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A top Australian court on Thursday overturned all convictions against a woman who spent 20 years in prison over the deaths of her four children.
Kathleen Folbigg, 56, was pardoned and released from prison in June after an investigation found there was “reasonable doubt” about whether she was responsible for the deaths of her children, all of whom died before their second birthday.
Once branded Australia's “worst serial killer” by the news media, Folbigg always maintained her innocence. Speaking at the New South Wales Criminal Appeal Court in Sydney on Thursday, she said prosecutors had “cherry-picked” entries in her diary to secure the 2003 conviction in which she was convicted of killing her children was found guilty.
“They took my words out of context and turned them against me,” she told local reporters.
An Australian mother has been convicted of killing her four babies. Scientists say she is innocent.
The diary entries were central to the prosecution's case, in a trial that relied largely on circumstantial evidence and the argument that four deaths within the same family could not be accidental.
“I knew I was short-tempered and cruel to her at times, and she left. With a little help,” she wrote in a diary entry about her daughter Sarah that garnered attention during the trial.
The jury concluded that she had suffocated the children who were found lifeless in their cribs one after the other between 1989 and 1999: Caleb at 19 days, Patrick at eight months, Sarah at 10 months and Laura at 18 months.
Folbigg was sentenced to 40 years in prison for murder and manslaughter, but the sentence was reduced to at least 25 years on appeal.
In a 2018 documentary, she said the diary entries were “written from the perspective that I always blame myself” – a trait experts say is common in grieving parents.
“I took on so much responsibility because that's what you do as mothers,” Folbigg said in the documentary.
Kathleen Folbigg, an Australian woman who served 20 years in prison for killing her four children, was pardoned on June 5 after new evidence emerged. (Video: Portal)
Doubts about their beliefs grew in recent years as new scientific findings emerged.
In 2021, dozens of scientists – including two Nobel Prize winners – petitioned the state governor to pardon and release Folbigg. They argued that there was “significant positive evidence of natural causes of death” after finding rare genetic mutations in the DNA of Folbigg and her daughters, as well as variants in the DNA of her sons, that have been linked to deaths in young children.
In November, the final report of an investigation into the case concluded that there was an “identifiable cause” for the deaths of three children and that Folbigg's relationship with her children does not indicate that she killed them.
The overturning of Folbigg's convictions opens the door for her to seek compensation for her wrongful imprisonment. Representatives for Folbigg did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
In a statement to the Guardian newspaper, her lawyer Rhanee Rego suggested the payment “could be larger than any significant payment made to date.”
Brittany Shammas and Bryan Pietsch contributed to this report.