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- [00:00]
A
Before we begin today's episode of Australian True Crime, I want to tell you about a new project we've been working on behind the scenes. It's called she Matters. It's a new podcast from award winning journalist and femicide researcher Sherrelle Moody. Each week, Sherrelle speaks with families of women and children killed in Australia, sharing who they were, the joy they brought and the love they left behind. She Matters isn't a true crime podcast. It's about lives lived, lives loved and lives lost. She Matters is produced by Dash made podcasts in association with bravecasting Media. She Matters is available wherever you get your podcasts.
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B
Do you still understand that you're free to come and go as you please? You're not under arrest at all.
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A
Yep.
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B
I'm sorry. Okay.
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A
Do you know what sort of person would kill four children? I don't know. Comprehensive. I don't even want to think about it.
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B
Kathy. Did you kill Caleb? No. Did you kill Patrick? No. Did you try to kill Patrick on.
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A
That near missed episode?
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B
No.
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Did you kill Sarah?
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A
No.
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B
Did you kill Laura?
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A
No.
- [01:22]
We're joined again in this episode of Australian True Crime by guest host, criminologist and forensic anthropologist, Dr. Xanthi Mallett. Today I've got a fantastic guest with me, award winning investing of journalist Quintin McDermott. Following six years at Granala Television in the UK, he joined the ABC as a supervising producer on Lateline before moving to Four Corners in 2000 as a senior investigative reporter and producer. He is the ABC producer of the critically acclaimed and award winning documentary Stop at the Lance Armstrong Story at Australian Story. His piece on Kathleen Folbeg helped trigger a judicial inquiry in 2018 and he has covered her story for the ABC and the Australian ever since. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People of the Kulin Nation and a warning. This episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.
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B
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Keep the phone you already love, pay less every month and take one more problem off your list. That's one case I can officially close stress free. Visit boostmobile.com to start saving. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers will pay $25 per month as long as they remain active on the Boost Unlimited plan. This episode is brought to you by Addio, the AI native CRM. Addio is built to scale with your business from day one. Setup is instant and in seconds of syncing your email and calendar, you'll see all your relationships in one fully enriched with actionable insights. With Addio, AI isn't just a feature, it's the foundation. You can do things like instantly prospect and route leads with research agents, get real time insights from AI during customer conversations, and build powerful AI automations for your most complex workflows. Industry leaders like TaskRabbit, Granola and Flatfile are already experiencing. What's next for CRM? Start now at addio.com pod and get 15% off your first year. That's attio.com pod from holiday hosting to.
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- [05:12]
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- [05:20]
The reason for our chat today is really, you know, the the impetus is a new book that you've got out called Meadows Law, which nobody can see me holding up but I've got in my sticky little hand right now. I've got a copy here. Awesome book. Thank you. But let's go back to the beginning of your interest in the Katherine Folbet case, how all that came about.
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B
I have a mate called Peter Gill who's a champion bridge player.
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A
Oh yes, yes, you know Peter. Yeah. Yep.
- [05:47]
B
And as you know, Peter and his mates, his bridge playing mates, have a kind of obsession. He won't mind me saying this with the former Senior Crown Prosecutor, Mark Tedeschi and all the cases that he prosecuted. And one of the most famous cases he prosecuted was the case of Gordon Wood, who was convicted of throwing his then girlfriend, Caroline Byrne, over the cliffs at the Gap in Sydney, which was then a notorious suicide spot. And when I arrived in Australia in 1999 and then I joined Four Corners, I started looking at this case and for years and years and years, I was kind of digging into it and I was talking to various people about the case. And then eventually, after Gordon Wood appealed his conviction, I reported a story for Four Corners which questioned his guilt, essentially. And we put this story to air after the appeal court hearing had taken place, but before the judges. The three judges had handed down their verdict. And when they did, in early 2012, they delivered a verdict that acquitted Gordon Wood, but also that heavily criticised Mark Tedeschi, the Senior Crown Prosecutor. Gordon Wood will be a free man.
- [07:04]
A
After a Sydney appeal court tore up his conviction for the murder of his girlfriend, Caroline Byrne.
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B
I have reviewed the whole of the evidence and have concluded that I am not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Gordon Wood murdered Carolyn Byrne as charged. Accordingly, he must be acquitted. Peter Gill came to me after that and he started encouraging me to look at other cases which had been prosecuted by Mr. Tedeschi. One of the most interesting and notorious of which was the case of Kathleen Folbeg.
