Kathleen Folbigg: Could science free Australian jailed for killing babies?

sarah82

By Quentin McDermott
Sydney
11 March 2021




Imagine for a moment what it must feel like if, as a mother, you give birth to four children, one after another, each of whom, as infants, dies from natural causes over a 10-year period.

Then imagine being wrongly accused of smothering them all and being sentenced to 30 years in jail for four terrible crimes you did not commit.

That narrative is emerging as potentially the true story of Kathleen Folbigg, an Australian mother from the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales (NSW).

Branded at her trial in 2003 as "Australia's worst female serial killer", Folbigg has already spent nearly 18 years in prison after being found guilty of the manslaughter of her firstborn Caleb, and the murder of her three subsequent children, Patrick, Sarah and Laura.

But now, fresh scientific evidence is turning this case on its head.

Last week a petition signed by 90 eminent scientists, science advocates and medical experts was handed to the Governor of NSW, requesting a pardon for Folbigg and her immediate release.

Among the signatories were two Nobel laureates and two Australians of the Year, a former chief scientist, and the president of the Australian Academy of Science, Professor John Shine, who commented: "Given the scientific and medical evidence that now exists in this case, signing this petition was the right thing to do."

If Folbigg is freed and her convictions are overturned, her ordeal will be seen as the worst miscarriage of justice in Australia's history - worse even than the case of Lindy Chamberlain, who served three years in prison after being wrongly convicted of murdering her baby, Azaria, at Uluru.

The petition exposes a troubling gulf in this case between science and the law.

Over several appeals and a detailed inquiry which re-examined Folbigg's convictions in 2019, Australia's judges have resolutely rejected the notion of reasonable doubt in her case, giving greater weight to the circumstantial evidence presented at her trial, and the ambiguous entries which she made in contemporaneous diaries.

"It remains that the only conclusion reasonably open is that somebody intentionally caused harm to the children, and smothering was the obvious method," said Reginald Blanch, a former judge who led the inquiry. "The evidence pointed to no person other than Ms Folbigg."

The NSW government further assured the public two years ago "that no stone has been left unturned".

But the science, increasingly, points to the conclusion that there must be reasonable doubt about her convictions. "The science in this case is compelling and cannot be ignored," says human geneticist and researcher Professor Jozef Gecz.

Child and public health researcher Professor Fiona Stanley says: "It is deeply concerning that medical and scientific evidence has been ignored, in preference of circumstantial evidence. We now have an alternative explanation for the death of the Folbigg children."

That alternative explanation lies in the recent discovery of a genetic mutation in Kathleen Folbigg and her two daughters which, the scientists say, was "likely pathogenic" and which they believe caused the deaths of the two girls, Sarah and Laura.

A different genetic mutation has been discovered in the two boys, Caleb and Patrick, although the scientists acknowledge that here, further research is needed.

The initial discovery of the two girls' mutant gene, CALM2 G114R, was made in 2019 by a team led by Carola Vinuesa, a professor of immunology and genomic medicine at the Australian National University, and a driving force behind the petition calling for Folbigg's release.

"We found a novel, never-before reported mutation in Sarah and Laura that had been inherited from Kathleen," Professor Vinuesa told the BBC.

"The variant was in a gene called CALM2 (that encodes for calmodulin). Calmodulin variants can cause sudden cardiac death."

In November last year, scientists from Australia, Denmark, France, Italy, Canada and the US reported further findings in the prestigious medical journal, Europace, published by the European Society of Cardiology.

A team in Denmark, led by Aalborg University Professor Michael Toft Overgaard, conducted experiments designed to test the pathogenicity of the CALM2 variant.

They found that the effects of the Folbigg mutation were as severe as those of other known CALM variants, which regularly cause cardiac arrests and sudden death, including in young children while asleep.

The scientists stated: "We consider the variant likely precipitated the natural deaths of the two female children."

Both girls were suffering from infections before they died, and the scientists suggested that: "A fatal arrhythmic event may have been triggered by their intercurrent infections."

The scientists also reported that Caleb and Patrick each carried two rare variants in BSN, a gene shown to cause early onset lethal epilepsy in mice.

The recent genetic discoveries follow in the footsteps of earlier expert medical opinions which support the theory that all four children died from natural causes.

Professor Stephen Cordner, a Melbourne based forensic pathologist, re-examined the children's autopsies in 2015, concluding that: "There is no positive forensic pathology support for the contention that any or all of these children have been killed." He added: "There are no signs of smothering."

