Woman makes horror discovery of newborn’s body in freezer while clearing out late mother’s home in Spain « Euro Weekly News

A woman sorting through her late mother’s belongings in the small Galician town of Allariz lifted the lid of a chest freezer and made the horrific discovery of the body of a newborn baby inside. Forensic experts believe the baby may have died more than 20 years ago, with the freezer moved between several homes before it got there.

The freezer was sitting in a ground-floor garage 

The discovery was made on Monday November 2 in a storage room in the garage of a block of flats in the centre of Allariz, a town of around 6,500 people in the province of Ourense, in north-west Spain. The woman had been going through her mother’s things following her recent death when she decided to check inside the chest freezer, and she alerted the authorities straight away.

The Guardia Civil has opened an investigation and an Ourense judge has placed the case under secreto de sumario, a judicial secrecy order that keeps a case’s details private while it’s investigated. No arrests have been reported.

It had been moved between several homes in Ourense

Another odd detail of the story is that the freezer hadn’t always been in Allariz either. It was kept in more than one flat in the city of Ourense before arriving in the town in a recent move, when the daughter of its owner, the woman who has since died, went to live there.

That’s now one of the key questions for investigators, as they try to work out whether the body was already inside during each of those moves and, if so, who knew about it.

It’s also the question on everyone’s minds in Allariz. Some neighbours have pointed to Spain’s huge blackout in April 2025, which left homes without power for hours, and wondered how a body could have stayed frozen through it. Technicians said chest freezers aren’t affected by short power cuts, though, and usually take three to five days to fully thaw.

What forensic experts believe so far 

First estimates suggest the baby was born after 32 to 34 weeks of pregnancy, so somewhere between six and eight weeks early. The baby is also thought to have breathed, which would mean investigators aren’t dealing with a stillbirth.

The full autopsy is being carried out by the Instituto de Medicina Legal de Galicia (Imelga, Galicia’s forensic institute), and that will confirm whether the baby was born alive and how it died. 

Judicial sources said the first part of that work is “relatively simple” and includes a lung float test, which shows whether air ever reached the baby’s lungs. Pinning down exactly when the baby died will be much more difficult, though, with forensic experts admitting “we don’t have absolute certainty” over the 20-year estimate. Anything found with the body, including wrapping or clothing, could help narrow it down.

DNA samples sent to Madrid to find the parents

The baby’s mother still hasn’t been identified. Officers have taken statements from several people close to the woman who died, and DNA samples have been sent to a laboratory in Madrid so they can be compared with the baby’s. 

Investigators are trying to establish whether the death was deliberate or the result of a lack of care after the birth, and whether it happened somewhere else in the province before the freezer was taken to Allariz.

Why any crime could already be time-barred

Even if investigators manage to piece together what happened, nobody may ever face trial for it. In Spain, the time limit for prosecuting homicide and murder is 20 years, and it’s shorter for lesser offences. So if the baby did die in the early 2000s, as the first estimates suggest, any possible crime may have already expired.

It’s not the first case of its kind to shake Galicia this year either. In August, a newborn was found dead inside a wardrobe in a home in Sada, in A Coruña, after the mother was taken to hospital with heavy bleeding and denied having been pregnant.

‘Here we boast that nothing bad ever happens’

The case has become the only topic of conversation in Allariz, a medieval town far better known for its cobbled streets and riverside walks, with neighbours saying they never noticed anything unusual.

“But here we boast that nothing bad ever happens, and look,” said Ana, who lives in the same block as the garage. Another neighbour, Jesús, couldn’t get past how long the freezer must have been running: “All those years with the freezer plugged in? How strange.”

Others just want to know what happened, even if any crime may already have expired.

The Guardia Civil and forensic experts will send their final report to the judge once the autopsy and DNA results are in. Until then, the case stays under judicial secrecy, with no arrests made and the baby’s parents still unidentified.