Kathleen Folbigg: Mother who served 20 years for killing her four babies pardoned

Brisbane, Australia
CNN
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Woman Convicted As Australia’s Worst Female Serial Killer He was pardoned after serving 20 years in prison for the alleged murder of four children in one of the incidents. Biggest misjudgment in the country.

New South Wales Attorney General Michael Daley has ruled out Kathleen Folbigg’s death, based on preliminary findings from an investigation that showed “reasonable doubt” about her guilt in the deaths of all four. intervened to order his release.

At a news conference on Monday, Daly said he had spoken to the governor and recommended an unconditional pardon, which was granted.

“This is a terrible ordeal for all involved and I hope that our actions today put an end to this 20-year problem,” said Daly.

Forbigg was jailed in 2003 on three counts of murder and one count of manslaughter after losing four babies over a decade starting in 1989. In each case, she was the one who found her body, but she had no physical evidence that she had caused it. their death.

Instead, the jury relied on the prosecution’s argument that the odds of a family’s four babies dying of natural causes before the age of two were as low as pigs flying.

They also noted the contents of her diary, which contained passages that alone could be interpreted as a confession of guilt.

As recently as 2019, an investigation into her conviction found there was no reasonable suspicion that she had committed a crime.

But another investigation began last year after new scientific evidence revealed a genetic explanation for the deaths of children.

“There is a reasonable suspicion of Mr Forbigg’s guilt in the entire body of evidence leading up to this investigation,” Sophie Curran, a lead attorney supporting the investigation, said in a final filing.

She also said in her final filing that the New South Wales Attorney General indicated that she was “open to an investigation that concludes there is reasonable doubt as to Ms Folbigg’s guilt”.

Folbigg was just 20 when she married Craig Folbigg, a man she met in her hometown of Newcastle on the north coast of New South Wales.

Within a year she was pregnant with Caleb, who was born in February 1989 and lived only 19 days. The following year, the Folbiggs had another son, Patrick, who died at the age of eight months. Two years later, Sarah died ten months after her birth. Then in 1999, the fourth and longest-lived Folbigg child, Laura, died at 18 months.

A police investigation into the deaths of all four children began the day Laura died, but it took more than two years for Forbigg to be arrested and charged. By then her marriage had fallen apart and Kathleen’s husband was working with the police to file a case against her.

He handed over her diary to the police, which prosecutors claimed contained the deepest thoughts of a guilt-ridden mother who was involved in the death of her child.

An examination of the infant’s remains found no physical evidence of suffocation, but suspicion centered on Folbigg because there was no other plausible explanation for the infant’s death.

In 2003, Judge Graham Barr recalled Folbigg’s troubled past when he sentenced him to 40 years in prison. Her father murdered her mother when she was only 18 months old, and she spent much of her formative years in her foster home.

According to court documents, Barr said Mr. Forbig’s prospects for rehabilitation were “negligible.”

“She will always be in danger if given the responsibility of caring for a child,” he says. “That should never happen.”

This is a developing story.and in the future