After spending more than two decades in jail, Kathleen Folbigg has been cleared of causing the deaths of her four children. “I hoped and prayed that one day I would be able to stand here with my name cleared,” she said outside the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal, minutes after applause broke out inside when her convictions were quashed on Thursday (December 14).
Once labelled Australia’s “worst female serial killer,” the 56-year-old was granted an unconditional pardon and released from jail in June after an inquiry into her convictions heard there was reasonable doubt about her guilt following new scientific discoveries.
In a final report released in November, inquiry commissioner Tom Bathurst KC found there was an “identifiable cause” for three of the deaths and Ms. Folbigg’s relationship with her children did not support the case that she killed them. Mr. Bathurst’s report was sent to the appeal court, which delivered its ruling on Thursday.
Ms. Folbigg was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to 40 years imprisonment — eventually appealed to a minimum 25 years — for the suffocation murders of three of her children and the manslaughter of a fourth. The children, Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura, died between 1989 and 1999 at ages ranging from 19 days to 18 months.
The 2022 inquiry heard that a rare genetic variation was a “reasonably possible cause” of Sarah and Laura’s deaths, according to cardiology and genetics experts. Myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, was another possible cause of Laura’s death. Patrick may have died from a neurogenetic disorder, which could have also hospitalised him before his death. Reasonable causes for their deaths undermined the tendency reasoning used to convict Ms. Folbigg of Caleb’s manslaughter.
NSW Chief Justice Andrew Bell delivered the Court Of Criminal Appeal’s decision. “While the verdicts at trial were reasonably open on the evidence then available, there is now reasonable doubt as to Ms. Folbigg’s guilt. It is appropriate that Ms. Folbigg’s conviction be quashed.”
“A substantial and significant new body of scientific evidence had become available since Ms. Folbigg’s trial, diminishing the force of what had previously been relied upon as powerful coincidence and tendency evidence”, the court ruled. The judges agreed with Mr. Bathurst’s finding that the mother’s diary entries — controversially used to help secure her convictions — did not contain reliable admissions of guilt.
“It may readily be understood how certain entries, viewed in isolation, had a powerful influence on the original jury. Viewed in their full context, however, as they must be, and informed by the expert psychological and psychiatric expert evidence which was not before the jury, the diary entries were not reliable admissions of guilt,” said Justice Bell.
The diaries showed Ms. Folbigg’s private feelings, written to herself, which she never expected to be read and interpreted by strangers. “They took my words out of context and they turned them against me,” Ms. Folbigg asserted following her acquittal, adding: “I love my children and I always will.”
While grateful that new scientific evidence had given her answers for the deaths of her children, Ms. Folbigg lamented a legal system that sought to blame her, rather than accept that children can and do die suddenly, unexpectedly and heartbreakingly.
Her lawyer Rhanee Rego described her client as: “A woman who demonstrated courage and resilience to reject the claims made about her.” She added that her wrongful imprisonment should become a major impetus to improve the legal system.
Ms. Rego confirmed Ms. Folbigg will be seeking compensation for her lost decades. “I’m not prepared to put a figure on it, but it will be bigger than any substantial payment that has been made before,” she predicted.
With Australian Associated Press