- [07:41]
A
Kathleen Folbeg has been spared a life sentence, but will spend at least 30 years behind bars for the manslaughter of her first baby, Caleb, and the murders of those who followed Patrick, Sarah and Laura. The judge said Folbig would serve a hard jail term and would need to be protected from the danger of being killed by other inmates. Currently, she's locked up for all but two hours a day, a situation likely to continue indefinitely. I think it was so politically unpopular when the questions started to be asked. I mean, whenever I wrote about Cass case, I used to get really aggressive, vicious, violent email saying, you're defending a baby killer. And it took a long time for that kind of rhetoric around the case to change. So it was politically so unpopular to look at this case. You know, she was, you know, Australia's worst female serial killer. And so I think it was just too hot a topic to touch. Nobody wanted to be the person that released Kathleen Folbig.
- [08:44]
B
I kind of pitched it in a Slightly half hearted way to Four Corners. And we didn't do it. We didn't do a story on it for Four Corners, because, to be frank, I haven't done. I hadn't done enough work on it. But then later on, I joined Australian Story as a producer in 2017. And then the following year, in 2018, we put out this episode on Kathleen, which raised significant questions about her guilt. And it was after that, nine days after that, that Mark Speakman, then the Attorney General of New South Wales, got up and said, I'm calling an inquiry into her convictions. In 2003, Kathleen Folbig was convicted of the homicides of her four children. In 2015, a petition on behalf of Ms. Folwig was presented to His Excellency the Governor. On my recommendation, His Excellency the Governor has today directed an inquiry into Ms. Folwig's convictions. Can I say this has been an immensely difficult decision? Put yourself in the position of Ms. Folbig's ex husband, Craig Folbig. The worst thing that can happen to anyone in their life, I believe, is to lose a child. Just imagine what it must be like to lose four children. The distress that today's decision will cause is something that has weighed on me heavily in formulating this recommendation to the Governor. But in the end, my job is to uphold confidence in the administration of justice. So that was a very significant moment and that's the way in which I got into the story. But the other highly significant thing which was completely fortuitous and I didn't know this was going to happen, was that a young lawyer who was scientifically trained in genetics, Dave Wallace, saw the Australian story and it reminded him of the work that he had done as a science student, where he had come to the conclusion on his own terms, if you like, that Kathleen's convictions were potentially unsafe and he thought that there might be a genetic reason for the deaths of all or some of the children, the four children. And he then got in touch with Professor Carolla Vinuesa, under whom he had worked as a science student, and he persuaded her to get involved. And that is how indirectly this is not. No credit to me at all or to Australian Story, but quite fortuitously, as I say, and really everything flowed from there.
- [11:17]
A
It's really those sliding doors moments though, isn't it? Like these things that happen. And actually just as a little insight into how I got involved in Kath's case. So your book is called Meadows Law and I want to get on to the title later. Because I don't think like 99.9% of people listening are going to know who Professor Soroy Meadows is, which this book is named after. But I know because when I was doing my PhD many years ago now, I won't say how many because it makes me feel old, but when I was doing my PhD, I was looking at forensic evidence, some statistical evidence and the law, but I looked at when expert evidence went wrong. And I covered Professor Saroy Meadows cases of alleged child murder, which was what he was famous for in the uk. He's a British pediatrician, very eminent at the time that he, he gave evidence in some very high profile child death cases where the women were accused of murdering their children and those women were found guilty, but those cases were later overturned because his evidence was unreliable. And so I was very well aware of Professor Soroy Meadows. Fast forward to 2012. I moved to Australia and I came across Kath's case and I saw the links that basically Sir Roy Meadows evidence was still being used to support Kath's conviction and the fact that it was safe. And I found that really frightening because I knew what had happened in the uk, he'd been totally discredited by this point. The cases had been overturned and it frankly horrified me his name was still being used in child death cases. And that here nobody seemed to realize that that had been totally discredited. So that was actually the reason I started researching my book on mothers who murder. That's the headline colon and Infamous Miscarriages of Justice. And he is the whole reason that I also wrote my first book. And that was really instigated by Cath's case. And then Cath contacted me via Tracy and various other people. And that's kind of those sliding doors moments too. Cause if I hadn't known about Sawyer Meadow, I hadn't seen Cass case, I wouldn't have written the book. And the rest they say is history. Yeah.
