Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura died between 1989 and 1999 when they were between 19 days and 18 months old. His mother, the Australian Kathleen Folbigg, spent two decades in prison accused of the murder of her four babies and was pardoned last June after a review of her case, thanks to a team coordinated by a Spanish scientist, determined that there were doubts reasonable about his guilt. Now an Australian court has annulled the sentences imposed and her lawyer is preparing a request for “substantial” compensation.
“The system preferred to blame me instead of accepting that, sometimes, children can and do die suddenly, unexpectedly and heartbreakingly,” lamented the woman who for years was branded as “the worst serial killer” in Australia. The woman, now 56, was sentenced in 2003 to 40 years in prison, reduced to 30 years in 2005. “I hoped and prayed that one day I could be here with my name cleared,” Folbigg said in Sydney after learning of the failed.
The case was reopened following a letter sent in 2021 to the Australian authorities by a hundred scientists – including two Nobel Prize winners – to request a pardon and immediate release of Folbigg.
The trigger for this request was the conclusions reached in 2020 by a team of scientists, coordinated by the Spanish immunologist Carola García de Vinuesa and led by the Danish Michael Toft Overgaard, who pointed out that the deaths of the Folbigg babies could be due to to genetic causes. 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 through epileptic seizures.
The Spanish scientist Carola García de Vinuesa, whose genetic research was key to reviewing the case of Kathleen Folbigg, celebrated this Thursday that an Australian court annulled the conviction. “It is very good news and a reminder that the judicial system needs to listen more to science, and value more the contribution of genomic medicine to understand the cause of sudden death and rare diseases, before blaming mothers,” said the Spanish scientist in an email sent to Efe.
In this sense, the Spanish scientist indicated that “unfortunately, there are still too many mothers accused of harming their children, in judicial cases where there has not been good scientific scrutiny,” according to the message sent today from London, where she works at the Institute Francis Crick.