Police arrest 'mother who froze new born twins to death and placed them in a supermarket freezer'

Police say they today arrested a 30 year old woman named only as Irina on suspicion of killing the children by placing them in her freezer at home. A former employee at the store, she then moved the tiny frozen bodies to the supermarket freezer when they were placed alongside meat for sale in the shop.

The story caused shock and disbelief around the world after the macabre find on Tuesday. Police now allege that the mother killed her twins in 2008, and that the bodies were kept in freezers ever since. They claimed that she confessed to killing the twins when she was confronted by officers. 

It is not clear when she moved the corpses in plastic bags to the supermarket freezer or how long the babies were in the storage freezer at the shop. 

'Sverdlovsk police has done titanic work in order to locate the woman who gave birth to frozen twin boys', said Valeri Gorelykh, the head of the press office of the Main Department of the Internal Affairs Ministry.

'This woman was arrested this morning. She is called Irina and is 30 years old.

'She lives with a daughter and her mother. She is not married. She worked in the supermarket some years ago. In 2008, she gave birth to twin boys at home and at first froze them to death in her freezer at home. Later she carried the bodies to the supermarket and  hid them in the freezer there. 

'She had intended to take them away and bury them when he left the job, but somehow she missed the moment when she could do it. Then she lost her access to the areas where the fridges are.

'This story has shocked police, we did our best to solve this crime. It was controlled by the head of Sverdlovsk region Interior Ministry Department, and we are proud to report it has been solved so quickly'.

Verkhnyaya Pyshma is a town of 59,750 people close to Yekaterinburg, Russia's fourth largest city. The arrest came after police quizzed all 20 people at the town's Central Supermarket with access to the storage freezer. The babies were found after a change of ownership at the store. Old stock was removed from all freezers by the former owner. Staff at the shop were 'appalled' by the discovery.