Her Father’s Daughter

Kathleen Folbigg and her husband, Craig, lived in the Hunter Region of New South Wales. Between 1989 and 1999 all four of their children died in infancy: Caleb at 19 days, Patrick at eight months, Sarah at ten months and Laura at 18 months. Each was put down to natural or undetermined causes, but four in one family drew suspicion, and after the couple separated Craig took his wife’s diaries to police.

The entries were ambiguous, full of guilt and exhaustion, and the prosecution read them as confessions. There was no physical evidence that any child had been smothered. In May 2003 a Sydney jury convicted her of murdering Patrick, Sarah and Laura, of Caleb’s manslaughter and of grievous bodily harm to Patrick. She was sentenced to 40 years, cut to 30 on appeal. A 2019 inquiry upheld the convictions.

Then geneticists found that Sarah and Laura had inherited from Kathleen a rare CALM2 gene variant linked to sudden cardiac death, and that the boys carried variants of a gene tied to lethal epilepsy in mice. A second inquiry, led by former chief justice Tom Bathurst, found reasonable doubt, and on June 5, 2023, Folbigg was pardoned and released after 20 years. All her convictions were quashed on December 14, 2023. In August 2025 the state approved $2 million in compensation, a figure she called unjust.