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B
And as you say, not only sliding doors, but it is so significant the role that Professor Saroy Meadow played in all these cases.
- [13:41]
A
Unbelievable.
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B
And one of the things that struck me in researching Kathleen's case, of course, is that the most famous of these cases in the uk, the case of Sally Clark, oh yeah, terrible. Was overturned. She won her second appeal literally a couple of months before Kathleen went on trial in 2003. And I think the argument would have been that, you know, there were very different cases and so on and so on and so on. And so they went ahead.
- [14:11]
A
Sally Clark is a particularly heartbreaking case. Sally Clark was an English solicitor who in November 1999, was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. On the back of Sorori Meadows evidence, she was found guilty of murder of her two infant children, two boys. The first son died in 1996 within he was only a few weeks old. And the second son died in similar circumstances in 1998. Now, a month later, she was arrested, tried for both. She was found guilty, even though the defence argued that this was Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which was the same in Cath's case, so relied on the evidence of sorrow Meadows. This was finally overturned, however.
- [14:54]
Was released from prison. But she was so damaged psychiatrically, psychologically, from the trauma that she'd suffered that she died shortly afterwards. And so that is, I think, one of the most tragic cases, given she was entirely innocent. She was a grieving mother imprisoned, and as a result, she basically drank herself to death. She died of alcohol poisoning in 2007. And that, to me, that is on Sir Roy Meadows and the erroneous evidence that he gave in her case. What is Meadows law? What was he saying about these women and multiple deaths within families? Because those are the cases we were really talking about, when more than one child dies in a family.
- [15:38]
B
Yeah. So essentially what he said, Anthony, was this. That he came up with this theory that for one infant to die in a family is, of course, a tragedy. For two infants to die in the same family is suspicious, and for three infants in the same family to die is murder, essentially, or infanticide, if you like, until proven otherwise. And it's interesting here, and this feeds into the whole idea of parents and the role of mothers and fathers, because there were two medical examiners in the United States whose surname is dimaio, who came up with an almost identical theory. And I talk about this in the book because one of the interesting things is that one of the Di Maio medical examiners wrote to a specialist pediatrics magazine in the United States putting forward the opinion that when these homicides occurred, it was almost always the mother who carried them out.
- [16:37]
A
Right, okay. Which statistically is not true, actually. Around 27 children die in Australia. There is hands of a carer every year. That's filicide is what it's described as. And half of those will be male and half will be female. So everyone thinks it's the mother. And that is statistically incorrect.
- [16:54]
B
Yes, and you're quite right to point that out, Anthy. And in my opinion, that the demeyers and indeed Professor Saroy Meadow based their theory, which, as I say, was almost identical on no substantial research evidence whatsoever. So this is the point I want to make is that one of the people who we interviewed for our Australian story episode was a British mathematician called Professor Ray Hill and he wrote a paper. The conclusion he came to, and he's certainly done his research far better than Professor Sir Roy Meadow, is that he's a statistician and he said one of the horrendous problems with cases like this is the misuse of statistics. He said that in his opinion. He wrote a paper saying this single cot deaths outweigh single infant murders by 17 to 1. Double cot deaths outweigh double infant murders by about 9 to 1 and triple cot deaths outweigh triple murders by about 2 to 1.
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A
So it's twice as likely that a child would die of cot death three times. Three children within the same family would die of SIDS or cot death as it may have been known back then. Defense when he wrote it then would have been murdered.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So actually the stats that it was from memory, I think Soro Mano said It was like 23 million chance that two children or three children would die in a family of cop death.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Which makes it so unbelievable actually it's twice as likely they die of natural causes than be murdered.
- [18:29]
B
Exactly. So you know, people have got that all wrong.
- [18:32]
A
And the problem with the stats is what they. What Sir Roy Meadows did, and I won't bore anyone with the like heavy level stats, but basically he took the likelihood of one child dying of sudden infant death and the likelihood of another child dying totally independently and just times them together.
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B
Yes.
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A
And then he added another one and times it together again.
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B
That's right.
