CANBERRA, Australia (AP) – A woman convicted of suffocating her four children over a decade lost an appeal in a Sydney court on Wednesday against the conclusion of an investigation that her victims did not die of natural causes.
An increasing number of scientists say that Kathleen Folbigg is the victim of a judicial error, although many others consider the series of deaths too tragic to be just bad luck.
The New South Wales State Court of Appeal dismissed its request to review a judge’s decision that “makes your guilt for these crimes even more certain.”
His last hope of early release is now in a petition for forgiveness presented this month to New South Wales governor Margaret Beazley. Folbigg’s convictions would still remain, but she would be released.
The petition bore the signatures of 91 scientists, doctors and related professionals, including two Nobel winners.
Folbigg, now 53, was convicted in 2003 of the murder of three of her children and the manslaughter of a fourth. She consistently denied the guilt. She was sentenced to 30 years in prison with a minimum of 25 years to serve before she could be considered for probation.
Her first child, Caleb, was born in 1989 and died 19 days later, in what a court ruled was the least crime of wrongful death. Her second son, Patrick, was 8 months old when he died in 1991. Two years later, Sarah died at 10 months. In 1999, Folbigg’s fourth daughter, Laura, died at the age of 19 months. Folbigg was the first to arrive on the scene of each tragedy.
An autopsy revealed that Laura had myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that can be fatal. But, due to the death of his three brothers, a pathologist listed the cause of his death as “undetermined”.
Patrick suffered from epilepsy and his death was attributed to an airway obstruction due to a seizure. The other two were registered as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS.
At their trial, Folbigg’s lawyers told the jury that there were medical explanations for each death. Caleb had a soft larynx and Sarah had a congested uvula that could have obstructed her airway.
Folbigg did not testify at her trial, but she testified for nearly three days in the 2019 judicial review of her convictions based on a pathologist’s findings that the children probably died of natural causes with no sign of suffocation.
The judge who heard the review also heard an expert’s testimony that both girls had an inherited genetic mutation linked to abnormal heartbeat and sudden death in children and suggesting that their deaths may have been triggered by infections they had at the time.
Last year, the findings of 27 scientists who describe the genetic mutation in Folbigg girls and their functional validation were published by Oxford University Press in the cardiology magazine Europace.
The case against Folbigg was circumstantial and was based on the interpretation of vague records she made in personal diaries, one of which her ex-husband Craig Folbigg reported to the police.
Entries included: “Obviously, I’m my father’s daughter”, a reference to her father stabbing his mother to death in 1968 when Folbigg was 18 months old.
Folbigg’s lawyers note in their petition for forgiveness that the diaries do not contain admissions of guilt.
“You have to understand that these journals are written from a point where I always blame myself,” said Folbigg in a phone call from prison in 2018, recorded by Australian Broadcasting Corp.