocked Germany. 

The woman then messaged her husband that he would not see the children again.

The children’s bodies were discovered in their beds on September 3 last year. The woman insisted that an intruder had broken into her home, tied her up and forced her to send chat messages before murdering the children.

Psychiatric experts found no evidence of serious mental illness. The woman’s defence lawyer called for her release on the grounds that doubts remained over whether his client had committed the murders.

The court found that Melina, 1, Leonie, 2, Sophie, 3, Timo, 6, and Luca, 8, had been murdered by their mother, who had subsequently thrown herself in front of a train at Dusseldorf central station but survived.

She had sent her eldest son, who survived unscathed, to his grandmother.

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AAP

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