Three years later, in 2018, forensic pathologist, Matthew Orde, Clinical Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: "Fundamentally, I'm in agreement with Professor Cordner, in that all four of these child deaths could be explained by natural causes."

Now, as Lindy Chamberlain did before her, Kathleen Folbigg bides her time in jail, awaiting the outcome of the petition and a recent hearing in the NSW Court of Appeal. She continues to protest her innocence.

Link : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-56355695

sarah82

Ni berita ttg kes Kathleen Folbigg tahun 2003

Inside the mind of a killer mother

Kathleen Folbigg loved having children. She loved the feeling of a baby moving inside her, enjoyed the idea that her child was growing fat and healthy.

When she had just days to go before a birth, home-bound, glowing, going for long walks to bring on the labour, she would write in her diary, her shiny pink book of thoughts: "We're all waiting, little one, when will you come?"

Yesterday, Kathleen Folbigg entered another period of waiting, this time without the hope that a child brings, as she began a 40-year-sentence for killing her four babies.

What happened to turn this yearning mother into a killer? Her diaries may provide the answers.

When each baby came, love at first sight didn't come with it. Kathleen would sit at home, alone, despairing.

Maybe it was the breast feeding. She tried each time, hoping it would help with the bonding, but it never worked. She knew it was not a physical thing, but a psychological one.

Sitting in the lounge chair, her feet tucked under her, she tries to psyche herself into trying again, but the idea of it repulses her.

And soon after each birth the attention of others shifts from the blooming mother to the beautiful newborn.

She hates it when the attention moves away. It has happened before, that feeling of abandonment - when she was rejected as a child, taken into a new family but always made to feel like she wasn't truly a part of it.

Months after she has marked in her diaries the day when she bought Caleb home with asterisks or Patrick back from hospital with scores of exclamation marks, the troubles begbay



She makes sure husband Craig has painted all the walls in their Millard Close home a different colour since last time - to help with the fresh beginning.

When her moods begin to swing wildly, she watches the fish swimming in the tank to try to remain calm. It works, for a while.

The diaries - backed later by psychiatric evidence - give clues to her intentions. She knows she will kill her children. She can't stop it. That feeling.

In bed at night, it is bad too. As Craig snores away, things keep coming into her mind - haunted by guilt and a constant fear that she will do it again.

sarah82

She turns on the bed lamp and tries to write, remembering how scared she is when she is alone with a baby. Sometimes she has to put the diary on the floor and walk away. Back to the fish tank. To watch and try to relax. Hold the feeling at bay.

OPENMENU
The Age


National
This was published 17 years ago

Inside the mind of a killer mother
October 25, 2003 — 10.00am
Kathleen Folbigg loved having children. She loved the feeling of a baby moving inside her, enjoyed the idea that her child was growing fat and healthy.

When she had just days to go before a birth, home-bound, glowing, going for long walks to bring on the labour, she would write in her diary, her shiny pink book of thoughts: "We're all waiting, little one, when will you come?"

Yesterday, Kathleen Folbigg entered another period of waiting, this time without the hope that a child brings, as she began a 40-year-sentence for killing her four babies.

What happened to turn this yearning mother into a killer? Her diaries may provide the answers.

When each baby came, love at first sight didn't come with it. Kathleen would sit at home, alone, despairing.


Maybe it was the breast feeding. She tried each time, hoping it would help with the bonding, but it never worked. She knew it was not a physical thing, but a psychological one.

Sitting in the lounge chair, her feet tucked under her, she tries to psyche herself into trying again, but the idea of it repulses her.

And soon after each birth the attention of others shifts from the blooming mother to the beautiful newborn.

She hates it when the attention moves away. It has happened before, that feeling of abandonment - when she was rejected as a child, taken into a new family but always made to feel like she wasn't truly a part of it.

Months after she has marked in her diaries the day when she bought Caleb home with asterisks or Patrick back from hospital with scores of exclamation marks, the troubles begin.


She makes sure husband Craig has painted all the walls in their Millard Close home a different colour since last time - to help with the fresh beginning.

When her moods begin to swing wildly, she watches the fish swimming in the tank to try to remain calm. It works, for a while.

The diaries - backed later by psychiatric evidence - give clues to her intentions. She knows she will kill her children. She can't stop it. That feeling.

In bed at night, it is bad too. As Craig snores away, things keep coming into her mind - haunted by guilt and a constant fear that she will do it again.

She turns on the bed lamp and tries to write, remembering how scared she is when she is alone with a baby. Sometimes she has to put the diary on the floor and walk away. Back to the fish tank. To watch and try to relax. Hold the feeling at bay.


