Kathleen Folbigg was pardoned and released from prison based on new scientific evidence that her four children died by natural causes.
New Delhi: Kathleen Folbigg, the 55-year-old Australian woman, has been pardoned after she spent 20 years in prison over the deaths of her four children. Folbigg was pardoned and released from prison based on new scientific evidence that her four children died by natural causes as she had insisted. Folbigg was released from a prison in Grafton, New South Wales state, following an unconditional pardon by Governor Margaret Beazley.
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Kathleen Folbigg Dubbed As Australia’s ‘Worst Woman Serial Killer’
In 2003, Kathleen Folbigg was convicted for the murder of her four children and was dubbed as Australia’s ‘worst female serial killer’. Her former husband, Craig Folbigg, said in submissions to the inquiry that the implausibility that four children in one family would die of natural causes before the age of 2 was compelling grounds to continue treating the diary entries as admissions of his former wife’s guilt.
How Science Helped Secure Kathleen Folbigg’s Pardon
Kathleen Folbigg’s four children – Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura – died separately over a decade, at between 19 days and 19 months old. Kathleen Folbigg was convicted for the murder of her four children between 1989 to 1999.
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Her first child, Caleb, was born in 1989 and died 19 days later in what a jury determined to be the lesser crime of manslaughter. Her second child, Patrick, was 8 months old when he died in 1991. Two years later, Sarah died at 10 months. In 1999, Folbigg’s fourth child, Laura, died at 19 months.
Evidence discovered in 2018 that both daughters carried a rare CALM2 genetic variant was one of the reasons that the inquiry was called. Lawyer Sophie Callan said expert evidence in the fields of cardiology and genetics indicated that the CALM2-G114R genetic variant “is a reasonably possible cause” of the daughters’ sudden deaths, according to a report by news agency The Associated Press.
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Myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, was also a “reasonably possible cause” of Laura’s death, Callan said. For Patrick, Callan said there was “persuasive expert evidence that as a matter of reasonable possibility, an underlying neurogenetic disorder” caused his sudden death.
The scientific evidence created doubt that Folbigg killed the three children and undermined the argument made in Caleb’s case that four child deaths were an improbable coincidence, Callan said.
Prosecutors had told the jury at her trial that the similarities among the deaths made coincidence an unlikely explanation.
Folbigg was the only one at home or awake when the young children died. She said she discovered three of the deaths during trips to the bathroom and one while checking on a child’s wellbeing. Prosecutors also had told the jury that Folbigg’s diaries contained admissions of guilt.
After 20 years in prison, Folbigg was pardoned and freed. She was pardoned “based on significant positive evidence of natural causes of death” and a petition signed by 90 scientists, medical practitioners and related professionals.
