Woman who cut her newborn in half when she realised it must have been fathered by her lover is jailed for 18 years

27-year-old Elena Smocot from Romania who murdered her newborn son, before cutting the corpse in half and removing the baby's intestines, because she believed it was her lover's child, has been jailed for 18 years. She apparently killed her baby in front of her four-year-old son and her nephew, aged seven, in her home in Barlad, Vaslui County, east Romania. She told police how her actions were triggered by noticing how her newborn looked nothing like her two other children, and bore a striking resemblance to the man she had been having an affair with. The mother-of-two said that as soon as she noticed the similarity with her lover, she decided to kill the child. She described to police how she grabbed the child by the legs and swung it around, bashing his head against the furniture several times until it stopped screaming. She then went outside, put the baby on the ground and stamped on him repeatedly.

The remains of the baby was placed in a box

The two other children, who heard her shouting, went outside and saw the brutal abuse, after which they ran to raise the alarm with neighbours. However, before neighbours and police arrived, Smocot grabbed a broken roof tile and used it to cut the baby into half, a court heard. She then pulled out the baby's intestines and put them in the bath tub and then switched on the shower where she stood inside the same bath to wash herself. During the court case judges heard evidence that the woman might have been suffering from depression because in both 2010 and 2012 she was suffering from postnatal depression. She said that nobody had known she had a lover, and in interviews with detectives gave chilling detail of the killing.
Prosecutor Alice Ruja said: 'She described the way in which she took the baby's intestines out, she insisted on the officers recording the detail like the fact that she had to pull twice to get them out.'
'She says she had to repeatedly chop at the corpse as well because it was not as easy as slicing chicken meat.
As well as being sentenced to jail, the judge also took away the parental rights for her other two children.