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This mother spent 20 years in prison for the murder of her four babies. Now she was pardoned after a medical discovery

2023-06-05T15:30:48.170Z

Highlights: Kathleen Folbigg, 55, was for years considered her country's worst serial killer. She was convicted in 2003 of suffocating her children but she always maintained her innocence. New forensic evidence suggests the deaths are linked to a rare mutation of the CALM2 gene, which controls calcium transport in heart cells. More than 90 scientists asked the Australian Justice for his release last year, saying his conviction was based on circumstantial evidence, such as the notes in his diary from which they tried to derive an attitude of guilt.


"Something is wrong with my baby!" she yelled at her husband at the beginning of her nightmare. "I feel like the worst mother in the world," she wrote in a diary, along with other phrases that served to condemn her.


A mother who spent 20 years in prison for the deaths of her four children was pardoned and released Monday in Australia after new scientific evidence suggested the babies died of natural causes, as she always advocated.

Kathleen Folbigg, 55, was for years considered her country's worst serial killer for the mysterious deaths of her babies Patrick, Sarah, Laura and Caleb, aged between 19 days and 18 months, who died over the course of a decade. Folbigg was convicted in 2003 of suffocating her children but she always maintained her innocence.

"In the interests of justice, she must be released from custody as soon as possible," New South Wales state attorney general Michael Daley said Monday, according to El Pais.

Kathleen Folbigg, at the New South Wales Coroner's Court, in Sydney, on May 1, 2019.Joel Carrett/AP file

"She's very, very happy," New South Wales lawmaker Sue Higginson told NBC News. "I have received messages that speak of tears, laughter, hugs with her friends, and that she now sees life very differently than it has been for the last 20 years," he added.

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Last year more than 90 scientists asked the Australian Justice for his release. The experts said that his conviction was based on circumstantial evidence, such as the notes in his diary from which they tried to derive an attitude of guilt and the rarity that four children from the same family could die of natural causes.

The scientists noted that new forensic evidence suggests the deaths are linked to a rare mutation of the CALM2 gene, which controls calcium transport in heart cells.

This gene was found in the two girls, Saray and Laura, and in the boys acute difficulty breathing was detected due to a problem in the larynx, epilepsy and blindness, said geneticist Carola García Vinuesa, head of the Department of Immunology at the Australian National University, who was called as a witness in the case.

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Mutations in the CALM 2 gene are one of the best recognized causes of sudden death in infancy and childhood, García Vinuesa explained in a recent article in The Conversation in which he explained the reasons in his opinion to pardon the mother.

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In the opinion of the more than 90 experts who signed the pardon petition, both the girls and boys suffered from medical ailments that point to death from natural causes. "Stop the gross miscarriage of justice that is being committed. Not to do so is to continue to deny him his most basic human rights," they wrote.

"The case sets a dangerous precedent, because it means that compelling medical and scientific evidence can simply be ignored in favor of subjective interpretations of circumstantial evidence," they added. Among the signatories were Nobel Prize winners Peter Doherty and Elizabeth Blackburn.

Kathleen Folbigg after a hearing in Maitland, Australia, on March 22, 2004.Fairfax Media / Fairfax Media via Getty Images

Folbigg's children died between 1989 and 1999 in Hunter-Newcastle, about 75 miles from Sydney, when they were between 19 days and 18 months old, and were in his care.

It all started when the woman shouted to her husband, Craig Folbigg, to whom she had been married since 1987, on the night of February 20, 1989: "Something is wrong with my baby!" His firstborn, Caleb, was not breathing. He died 19 days after birth.

"It happened again," Kathleen Folbigg cried as she asked her husband to come home when her second baby, Patrick, already suffering from brain damage, partial blindness and epileptic seizures, died on February 13, 1991, at 8 months of age.

In the third case, Folbigg found his 10/30-month-old daughter Sarah, blue and motionless; He died on August 1993, 1. Six years later, on March 1999, 18, her fourth daughter, Laura, died at <> months after her mother put her for a nap.

Initially, experts considered that Caleb and Sarah were victims of a sudden death and Patrick of an epileptic seizure, while leaving as "undetermined" the causes of Laura's death, which opened the door to investigate possible infanticides.

The incriminating diary

Criminal investigations began in July 1999, with a focus on Folbigg's diary. In it, she wrote, "I am my father's daughter," alluding to her biological father, who stabbed Folbigg's mother to death in 1969, when she was an 18-month-old baby, after the woman left home.

Folbigg, who separated from her husband in 2000, wrote in her diary: "I feel like the worst mother in the world, I'm afraid she'll leave me like [her daughter] Sarah did. I know he had little patience and was cruel to her at times and left [died]." In addition, in some passages he blamed that his stress made him "do terrible things".

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This newspaper was key in his conviction in 2003 (for the murder of Patrick, Sarah and Laura, and the manslaughter of Caleb) to 40 years in prison, with the right to parole after 30 years.

Folbigg, who always maintained his innocence, managed to get the Criminal Court of Appeal to reduce his sentence in 2005 to 30 years, with the right to ask for parole after 25 years in prison.

In 2008, Australian authorities ordered a non-judicial investigation into the case, but then-judge Reg Blanch, in charge of the review, determined that the evidence against the accused, as well as her diaries, proved her guilty.

"The only reasonably open conclusion is that someone intentionally caused harm to the children, and suffocation was the obvious method. The evidence did not point to anyone other than Mrs. Folbigg," Blanch said at the time.

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The case took a turn in 2020, when a team of scientists, coordinated by Spanish immunologist Carola García de Vinuesa and led by Danish Michael Toft Overgaard, concluded that the deaths of Folbigg's babies could be due to genetic causes.

The case was reopened following a letter sent in March 2021 to the Australian authorities by a hundred scientists requesting Folbigg's pardon and release.

The pardon does not imply that the 55-year-old woman is acquitted of the crimes attributed to her, which falls within the competence of the Criminal Court of Appeal; it is also possible that Folbigg will claim compensation.

With information from the newspaper El País, the news agencies Efe and The Associated Press, and the news network NBC News.

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2023-06-05

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