Kathleen Folbigg’s life began with tragedy.
At just 18-months-old, Kathleen’s father murdered her mother and was arrested the next day.
Kathleen became a ward of the state and placed into foster care. At the age of three, she was placed in the Bidura House, an orphanage in New South Wales, Australia. After just two months in the orphanage, she was placed into permanent foster care, where she remained until she was a young adult.
She dropped out of school at the age of 15, and five years later married Craig Folbigg, a 25-year-old steel worker, according to Marie Claire.
Kathleen became pregnant in 1988 and gave birth to the couple’s first child, Caleb, on February 1, 1989. Caleb was diagnosed with laryngomalacia, a condition where the soft cartilage of the upper larynx collapses inward when a child breathes in. This causes airway obstruction but is something children grow out of. Caleb’s breathing was noisy due to the condition, but he was otherwise healthy.
On February 20, just 19 days after Caleb was born, he died in his sleep in a room next to Kathleen and Craig’s. His death was blamed on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), a condition most knew little about in the late 80s and 90s.
Still grieving, Kathleen became pregnant again later that year, giving birth to son Patrick on June 3, 1990. Craig decided to stay home for three months after Patrick was born in order to help Kathleen care for the baby. On October 18, Craig woke up to hear his wife screaming as she stood by Patrick’s bed.
Patrick wasn’t breathing, so Craig tried to revive him using CPR. The couple called an ambulance and Patrick was rushed to the hospital, where he was saved. He began to improve at the hospital, but suddenly had a seizure and was diagnosed with epilepsy and cortical blindness. On February 13, 1991, tragedy again struck the Folbigg household when Patrick died as the result of seizures. Kathleen called Craig to tell him that Patrick had died, reportedly telling her husband “It’s happened again!”
Craig and Kathleen moved to Thornton, New South Wales, to start over, and more than a year after Patrick’s death, baby Sarah was born on October 14, 1992. When she was just 10 months old, Craig was awakened once again by his wife’s screams as she stood with their infant child. Just 20 minutes earlier, Craig had awoken to notice Kathleen and the baby weren’t in the room they all shared. He fell back asleep, unconcerned, only to be woken again by Kathleen’s screams.
Craig saw Sarah laid out in her bed and picked her up. She was warm but not breathing, so Craig attempted CPR, to no avail. Emergency responders also failed to resuscitate the child.
Three deaths. Three tragedies, which put stress on the Folbiggs’ marriage. They separated and reconciled multiple times, according to Marie Claire, but came back together for a final time in 1996.
The couple moved to Singleton, New South Wales, that year, and welcomed baby girl Laura on August 7, 1997. Laura was the longest surviving child of Craig and Kathleen, dying at 19 months old on February 27, 1999.
The relationship deteriorated in 1999 once again and the couple separated for good. During this time, Craig found one of Kathleen’s journals in a bedside drawer and began to doubt the children’s deaths were natural. He turned the diary over to the police, who were also suspicious that four children in the same family could all die of natural causes.
Kathleen was arrested in 2001, and charged with the murder of her four babies. Without any direct evidence to prove she murdered her children, prosecutors relied on juror’s disbelief that the four children could all die of natural causes, as well as cherry-picked passages from Kathleen’s diary.
SHD Picture by ANITA JONES. Photo by Fairfax Media via Getty Images
For instance, when Patrick, the second child, was born, Kathleen wrote in her diary: “I had mixed feelings this day, wether [sic] or not I was going to cope as a mother or wether [sic] I was going to get stressed out like I did last time.”
And when Kathleen became pregnant with Laura, she worried that it: “wasn’t just a determination on my behalf to get it right and not be defeated by me total inadequate feelings about myself. To prove that there is nothing wrong with me, if other women can do it so can I.”
Three of the deaths were attributed to natural causes – Caleb and Sarah to SIDS, and Patrick to asphyxia from a seizure – but a coroner said that Laura was too old to die from SIDS at 19 months old.
The defense countered that Laura’s death could be attributed to myocarditis, which is caused by inflammation of the heart muscle. Defense attorneys also produced diary entries that showed Kathleen loved and cared for her babies, and argued that the prosecution’s diary entries could be explained by grief. Emergency responders testified that Kathleen appeared genuinely distraught each time one of her children died.
In April 2003, Kathleen was convicted of murdering her four children and sentenced to 40 years in prison, with the possibility of parole after 30 years. After an appeal in 2005, her sentence was reduced to 30 years in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.
Fairfax Media via Getty Images
In 2011, Australian legal academic Emma Cunliffe published the book “Murder Medicine and Motherhood,” alleging that Kathleen had been wrongly convicted and that the medical evidence used to convict her was misleading. Cunliffe also argued that Kathleen’s diary entries were unfairly used against her.
In 2013, a team of lawyers looked into Kathleen’s case. Stephen Cordner, a forensic pathologist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, also wrote a 121-page report detailing how each child likely died of natural causes. He argued that Sarah’s death was a textbook example of SIDS, Patrick died of a seizure, Caleb’s death was due to his laryngomalacia, and Laura’s death was caused by myocarditis.
In 2015, Kathleen’s legal team petitioned the attorney general’s office to take another look at her case. It wasn’t until 2018 that New South Wales Attorney-General Mark Speakman announced his office would look into Kathleen’s convictions.
Dr. Carola Garcia de Vinuesa, an immunologist, examined Kathleen’s DNA as well as that of her deceased children, finding a genetic mutation that could cause heart issues leading to death. But a report released in 2019 included a statement from former chief judge of the District Court Reginald Blanch, who said he found no reason to doubt Kathleen’s convictions.
Kathleen again appealed, but that appeal was rejected in 2021. In 2022, Speakman announced a second inquiry into Kathleen’s convictions. This inquiry led to Kathleen being released from prison in June 2023 and her convictions being overturned in December, CNN reported. In addition to her convictions being overturned, Kathleen’s lawyers have called for “substantial” compensation for her time spent behind bars.
“The time this has taken in seeing today’s result has cost many people a lot,” Kathleen said after her convictions were overturned. “I hoped and prayed that one day I would be able to stand here with my name cleared.”
Screenshot from 9 News Australia.
CEO of the Australian Academy of Science Anna-Maria Arabia told Australia’s 7News after Kathleen was released that “this case has shown is that there is no mechanism for us to consider new and emerging evidence as it comes to light and what that means for other cases,” and called for reform.
Not everyone believes Kathleen is truly innocent, even with medical evidence. Her ex-husband Craig, who spent decades believing his wife murdered his children, has been unable to accept the evidence, with his lawyer Danny Eid saying in June that “Craig has no doubt that his children were murdered.” Eid added that “the numbness for him continues.”
Craig remarried in 2004, the year after Kathleen was convicted. Together he and his wife Helen have a son, Connor, but told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2006 that he still thinks of his deceased children.
“Not a day passes when I don’t think of my four other little angels,” he told the outlet. “I see their faces always. They are with me everywhere I go and I will love them forever.”