A bizarre tale unfolded into the public eye yesterday in Reading, where a nurse’s aide married to a astrophysics scholar was charged with allegedly giving birth, then killing, five babies over the last two decades without anyone knowing.
Michele Kalina, 44, allegedly stored her dead children’s remains inside her home in a cooler and a concrete slab in the wall, Berks County District Attorney John Adams said yesterday following a three-month investigation into the morbid, sad story.
“I’ve been involved in criminal justice for 25 years. I have never seen anything like this,” Adams said in a phone interview. “It’s shocking, disturbing and it’s just very, very unusual.”
Adams said husband Jeffrey Kalina, who has a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in astrophysics and a bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had no idea about the dead babies inside his home, allegedly since 1996.
That year, Michele Kalina began having an affair with another man, who was not named but is the father of four of the five dead babies found, Adams said. Only Michele Kalina has been charged with their murders. The bodies of infants believed to be between 32 and 48 weeks old were badly decomposed when found in July by Jeffrey Kalina and a daughter he has with Michele.
No one, not even the husband, apparently knew Michele Kalina was ever pregnant with any of the dead babies, Adams said.