- [18:51]
A
He treated them as what we would call in stats, world independent variables, as if they had nothing to do with each other at all. However, we know that children who die of sudden for death, we may not understand why they die, but we know that there are links between those deaths be those environmental, genetic, a combination of social factors, whatever. There are reasons which make it more likely in fact, that if you've lost one child to sids, you're more likely to lose a second. And therefore the risks actually go up. Because there's something within your genetic or family that is actually predisposing them. Now we didn't what it was in Kath's case, we do now. This situation is a tragic set of circumstances where two people's DNA created a situation where children were predisposed to die young. The variables were always dependent. And that stupid mistake that people make because they just don't understand basic statistical principles is what led to Meadows Law and led to a number of women being prosecuted and going to prison. Sally Clark's death and Cath losing 20 years of her life.
- [20:04]
B
Absolutely. And the other point about Cathy's case, poor woman, Is that at her committal hearing before the trial, when she was committed for trial, there was a paper written by an American pediatrician called Janice Opphofen, and she wrote the paper saying essentially these were homicides and that the chances of all four deaths being natural was one in a trillion.
- [20:36]
A
Wow.
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B
Okay. Now, you're quite right to laugh, Xanthi, but, you know, when you think about. That was publicized, that was published at the time.
- [20:43]
A
Yeah.
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B
So, of course, that helped to cement the view, the public view, that it was completely inconceivable.
- [20:50]
A
Exactly. And that's the point, isn't it, of numbers. It's numbers beyond. You know, I can't even imagine how many zeros on the end of a trillion. It's ridiculous.
- [20:57]
B
But of course, what that meant is that in Kathy's case, when her fourth child, Laura, died in 1999, and Meadow's Law was kind of an accepted theory, it meant that from there on in, essentially they believed, the police believed, and I think also probably the forensic pathologists believed.
- [21:18]
A
That's where this started with the forensic pathologist.
- [21:21]
B
Exactly. That this had to be murder.
- [21:24]
A
Yes. Professor Karlan knew about. Now, this I have a problem with isn't. I've given expert evidence, and as an expert, when you're employed by the prosecution or defense, it doesn't matter. You need to just assess the evidence that's in front of you. You're not meant to take extraneous information into account which could consciously or subconsciously prejudice your. Now, with this case, Professor Carla, who did the fourth post mortem on Laura, he knew about the previous three children's deaths. All three children, the previous three that had sadly died had a medical condition that was known before death, and they were given his natural causes at death. So there was no suspicion about any of those three children. But with Laura's death, he would have given natural causes because there were medical issues that were documented before she died. However, he knew about the previous three and said if it hadn't been for that, he'd have given natural causes. Now, that, to me, is a huge red flag, because if his evidence from his postmortem, which is what he's meant to base his report on, says natural causes and he is letting other things influence it, that to Me is prejudicial. He also knew about the diaries. And have you read the diaries?
- [22:41]
B
Yes. Oh, yes.
- [22:42]
A
Yeah, me too. And when I read them, and I got a copy quite early on after my book came out, so I already believed there was reasonable doubt. But I'd only seen the snippets of the diaries that were released at trial, which were those obviously selected to try and insinuate guilt. Kathleen Folbig had killed three of her children and was pregnant with her fourth when she wrote in her diary about the day her memories were would come to the surface. That will be the day to lock me up and throw away the key, she wrote, something I'm sure will happen one day. So I read the whole thing. And nowhere in those diaries does Kath ever say that she intentionally harmed those children. Yes, she. She exhibits guilt, remorse, all of those emotions. But you put that in to me, there was always two readings of it. It could either be a woman who's intentionally harmed these children, thus those emotions, or these are the emotions of a woman who is deeply trauma from the death of her four children, whom she couldn't protect and keep alive. Now, if I had a child that died of sids, I would feel guilt and remorse and all of that. Of course you do, because you're trying to nurture that thing that relies on you. And so guilt is a totally normal emotional response in that context. And there was always two ways to read those diaries. And when I saw them, I was like, there's nothing in here that convinces me of her guilt.
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B
Yeah, absolutely.
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A
So.
- [24:06]
B
So she's tried in 2003, and her defense team fails to call a single psychologist or expert witness or psychiatrist to say, this is what any mother, as you have said, any mother whose child has died on their watch would do. They would feel guilt and they would.
