06-06-23, 01:58
|
#1
|
Join Date: Feb 2011
Posts: 47,712
Thanks: 27,653
Thanked 14,458 Times in 10,262 Posts
|
Australian 'Serial Killer' Kathleen Folbigg Pardoned For Deaths of Her 4 Infants
Kathleen Folbigg: Australian Jailed For 20 Years Over Deaths of Her Four Infant Children Pardoned
Kathleen Folbigg Always Maintained She Was Innocent.
A woman once branded "Australia's worst female serial killer" has been pardoned after new evidence suggested she did not kill her four infant children.
BBC 6 JUNE 2023
Kathleen Folbigg 'Serial Killer'
Kathleen Folbigg spent 20 years in prison after a jury found she killed sons Caleb and Patrick and daughters Sarah and Laura over a decade.
But a recent inquiry heard scientists believe they may have died naturally.
The 55-year-old's case has been described as one of Australia's greatest miscarriages of justice.
Ms Folbigg, who has always maintained her innocence, was jailed for 25 years in 2003 for the murders of three of the children, and the manslaughter of her first son, Caleb.
Each child died suddenly between 1989 and 1999, aged between 19 days and 19 months, with prosecutors at her trial alleging she had smothered them.
Previous appeals and a separate 2019 inquiry into the case found no grounds for reasonable doubt, and gave greater weight to circumstantial evidence in Ms Folbigg's original trial.
But at the fresh inquiry, headed by retired judge Tom Bathurst, prosecutors accepted that research on gene mutations had changed their understanding of the children's deaths.
On Monday, New South Wales Attorney General Michael Daley said Mr Bathurst had concluded that there was reasonable doubt that Ms Folbigg was guilty.
As a result, the NSW governor had signed a full pardon, and ordered Ms Folbigg's immediate release from prison.
"It has been a 20-year-long ordeal for her... I wish her peace," Mr Daley said, adding his thoughts were also with the children's father, Craig Folbigg.
At the latest inquiry, Mr Folbigg's lawyers pointed to the "fundamental implausibility" of four children from one family dying of natural causes under the age of two.
The unconditional pardon does not quash Ms Folbigg's convictions, Mr Daley said. That would be a decision for the Court of Criminal Appeal, if Mr Bathurst chooses to refer the case to it - a process which could take up to a year.
|
|
|