"I don't know," she writes, propped up in bed. "How do I conquer this? Help is what I want."

But there is no help. Kathleen cuts off everyone once they cross her. No second chances. They become enemies immediately.

Perhaps it is something she has learnt from her foster mother, Deirdre Marlborough, who, once she heard of her daughter's arrest, sent back all her childhood photographs with a scathing letter that included the line: "Kathleen Megan, I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU."

So instead, beginning in her early 20s, Kathleen cries out where no one will hear: in her book, with the golden clasp, covered in teddy bears and cherubs. In childlike handwriting she begs for things to be OK and fills the pages with her secret thoughts, some of which will be used by the prosecution to convict her where the circumstantial evidence left gaps.

For nine years as she sporadically documents her worries, two recur.

First, that Craig will leave her. She feels threatened because of his taunts about her weight, and she can't deal with his "perpetual flirtations".

Second, there is no real feeling of family roots. Nothing to ground her, no support.

Even when she keeps having her own children, the feeling doesn't leave.

To cope, she tells herself the best way to deal with it is to think about her identity.

In these moments, though, what she really wants to know most is about her real father, Thomas Britton, who stabbed her mother, Kathleen Donavan, to death in 1968. She writes: "The only thing left undone in my life is my real father. Unless someone decides to be compassionate and tell me about him one day, it will remain unknown."

While Kathleen's Department of Community Services file refers to her foster family days as a happy time during which she grew to be a sweet, affectionate child, when reference is made to this in court she looks to the ceiling or rolls her eyes.

"Things I remember are not good about my upbringing but the fact remains I had a safe home, food and clothing. I am a person who had a choice of that or state orphanages all her life - can't expect much more," she writes, prompting psychiatrists to say she sees security in material tangible terms rather than emotional ones.

On November 13, 1966, she feels depression stemming from family isolation coming on again. She writes: "Why is family so important to me? I now have the start of my very own, but it doesn't seem good enough. I know Craig doesn't understand. He has the knowledge and stability and love from siblings and parents, even if he chooses to ignore them. "Me - I have no one but him. It seems to affect me so. Why should it matter? It shouldn't."

But how much of a support was Craig? He was a loving father, yes. A man who adored playing with his children. A breadwinner.

During the trial, he cried his way through his testimony. The grieving father. The man who didn't realise what was going on. His life forever demonised.

While this may all be true, psychiatrists have suggested that Kathleen's uncontrollable anger came from depression and, for this, Craig was to blame.

Dr Bruce Westmore, a forensic psychiatrist who has thumbed through her diaries, says the anger came mostly from her dealings with Craig but was displaced on to the children.

A suggested motive for Kathleen suffocating her babies was that she was obsessed with her weight and a constant need to go to the gym. But her diaries show this preoccupation came perhaps from a different source.

Time and time again, she documented her husband's obsession with her weight: "Must lose extra weight or he will be even less in love with me than he is now. I know that physical appearance means everything to him."

Later, when pregnant with Laura, she notes: "On a good note, Craig said last night he accepts that I'm to going to be skinny again. That's wonderful, but I know deep in my heart he wants his skinny wife back."

There's a raging storm outside and she's scared at home on her own. She wants Craig to come home, but at the same time remembers he makes her feel bad. "Actually relish in the fact he has a weight problem now. All the years of him tormenting me have come back to get him."

The seemingly constant jibes from Craig propel her low self-esteem. She will often write about being fat and ugly. She tries to stop eating the junk food. "Got to start changing my life and becoming a hot-looking energetic mother for my daughter and a sexy wife for my husband," she writes.

This all spills over into a preoccupation that Craig is having an affair. When he rejects her advances because her pregnancy is beginning to show, she talks of her whole world coming crashing down: "Craig's roving eye will always be of concern to me."

She sits in bed one night, pregnant with Laura. It's 9.34pm, she notes in the right-hand corner of the page, and says she doesn't want to die with no one knowing she was here: "Thirty years. The first five I don't really remember, the rest, I choose not to remember. The last 10-11 have been filled with trauma, tragedy, happiness and mixed emotions of all designs.

"If it wasn't for my baby coming soon, I'd sit and wonder again what I was put on this earth for. What contribution have I made to anyone's life?"

https://www.theage.com.au/national/inside-the-mind-of-a-killer-mother-20031025-gdwm17.html

lilac85

Menarik diary dia tu.

sarah82

lilac85 replied at 11-5-2021 05:47 PM
Menarik diary dia tu.

