Charges against a woman once dubbed the “worst female serial killer” in Australia have been officially removed, following her prison release in June.
According to The Washington Post, an Australian court pardoned 56-year-old Kathleen Folbigg after “reasonable doubt” was presented in connection with how her four children died.
Outside the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal in Sydney on Thursday, Folbigg accused prosecutors of selectively choosing entries from her diary to help secure her conviction. In 2003, she was convicted of manslaughter for one of her children’s deaths and murder for other children’s deaths.
“Those diaries contained my private feelings, which I wrote to myself. No one expects those types of things to be read by strangers, let alone opinionated on,” she said. “They took my words out of context and turned them against me.”
Folbigg’s children, Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura, all died before the age of two, and all of them were thought to have passed away from suffocation.
The Guardian reports that Folbigg’s pardon comes after investigators obtained scientific evidence that her children may have died from natural causes. The inquiry’s commissioner, Tom Bathurst, found an “identifiable cause” in the deaths of three of the four children that suggested their deaths could have been genetic.
Bathhurst’s report indicated that the children’s death may have been brought about by a neurogenetic disorder, known as CALM2-G114R. Both Folbigg and three of the children had the disorder. Bathhurst said Caleb’s death was the only one without an unidentifiable natural cause.
“Although no identifiable cause of Caleb’s death was identified (the other evidence means) that in his case the reasonable possibility that he died of unknown natural causes has not been excluded,” Bathhurst said.
The director of public prosecutions subsequently acknowledged reasonable doubt regarding Folbigg’s guilt. In June, NSW Attorney General Michael Daley endorsed the preliminary findings, recommending Governor Margaret Beazley to grant the pardon.
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[Feature Photo: In this image made from video, Kathleen Folbigg gives a statement the day after her release from prison in Coffs Barbour, Australia, Tuesday, June 6, 2023. Folbigg, who spent 20 years in prison was pardoned and released Monday June 5, 2023, based on new scientific evidence that her four children died by natural causes as she had insisted. (Pool via AP)]
