Kathleen Folbigg was vilified as a baby killer and Australia’s “most hated woman” when she was convicted in 2003 of murdering three of her children and manslaughter of another.
But on Thursday, Folbigg’s convictions were quashed by an appeal court after an inquiry that examined new scientific evidence and found there was reasonable doubt about her guilt.
She had previously been pardoned and was released from prison in June after 20 years behind bars.
The case could result in the largest damages award for a wrongful conviction in Australia – and a reckoning for the country’s justice system.
“For almost a quarter of a century I was met with disbelief and hostility,” Folbigg said after she was acquitted.
“I have experienced abuse in all its forms. I hoped and prayed that one day I could stand here with my name cleared. I hope no one else will ever have to suffer as I suffered.”
‘They picked words and sentences from my diaries’
Folbigg’s original guilty plea was not based on medical evidence that explained how her four young children – Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura – died between 1989 and 1999, aged 19 days to 18 months.
Instead, the prosecution relied heavily on Folbigg’s diary entries as admissions of guilt. No experts in trauma, diaries or grief were called to testify.
The case against Folbigg was also based on Meadow’s Law – a controversial and now discredited rule that three or more sudden infant deaths in a single family were murders until proven otherwise.
In a 1998 diary entry about Laura, the last of her children to die, Folbigg wrote: ‘I shouted at her so angrily it scared her, she hasn’t stopped crying. It got so bad that I almost purposely dropped her on the floor and left her behind.
“I held back enough to put her on the ground and walk away. I went to my room and let her cry. Was probably only gone for 5 minutes, but it seemed like a lifetime. I feel like the worst mother on this earth. Afraid she’ll leave me now. Like Sara did. I knew I was short-tempered and cruel to her at times, and she left. With a little help.”
Folbigg accused the prosecutor Thursday of taking her words out of context.
“They picked words and sentences from my diaries. Those books contained my personal feelings, which I wrote to myself,” she said.
“No one expects this kind of thing to be read by strangers, let alone have an opinion about it. They took my words out of context and turned them against me. They accused me of something I never wrote about, never did and could never do.”
Two-decade battle for Folbigg a ‘enormous effort’
It wasn’t the justice system simply working properly that ultimately freed Folbigg, according to her attorney Rhanee Rego, who has worked pro-bono since 2017.
Australia has no independent body to investigate possible miscarriages of justice – unlike Britain, the US, New Zealand and Canada, which have independent commissions to review convictions.
As Rego put it, Folbigg’s case rested on “a large group of good people who saw injustice and did something about it.”
One of them was Emma Cunliffe, a legal expert at the University of British Columbia, who published Murder, Medicine and Motherhood in 2011 about Folbigg’s case.
It was claimed that she had been wrongly convicted and that the diary entries were not those of a guilty woman, but of a grieving mother trying to make sense of her trauma.
She cited misogynistic reasoning in Folbigg’s case, noting that normal behavior such as working part-time and putting her children in daycare so she could go to the gym was portrayed as suspicious in court.
A breakthrough came in 2018 when research by a team of experts, including immunologist Prof Carola Vinuesa, revealed that Folbigg and her two daughters – Laura and Sarah – were carriers of a rare genetic variation known as CALM2-G114R. It suggested there was a good chance the deaths were natural.
Vinuesa gave evidence at an inquest into Folbigg’s conviction in 2019. It also examined evidence from the first trial and confirmed Folbigg’s guilt.
The genetic evidence and new medical research by an international team of scientists – including finding that the two boys, Caleb and Patrick, carried variants in a gene known as BSN “shown to cause fatal epilepsy in mice” caused” – were raised again in another study earlier this year.
This was prompted by leading scientists calling for Folbigg’s release based on strong evidence that her children had died of natural causes. The 2023 inquiry found there was reasonable doubt about Folbigg’s convictions and in June she was pardoned and released from prison.
One of Folbigg’s biggest advocates was childhood friend Tracy Chapman, who always believed she was innocent. For 20 years. Chapman faced insults and death threats while supporting Folbigg during unsuccessful appeals.
“The 20-year battle for Kathleen has been a tremendous effort,” she said. “It cost jobs, lost income and destroyed lives and relationships. It also required enormous mental strength.”
Folbigg said she was grateful that the latest science and genetics had provided answers about how her children died. But, she added, the legal answers were there to prove her innocence in 1999.
“They were ignored and rejected,” she said. “The system preferred to blame me rather than accept that children can sometimes die suddenly, unexpectedly and heartbreakingly.”
A reckoning for the Australian justice system
Nevertheless, Folbigg considers himself one of the “lucky ones”.
“I have a chance, with support, to rebuild my life. But there are many more people who are not so lucky. We must be humble and open to improving the system to ensure the truth comes to light, because the truth and the right legal outcome matter.”
Rego, the lawyer, said the case should be the turning point that forces Australia to establish an independent body such as Britain’s Criminal Cases Review Commission.
“While this is Kathleen’s story, it illustrates broader problems in our justice system – a poorly designed review system that is unable to identify and correct miscarriages of justice in a timely manner.”
Rego said that now that her convictions had been annulled, compensation should come from the state. She wouldn’t put a figure on it, but suggested it would be “larger than any substantial payment previously made.”
NSW Attorney-General Michael Daley said the government would consider all requests for compensation.
“After everything that has happened over the past 20 years, it is impossible not to feel great compassion for everyone involved,” he said.
When Folbigg left prison in June, she moved to Chapman’s farm to heal and spend time with those who had assisted her.
“My children are here with me today and they will be close to my heart for the rest of my life,” she said Thursday. “I loved my children and always will.”