- [24:24]
A
Express that this whole notion that we don't have any evidence of families like the Folbigs with multiple deaths is rubbish. It existed. There was research from the uk, similar demographic to the Folbigs, multiple children dying in one family for all sorts of genetic, environmental, et cetera. There are so many reasons why children can die of SIDS that all kind of combined that we just don't understand. But the evidence existed at the time of Kath's trial, and I find that infuriating.
- [24:57]
B
Yes. And in actual fact, that is one of the reasons why, or maybe the key reason why Mr. Speakman, the attorney general in 2019, called the first inquiry because he said that there was a doubt or significant doubt about the evidence that had been given at trial, that there had been no previous cases like this. And just leaping forward to that inquiry, one of the things that I found astonishing in looking back at it and the evidence that was presented at the first inquiry and how it was presented in the first place by Gail Furness, counsel assisting, was that she kind of admitted this right at the outset. She said, yes, it's, you know, essentially she was saying. She didn't put it in these words, but she essentially was saying the trial was misled about this. And in my book, that should have sent the case straight to the Court of Criminal Appeal, because, you know, the jury was misled about previous incidences of families with infants, multiple infants who died from natural causes, because all of the.
- [25:59]
A
Jury needed to be presented by the defence was a reasonable alternative to murder. Now, the fact that that evidence existed, that had been, you know, families had been studied, multiple children dying, 2, 3, 4 children within a family, nothing suspicious, the fact that the jury did not hear that evidence as a genuine alternative to murder. Absolutely. It should have gone back to Court of Appeal. But you and I were both at that inquiry. We met at the courthouse in Sydney, didn't we? We had television like that.
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B
That's absol.
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A
And we were both sitting there and I wasn't there for the entire inquiry, but I saw enough of.
- [26:36]
Felt to me, and I'd be interested in your opinion, but it felt to me like it was a foregone conclusion, that this was basically lip service. Mark Speakman had called this inquiry because there was significant public pressure. You know, there was enough to make him. Make him do something. But it felt to me like a foreign conclusion. You know, the convictions were gonna be upheld. That was the way it ran. It was a very strange inquiry, from what I remember.
- [27:02]
B
Let me put it this way. I think there was certainly, I think a feeling amongst those, if you like, on Kathy's team that they didn't like the way in which the whole inquiry was being conducted. From the point of view of it, you know, an inquiry is. I mean, to state the obvious, an inquiry's supposed to inquire. And some of the questioning of some of the experts was really quite hostile, very disrespectful, to be frank. And then when Kathleen herself volunteered to appear and talk about her diaries and the entries she had made and to explain them, she was brutally cross examined.
- [27:42]
A
Margaret Kenneen.
- [27:43]
B
Yes, Margaret Kenneen.
- [27:45]
A
I remember this because. That's right, this was very strange, that Margaret, who was representing Craig Forbeg, Kathleen's ex husband and father of the children was allowed to cross examine Kath in a very inquisitorial manner, very aggressively. And she had the original diaries. And I remember everyone was looking around the court because we had not known where those original diaries were for a really long time. And she had them. Margaret Kinneane had them. And she would not allow Kath to explain herself. She was choosing select bits from the diaries in an attempt to make it look like she'd basically said she'd intentionally harm the children and wouldn't allow her to really explain. She kept cutting off. It was very aggressive. It did not feel that it was an attempt to get to the truth. And I thought. I was very surprised that that process was allowed to take place the way it did. It was so unusual.
- [28:40]
B
Yeah, me too. As you say, she was there to represent Kathleen's ex husband's Craig Volbig's interest.
- [28:48]
A
And to make sure he wasn't, you know, any of his conduct was called into question. She was there representing him. So why she was questioning Kath on the diaries lost me.
- [28:56]
B
Yes. And she questioned her for a very considerable time. She was hostile. I felt her tone was extremely condescending and quite intimidating. I think she was trying to humiliate her. And some of the language that Margaret Cunneen used was kind of extraordinary. And she and another senior counsel who grilled Kathleen, challenged KATHLEEN probably about 69 or 70 times over two and a half days to admit that she had killed one or more of the children. And so this was not framed in the format of a neutral inquiry, saying, okay, Ms. Volbig, will you please explain what you meant by this? And then moving on to the next one. It was framed in a very, as you say, inquisitorial, an accusatory.
