Murder charged; woman hid 5 sets of remains in closet

A Pennsylvania woman who stowed the remains of four children in her closet and threw bones from another into a landfill was charged with five counts of murder today, authorities announced.

Michele Kalina, 44, had previously been charged with abuse of a corpse on Aug. 9 after her husband and daughter discovered containers with the tiny bodies inside in the hallway closet of their Reading apartment.

The Berks County coroner said that four of the fetuses were born alive and then killed. According to District Attorney John T. Adams, a pathologist concluded Oct. 14 that the deaths were due to non-natural causes "consistent with aphyxia, poisoning or neglect."

Kalina, a home health-care aide, had conceived the children through an extramarital affair with a man who was kept unaware of her pregnancies, according to the Associated Press.

In August, a forensic anthropologist determined that the remains stashed in two of the containers were those of a one-month-old infant and a 20-week fetus. A third container held a two-by-three foot block of concrete. An x-ray of the block encased an "unknown mass." After cracking it open, investigators found more human remains ranging in age from 32 weeks to 43 weeks gestation, investigators said. Additional bones were uncovered by cadaver dogs in a nearby landfill, Adams said.

Investigators said Kalina had a daughter by her paramour who was given up for adoption in 2003, according to the Associated Press. With her husband, Kalina has a teenage daughter and a son who died in 2000 after a long illness.

Kalina has been jailed without bail since the discovery the remains.