Ya.. Jap nak cari berita ttg kes dia.. Kena korek.

sfrnna

Aduh siannya wrongly convicted.

mbhcsf

wow, alhamdulillah...
u see,  law ciptaan manusia kan

ada pun reasonable doubt tapi wow rupanya mutation yg menjejeaskan fungsi satu protein ni  yang binding calcium. Fungsi calmodulin penting untuk    kelicinan fungsi biokimia muscles dalam badan.

wow okay

good for her, tak pun naya kawan kena tuduh ( kire fitnah undang2 la kan ?) kesian.

dulu kat states yg org tu dah ena hukuman bunuh then baru clear nama.

sebab tu wujudnya dan perlunya wujud yaumul qiyammah , hari pembalasan sebab di dunia dengan undang2 manusia ...macam ada kelemahan.

lavendernovella

Stress dengan laki, anak jadi mangsa.

sarah82

sfrnna replied at 11-5-2021 07:57 PM
Aduh siannya wrongly convicted.

Tu la.. Dia dah dok penjara 18 tahun.. Iols baca.. 90 saintis termasuk 2 org pemenang Noble tandatangan petisyen utk bebaskan dia.

sarah82

mbhcsf replied at 11-5-2021 08:06 PM
wow, alhamdulillah...
u see,  law ciptaan manusia kan

Yap.. Mujur di Aussie tak ada hukuman mati.. Kalau tak.. Jenuh..

sarah82

lavendernovella replied at 11-5-2021 08:13 PM
Stress dengan laki, anak jadi mangsa.

Anak2 dia meninggal disebabkan kecacatan genetik.. Tapi masa tu dunia sains masih tak tau kewujudan mutasi yg menyebabkan kematian.

lavendernovella

sarah82 replied at 11-5-2021 08:49 PM
Anak2 dia meninggal disebabkan kecacatan genetik.. Tapi masa tu dunia sains masih tak tau kewujuda ...

Oh , ok. Sbb semua mati tu yang jadi suspicious.

sarah82

lavendernovella replied at 11-5-2021 09:07 PM
Oh , ok. Sbb semua mati tu yang jadi suspicious.

Asalnya depa ingat dia lemaskan anak2 dia.. Bila depa buat kajian baru.. Rupanya mmg anak2 dia ada kecacatan genetik yg merbahaya

lavendernovella

sarah82 replied at 11-5-2021 09:08 PM
Asalnya depa ingat dia lemaskan anak2 dia.. Bila depa buat kajian baru.. Rupanya mmg anak2 dia ada ...

Kat sini pun ada gak kes hampir sebb anak dia semua meninggal kurang dari setahun. Cuma sbb takder sapa repot , takder apa2. So assume mmg dah ajal jer lah. Mungkin kes sama macam ni , kecacatan genetik.

belilies

Kak sarah.. iols baca artikel psl sheols yg sblom deyols buat penemuan terbaharu ni, takde pun saiko sangat ayat sheols dlm diary tu.. biasa2 jur.

Kalo betul sheols bersalah, memandai2 jerlah deyols cuba portrays sheols sbg murderer

sarah82

belilies replied at 11-5-2021 09:52 PM
Kak sarah.. iols baca artikel psl sheols yg sblom deyols buat penemuan terbaharu ni, takde pun saiko ...

Ada link tak? Kak sarah cari yg trial 2003..x jumpa.. Nak cari kat youtube la.

sarah82

lavendernovella replied at 11-5-2021 09:11 PM
Kat sini pun ada gak kes hampir sebb anak dia semua meninggal kurang dari setahun. Cuma sbb takder ...

Kesian kan... Kena check... Mana tau.. Boleh selamatkan anak dia yg bakal lahir nanti.

belilies

sarah82 replied at 11-5-2021 09:55 PM
Ada link tak? Kak sarah cari yg trial 2003..x jumpa.. Nak cari kat youtube la.

Mac 2021
https://amp.news.com.au/national/courts-law/inside-serial-baby-killer-kathleen-folbiggs-violent-and-tragic-life/news-story/39e2bbb4b7f8e2c9eacc29cce09094a7


2019
https://www.google.com.my/amp/s/amp.abc.net.au/article/11051128

belilies

Banyak gbr diari dia ni kak, cer cuba gugel kathleen folbigg diary

sarah82

belilies replied at 11-5-2021 10:11 PM
Banyak gbr diari dia ni kak, cer cuba gugel kathleen folbigg diary

Menarik ni.. Mlm ni kena korek.