A CALLOUS mum killed her two-month-old baby son and then set his body on fire for “crying and keeping her up all night”.
Lubov Kostyuk, 23, used a shoelace to strangle her little son to death in her home in south-eastern Ukraine before burning the body down and hiding the remains in a forest.
The baby boy had had a fever and his mother did not take him to a doctor expecting the child to recover on his own at home in the village of Kobaky, in the country’s Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast region, detectives say.
Because of the illness, the baby was crying from time to time and keeping Kostyuk awake at night.
In the early morning, when the boy started crying again and woke his mother up, she grabbed a shoelace and strangled him to death.
After realising what she had done, Kostyuk decided to hide the crime, cops say.
She wrapped the child’s body in a blanket and tried to burn his body in the courtyard near her house.
But soon after dousing the body with petrol and setting it alight, she got scared that neighbours would smell the odour and put the fire out.
Kostyuk then put the burned body of her son into a bag and carried him to the forest outside the village.
In the forest she set the body on fire again before hiding the burned remains under dry branches and fleeing the scene.
Next day when the child’s father Petro Kostyuk, 49, came to visit his son, the mother said that “the baby disappeared and she did not know where it was”.
STRANGLED WITH A SHOELACE
Mr Kostyuk reported the missing child to the police who immediately started to investigate.
Interviewing locals, the officers discovered the mother was seen carrying a bag while heading to the forest on the day of the baby’s disappearance.
Kostyuk was arrested after the police searched the forest and found the child’s remains.
Confronted with the evidence, Kostyuk confessed, reports say.
Forensics also found traces of gasoline on the mother’s clothes and other evidence during the investigation, reports say.
The head of local police Oleksandr Baidus told local media: “The mother strangled her baby to death then tried to burn the body down.
“She said the child was crying and not letting her sleep.”
Mr Kostyuk, who left his wife a few months before the incident because “she was always nervous and their relationships were tense”, said: “Her mood would change dramatically for no apparent reason.
“But I could never even imagine that she would kill our son.”
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Nurse Olga Gachynska, who checked several times on the family after the baby’s birth said: “Everything looked fine for me. The baby was healthy, clean and fed.
“The mother treated him with love. She cuddled him and kissed him. It was impossible to predict that something like that was coming.”
Kostyuk was charged with murder and sentenced yesterday to 11 years in prison.
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