This screen grab from video footage released courtesy of Kathleen Folbigg on 6 June to the media shows Folbigg after being pardoned. Photo: Handout / Courtesy of Kathleen Folbigg / AFP
By court reporter Jamelle Wells
The Kathleen Folbigg released from Grafton jail on Monday, after being pardoned for killing her four children, looked very different to when she was last seen in public.
Smiling and relaxed, she stepped out of a car and hugged her best friend Tracy Chapman.
The next day, a video message pre-recorded from Chapman's farm showed Folbigg arranging flowers, spending time with animals and expressing her gratitude and love for her children.
She was wearing a white shirt and subtle makeup, with her hair longer and dyed a darker colour.
It was a much softer image - deliberately curated - than the last time the Hunter Valley woman was seen publicly in 2019, at a first judicial inquiry into her convictions for killing her babies Sarah, Laura, Patrick and Caleb.
That inquiry did not end well for her, when retired District Court Judge, Reg Blanche, found her evidence about her diary entries only reinforced her guilt.
At the 2019 inquiry, Folbigg struggled for words and broke down as she was hammered by lawyers for her ex-husband Craig Folbigg, and the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The lonely figure in the witness box was asked around 70 times if she killed her children, who died on separate occasions between 1989 and 1999, all under the age of two.
Each time she said she did not.
Photo: Handout / Courtesy of Kathleen Folbigg / AFP
A second inquiry, that started in 2022 and led to her pardon, heard experts found that rather than admissions of guilt, the diary entries were those of a grieving mother, and new scientific evidence suggested the Folbigg children may have died of natural causes.
Folbigg did not give evidence at her 2003 trial, but Australian Story aired phone calls from jail in which she explained her diary entries in 2018.
The second inquiry followed a groundswell of support for Folbigg that goes much further than her legal team and close friends.
After the new scientific evidence was found, a group of 100 eminent scientists from around the world, including Nobel Laureates Professor Elizabeth Blackburn and Peter Doherty, medical practitioners, and other prominent Australians signed a petition calling for her immediate pardon.
From the start, high-profile former Sydney broadcaster Alan Jones thought Folbigg should never have been convicted.
He said, like the case of Lindy Chamberlain, there was only ever circumstantial evidence and public hysteria.
"The language used to describe Kathleen in the media was awful," he told the ABC.
"When I visited her in jail, photographers would be waiting outside and there would be headlines like 'Alan Jones Visits Australia's Most Notorious Baby Killer', and poor Kathleen had to wear this.
"We exchanged letters, and I could see by her handwriting the trauma she suffered.
"I was told listeners would switch off and I had to stop talking about Lindy Chamberlain's innocence too, because most people thought Lindy was guilty, but I didn't care.
"People forget that Kathleen was at first given a maximum 40-year sentence before it was reduced to 30 on appeal.
"The severity of it was ridiculous and she was a mother who lost four babies and never had time to grieve properly.
"Guilty people often get into this long spiel of defending themselves, but Kathleen never did that.
"It's an absolute disgrace and the criminal justice system has to have a serious look at itself."
Photo: Handout / Courtesy of Kathleen Folbigg / AFP
Folbigg also had the backing of strategic communications advisers at GRACosway.
GRACosway director and former ABC journalist, Brigid Glanville, said the firm came on board after one of its founding partners heard immunologist Carola Vinuesa giving a talk about the scientific research that discovered the CALM2 G114R gene mutation found in the Folbigg girls Laura and Sarah.
"Most of us were journalists at the time Kathleen Folbigg was going through the courts and until we dug into it, many of us shared the views of the public, that Kathleen was guilty," Glanville said.
"Once we dug deeper and looked at the new scientific evidence and fully understood that her diaries entries hadn't been analysed by experts at trial, it was clear that Kathleen needed to be heard.
"Our role is to help give people a voice and after talking to her supporters we joined the team on a pro-bono basis to become a conduit between Kathleen, Tracy Chapman and the legal team to reach out to media and to help retell the story with the benefit of the new science.
"There had been some media interest, but the sheer complexity of it meant that many journalists weren't across it.
"People started reading the evidence, discussing it, and giving it the appropriate weight."
Folbigg's high-profile supporters also include businessman Peter Yates, who is Chair of The Royal Institution of Australia, a scientific not-for-profit with a mission to "bring science to people and people to science".
He said the organisation raised around $200,000 from the business community help finance things like transport and accommodation for Folbigg's small Newcastle-based legal team.
The next step is for retired Chief Justice Tom Bathurst KC to hand down his full inquiry report and for Folbigg to try to get her convictions quashed in the Court of Criminal Appeal.
Bathurst told the inquiry it was not his role to criticise her 2003 trial and that he had access to scientific evidence not available then.
However, questions are now being raised about why experts weren't called to analyse Folbigg's diary evidence as part of her defence and why no inquest was held into the children's deaths.
Folbigg's solicitor, Rhanee Rego, said police should not have charged her client in the first place, given there was no forensic evidence she harmed her children.
She said the DPP in Newcastle in 2001 recommended a full inquest take place, but it never happened.
"When there is no evidence to indicate human intervention in the deaths, no welfare reports, no witnesses reporting criminal behaviour, no signs of smothering, a forum assessing criminal guilt is inappropriate," Rego said.
"The coronial system is designed to make findings about manner and cause of death and this would have been more appropriate for the Folbigg children's deaths.
"The coronial system is not a system you can simply circumnavigate if it doesn't suit you."
Retired University of Newcastle Law Lecturer Ray Watterson, who got involved in the campaign to free Folbigg soon after she was jailed, has described her convictions as among the most contentious and troublesome in Australian history.
"People will gradually realise she should not have spent 20 years in jail and Australia will be looking for better ways to ensure this doesn't happen again to someone else," he said.
- ABC
