06-06-2023, 03:20 PM
An Australian woman who's served 20 years in prison for murdering her four children may be innocent. There's sufficient reasonable doubt for her to have been released & pardoned.
What a tragic series of events, poor woman. I hope she can prove her innocence & be awarded compensation for the years served, damage to reputation etc. etc. This is even worse than the Chamberlain case.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/04/austr...index.html
“This has been a terrible ordeal for everyone concerned and I hope that our actions today can put some closure on this 20-year-old matter,” said Daley, who added that he had informed Craig Folbigg, [b]the babies’ father, of his decision. “It will be a tough day for him,” he said.[/b]
Kathleen Folbigg was jailed in 2003 on three counts of murder and one of manslaughter following the deaths of her four babies over a decade from 1989. In each case, she was the person who found their bodies, though there was no physical evidence that she had caused their deaths.
Instead, the jury relied on the prosecution’s argument that the chances of four babies from one family dying from natural causes before the age of 2 were so infinitesimally low as to be compared to pigs flying.
The police investigation into the deaths of all four children began the day Laura died, but it was more than two years before Folbigg was arrested and charged. By then, the couple’s marriage had fallen apart, and Craig was cooperating with police to build a case against her.
He handed police her diaries, which prosecutors argued contained the deepest thoughts of a mother tortured by guilt for her role in her children’s deaths.
Examination of the babies’ remains failed to find any physical evidence they’d been suffocated, but without another plausible reason to explain their deaths, suspicion focused on Kathleen, their primary carer.
In the case of the two girls – Sarah and Laura – Bathurst found there was a “reasonable possibility” a genetic mutation known as CALM2-G114R “occasioned their deaths,” and that Sarah may have died from myocarditis, inflammation of the heart, identified during her autopsy.
In the case of Patrick, who had an unexplained ALTE, an apparent life-threatening event, when he was 4 months old and died at 8 months, Bathurst found that it’s possible his death was caused by an underlying neurogenic disorder.
During Folbigg’s 2003 trial, the prosecution used “coincidence and tendency” evidence to allege that Folbigg had also killed Caleb. In other words, that having been allegedly responsible for the deaths of three children, it was likely she killed him, too.
However, Bathurst found that the reasonable doubt over Folbigg’s role in his siblings’ deaths meant that the prosecution’s case against her for Caleb’s murder “falls away.”
What a tragic series of events, poor woman. I hope she can prove her innocence & be awarded compensation for the years served, damage to reputation etc. etc. This is even worse than the Chamberlain case.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/04/austr...index.html
"A woman condemned as Australia’s worst female serial killer has been pardoned after serving 20 years behind bars for killing her four children in what appears to be one of the country’s gravest miscarriages of justice.
New South Wales Attorney General Michael Daley intervened to order Kathleen Folbigg be freed, based on the preliminary findings of an inquiry that had found “reasonable doubt” as to her guilt for all four deaths.“This has been a terrible ordeal for everyone concerned and I hope that our actions today can put some closure on this 20-year-old matter,” said Daley, who added that he had informed Craig Folbigg, [b]the babies’ father, of his decision. “It will be a tough day for him,” he said.[/b]
Kathleen Folbigg was jailed in 2003 on three counts of murder and one of manslaughter following the deaths of her four babies over a decade from 1989. In each case, she was the person who found their bodies, though there was no physical evidence that she had caused their deaths.
Instead, the jury relied on the prosecution’s argument that the chances of four babies from one family dying from natural causes before the age of 2 were so infinitesimally low as to be compared to pigs flying.
Folbigg was just 20 years old when she married Craig Folbigg, who she’d met in her hometown of Newcastle on the northern New South Wales coast.
Within a year she fell pregnant with Caleb, who was born in February, 1989 and lived only 19 days. The next year, the Folbiggs had another son, Patrick, who died at eight months. Two years later, Sarah died at 10 months. Then in 1999, the couple’s fourth and longest lived child, Laura, died at 18 months.The police investigation into the deaths of all four children began the day Laura died, but it was more than two years before Folbigg was arrested and charged. By then, the couple’s marriage had fallen apart, and Craig was cooperating with police to build a case against her.
He handed police her diaries, which prosecutors argued contained the deepest thoughts of a mother tortured by guilt for her role in her children’s deaths.
Examination of the babies’ remains failed to find any physical evidence they’d been suffocated, but without another plausible reason to explain their deaths, suspicion focused on Kathleen, their primary carer.
In the case of the two girls – Sarah and Laura – Bathurst found there was a “reasonable possibility” a genetic mutation known as CALM2-G114R “occasioned their deaths,” and that Sarah may have died from myocarditis, inflammation of the heart, identified during her autopsy.
In the case of Patrick, who had an unexplained ALTE, an apparent life-threatening event, when he was 4 months old and died at 8 months, Bathurst found that it’s possible his death was caused by an underlying neurogenic disorder.
During Folbigg’s 2003 trial, the prosecution used “coincidence and tendency” evidence to allege that Folbigg had also killed Caleb. In other words, that having been allegedly responsible for the deaths of three children, it was likely she killed him, too.
However, Bathurst found that the reasonable doubt over Folbigg’s role in his siblings’ deaths meant that the prosecution’s case against her for Caleb’s murder “falls away.”