Australia pardons after 20 years in prison the mother accused of killing her four children thanks to the analysis of a Spanish scientist

An Australian woman convicted of the deaths of her four children has been pardoned after 20 years in jail following a review of the case. Kathleen Folbigg was convicted in 2003 on charges of murdering three of her children and manslaughter of the fourth, but a years-long investigation led by Spanish immunologist Carola Garcia de Vinuesa established a "reasonable doubt" surrounding the convictions.

"In the interests of justice, Kathleen Folbigg must be released from custody as soon as possible," New South Wales Attorney General Michael Daley said Monday. Two decades ago, prosecutors concluded that the woman had suffocated the children, who were between nine weeks and three years old when they died, but Folbigg has always maintained that the deaths were due to natural causes.

Australia orders review of the sentence of Kathleen Folbigg, accused of killing her four children, thanks to the work of a Spanish scientist

In 2021, dozens of scientists from Australia and abroad signed a petition calling for Folbigg's release, noting that new forensic evidence suggests the unexplained deaths are linked to rare genetic mutations or congenital abnormalities. In the absence of firm forensic evidence, prosecutors argued that it was very rare for four children to die suddenly without explanation, at such young ages and years apart.

But retired judge Tom Bathurst, who led the new inquiry, said medical conditions were found that could explain three of the deaths. Two girls have a rare genetic mutation, while one boy had an "underlying neurogenic condition." Given these factors, Bathurst determined that the death of the fourth child was also unsuspecting.

"There has never been, in the history of medicine, a case like this"

The case of Australia's worst serial killer thus becomes the biggest miscarriage of justice in its recent history. In the 20 years that passed since Folbigg's imprisonment until his release, scientific advances have played in his favor, but also the commitment of the Spanish immunologist Carola García de Vinuesa, who has led the scientific investigation of the case since 2018 to get a turn to the judicial investigation.

There was no evidence against Mrs. Folbigg beyond some ambiguous sentences from her diaries, which taken out of context were used as an assumption of guilt. The prosecution underpinned these phrases with the extraordinariness of the case. "There has never been, in the history of medicine, a case like this," the prosecutor said in his closing argument.

The tenacity of a scientist

Vinuesa had seen, throughout her career, several cases like this. Four sudden infant deaths can be extraordinary, but they are less so if they are of four siblings who may share genetic flaws. This Spanish scientist, then based in Australia, had been studying this type of case for some time. So he agreed to review Folbigg's conviction.

The first thing he noticed was that this was dictated in the early years of the twenty-first century, when the postulates of the British pediatrician Roy Meadow had resonance in cases of infant death. Meadow summed up his idea in a catchy maxim: "A sudden death is a tragedy, two are suspicious and three are murder until proven guilty." It is what came to be known as Meadow's law, a maxim that was used in several infanticide trials until science came to dismantle it. Three women were released when this theory was dismissed and the genetic causes of the cases were thoroughly investigated. When prejudices were replaced by science. Folbigg's could be added to this sad list.

Vinuesa's team looked for genetic mutations in the defendant's children. He found it in the two girls, a mutation in the CALM2 genes considered likely pathogenic. "As proof, I think this finding would be at the same level as having a confession or an eyewitness of a crime," geneticist Todor Arsov, from Vinuesa's team, explained to EL PAÍS. The prestigious cardiologist Peter Schwartz, of the Auxological Institute of Milan, abounded in this idea: "I can not assure that the mother is innocent," he acknowledged to EL PAÍS. "But if a child dies with a genetic mutation like this, it makes sense to think of natural causes. It's like you have a dead man with a gunshot to the head. You may have died of a heart attack and then someone shot you. But the normal thing is to think that he has died in a shooting, "he explained.

Since scientists began to raise doubts about the case, two official investigations have been carried out. The first, in 2018, concluded that there was no reasonable doubt about Folbigg's guilt. The second, which concludes now, began last year, after more than 90 international scientists, including two Nobel laureates, called for his immediate release. In addition to examining genetic research, this process has dismantled Folbigg's diary entries on the grounds that they did not contain a clear admission of guilt.

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