2023-06-11 01:31:36
the australian Kathleen Folbiggwho came to be considered the worst serial killer in her country, has been pardoned and released this Monday after spending twenty years in prison accused of the death of her four babies.
The governor of the state of New South Wales signed the pardon after learning the conclusions of a report on the case by retired judge Thomas Bathurst, authorities reported Monday.
The lawyer came to “the firm consideration that there are reasonable doubts about Folbigg’s guilt” in each of the deaths, after a scientific investigation coordinated by the Spanish immunologist Carola García de Vinuesa linked the deaths to genetic failures.
The pardon does not imply that the 55-year-old woman is acquitted of the crimes attributed to her, which is the responsibility of the Criminal Court of Appeals, and it is possible that Folbigg may claim compensation.
THE DEATH OF BABIES
Kathleen Folbigg’s children, Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura, died between 1989 and 1999 in Hunter-Newcastle, about 120 kilometers from Sydney, when they were between 19 days and 18 months old, while in her care.
Married in 1987 to Craig Folbigg, it all started when Kathleen yelled at her husband on the night of February 20, 1989. “something is wrong with my baby” upon discovering that her firstborn, Caleb, was not breathing, dying 19 days after birth.
“It Happened Again”Kathleen Folbigg cried as she asked her husband to come home when their second baby, Patrick, already suffering from brain damage, partial blindness and epileptic seizures, He died on February 13, 1991 at eight months of age.
In the third case, Folbigg found his ten-and-a-half-month-old daughter, Sarah, blue and motionless, dying on August 30, 1993. Six years later, on March 1, 1999, his fourth daughter, Laura, died at the 18 months after her mother put her down for a nap.
Initially, experts considered that Caleb and Sarah were victims of a sudden death and Patrick of an epileptic fit, while they left the causes of Laura’s death “undetermined”, which opened the door to investigate possible infanticides.
THE INCRIMINATING DIARY
Criminal investigations started in July 1999, paying special attention to Folbigg’s diary. In it he wrote: “I am my father’s daughter”alluding to his biological father, who stabbed Folbigg’s mother to death in 1969, when she was an 18-month-old baby, after the woman left home.
Folbigg, who separated from her husband in 2000wrote in his diary: “I feel like the worst mother in the world, I’m afraid she’ll leave me like Sarah (her daughter) did. I know she had little patience and was cruel to her sometimes and she left (she died),” or passages in which he blamed that his stress made him “do terrible things”.
This diary, which was key in his subsequent conviction in 2003 for the murder of Patrick, Sarah and Lauraas well as the involuntary manslaughter of Caleb, to 40 years in prison, entitled to request parole after 30 years.
LEGAL PROCESS
Folbigg, who has always defended his innocence, managed to get the Criminal Court of Appeals to reduce his sentence in 2005 to 30 yearswith the right to request parole after 25 years in prison.
In 2008, Australian authorities ordered a non-judicial investigation into the casebut the then judge Reg Blanch, in charge of the review, determined that the evidence against the defendant, as well as her diaries, demonstrated her guilt.
“The only reasonably open conclusion is that someone intentionally caused harm to the children, and suffocation was the obvious method. The evidence did not point to anyone other than Mrs. Folbigg.”Blanch then stressed.
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
The case took a turn in 2020when a team of scientists, coordinated by the Spanish immunologist Carola García de Vinuesa and led by the Danish Michael Toft Overgaard, concluded that the deaths of the Folbigg babies could be due to genetic causes.
The scientific research, published in the specialized journal “Europace”, of the European Association of Cardiology, links a genetic mutation (CALM2) of Sarah and Laura, with sudden cardiac death.
In addition, the study, made up of an international team of 27 scientists, found that the children carried rare variants of a gene that kills rodents by epileptic seizures.
The case was reopened again as a result of a letter sent in March 2021 to the Australian authorities by a hundred scientistsincluding two Nobel laureates, to request clemency and Folbigg’s release.
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