The bodies of five children aged between 2 and 8 were found stuffed into garbage bags on Tuesday near a logging road in the US state of Alabama after their father confessed to killing them and led police to the scene, authorities said.
"Timothy Ray Jones, the father of the children, did not reveal a motive for the killings, which he confessed to authorities in Mississippi," Smith County Sheriff Charlie Crumpton said, Reuters reported.
"I’m a father of two, and I can't imagine what goes through a man's head when he does this," Crumpton said. "It was a horrible, horrible crime."
"The children, whose names have not been released, were reported missing from their home near Lexington, South Carolina, by their mother on September 3," the Lexington County Sheriff's Department said in a statement.
"The children were found in a rural area in southwestern Alabama, about 50 miles southwest of Montgomery," Crumpton said.