Mother Released Twenty Years After Being Found Guilty of Killing Her Four Children

A woman condemned as Australia's worst female serial killer has walked free from prison after serving just twenty years.

Kathleen Folbigg, charged with killing her four children last month, walked free in what seems to be the country's worst miscarriage of justice.

New South Wales Attorney General Michael Daley has called for Folbigg to be freed based on the preliminary findings of an inquiry that raised reasonable doubt in her guilt.

Guilty

Folbigg was jailed in 2003 on three counts of murder and one of manslaughter following the death of her four babies over ten years starting from 1989.

In each of the deaths, she was the person who found the bodies. However, none had any physical evidence of the cause of death; the prosecution argued that the chances of four babies dying in one family were so remote someone must be responsible for their deaths.

Other evidence against Folbigg included the contents of her diary, which was said to contain worrying passages interpreted as confessions of guilt. It seems now that these were the writings of a mother grieving the death of her children.

When he sentenced Folbigg, Judge Graham Barr recalled her troubled childhood and said there was little or no chance of her being rehabilitated, placing a sentence of forty years on her.

Kathleen Folbigg

When Folbigg was just eighteen months old, her father murdered her mother; she was placed in foster care, where she spent most of her formative years.

When she was twenty, she married Craig Folbigg, whom she had met in her hometown of Newcastle in New South Wales. Within the same year, she fell pregnant with Caleb, who only lived for nineteen days.

The following year, the Folbiggs welcomed another son, Patrick; he would also be found dead eight months later. Two years after this, Sarah was found dead at ten months, and then in 1999, their fourth child died at eighteen months.

It was at this point that the police began to investigate the deaths. Two years later, Folbigg was arrested and charged. The couple's marriage fell apart as Craig worked with the police to build a case against his estranged wife.

Road to Freedom

The road to freedom has not been short for Folbigg; as recently as 2019, her appeal was turned down.

The inquiry that saw her released started last year after new scientific evidence had emerged. More than ninety scientists and medical professionals signed a petition to have the case looked at, saying that new evidence cast doubt on her conviction.

Doctors stated that a genetic explanation for the children's sudden death could exist.

Both girls, Sarah and Laura, were found to have a genetic mutation known as CALM2-G114R, which caused their death from myocarditis and heart inflammation. The gene produces the protein which affects the opening and closing of the channels of the heart.

Patrick was found to have experienced an unexplained life-threatening event when he was four months old, which could have been caused by an underlying neurogenic disorder.

Folbigg had only been convicted of Caleb's death as she was found responsible for the death of three children, so it was likely that she killed him also.

This evidence and that of her defence team showed that rather than a sadistic killer, Folbigg was a loving mother, devastated and confused by the deaths of her children.

Judge Tom Bathurst said after reviewing the evidence, he was "unable to accept the proposition that Ms Folbigg was anything but a caring mother for her children."

Craig Folbigg

Craig, who had been outspoken in the first trial, spoke of a mother who was ill-tempered with their children and growled at them occasionally.

He stated through his lawyer that his opinion of his wife's guilt has never changed, and he believes that her release is a miscarriage of justice.

It is unclear what motivated him to make these claims; he is most likely a grieving father looking for someone to blame for his children's death.

Folbigg, now fifty-five, has been released from prison and pardoned. The pardon she received meant she did not have to serve the rest of her sentence; it did not quash her conviction.

If found to be innocent of all charges, there will not only be questions as to how this grieving mother came to be incarcerated for twenty years but also how much compensation she would expect from the Australian legal system.