- [29:46]
A
It was very. It was. It was being managed, to me more like a criminal trial where somebody has been accused of a crime and they're being cross examined by the Crown. And that's not what this was meant to be. This was meant to be an inquiry. It's meant to be a fact finding mission. It's meant to be testing, you know, the veracity of the evidence. Yes, but not to the point. And I think Margaret is a fantastic prosecutor and defence. She's done some amazing work. But I did not think she should have been allowed to question Cath about the diaries because it had nothing to do with representing Craig's interests and protecting him. And I think it was totally inappropriate.
- [30:26]
B
I agree. And can I just add to that what made it even more shocking, in my view, was the fact that the commissioner, the judge, if you like, Reginald Blanche, who's heading up the inquiry, repeated more than once that this was not an adversarial inquiry. And yet when Kathy was grilled to the nth degree about the diaries, it was definitely adversarial. There was absolutely no question about that. And so, you know, why was he saying, as the judge, the judicial officer, if you like, in charge of the inquiry, why was he saying this is not adversarial, but then allowing this line of questioning to continue?
- [31:07]
A
And sitting there in that call, it was clear from how Blanchard was running that inquiry that the outcome was going to sustain the convictions. There was no doubt in my mind.
- [31:27]
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B
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- [34:04]
2018, Reginald Blanche upheld the convictions and said that if anything. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but if anything, the evidence he heard first convinced him that Kath was guilty.
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B
Yes, he said that the evidence he had heard at the inquiry reinforced her guilt. He used the word reinforced and I know from having spoken to people at the time, and indeed this was my own reaction, that people who were kind of in her team, if you like, or supporting her, and a lot of people who I think were just reporting on it or observing the inquiry neutrally, were deeply shocked by that conclusion reached by Reginald Blanche.
- [34:45]
A
I was shocked because I thought he was so wrong, but not shocked because the way the inquiry ran, it felt like a full gone conclusion. I was like, well, yes, yes, I'm not surprised. I've sat through a few inquiries and it was the oddest I've ever sat through in terms of procedure.
- [35:01]
B
Yes. And of course there was then an appeal against that and then eventually, you know, I mean, to me personally, one of the real heroes of this story is Professor Vinuesa, because she was the one who, following the first inquiry was, I think like everyone else, deeply shocked, but who determined to kind of carry on with the scientific inquiries. And she persuaded this kind of international team of scientists to carry out experiments in the lab on this cardiac genetic mutation that she had helped to discover. Carm 2G114R.
- [35:35]
A
Rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Genetics and immunology expert Professor Carola Vinhuessa.
- [35:42]
B
Was part of a team that analysed.
- [35:44]
A
The genome sequences of Folbig and her children. In Folbig's daughters, Sarah and Laura, they discovered a genetic mutation. The team found a novel variant never before reported in a gene known as CAM2, which encodes for calmodulin. Calmodulin mutations typically are associated with, with cardiac arrhythmias that can cause sudden, unexpected death in children and adults, both while awake and while asleep.
- [36:13]
B
And of course, eventually they wrote a paper together 27, you know, international scientists.
- [36:18]
A
And experts, totally objective, no skin in this game.
- [36:23]
B
Yeah, exactly. Saying, look, you know, we believe this cardiac mutation is indeed pathogenic, by which.
- [36:30]
A
It means that it can lead to early death.
- [36:32]
B
Yes. And most probably cause triggered the deaths, if you like, of tragically, of Kath's two daughters, Sarah and Laura.
- [36:39]
A
And they were still at that point looking at the two boys and whether they had a potentially different genetic mutation that resulted in their death. But what we have now is, so Kath was basically found guilty on the basis that you couldn't, you know, it was just totally unreasonable to assume that four children would just die randomly within a family. Right. That was what the Crown kind of suggested, was the only other alternative. But no one was actually genuinely ever suggesting that these were just unlucky, random, disconnected events. It was clear that there was a causative factor. But what was not presented at trial was that there was potentially another cause. Now we have scientifically, objectively published, peer reviewed journal article saying two of the children are likely to have died of this genetic mutation. Now, if you take the two girls out of the mix and you've got the two boys there, suddenly you don't have a pattern anymore which supports that Cath murdered these four children, or murder of. She was found guilty of four and the manslaughter of the fourth. So you take the girls out, what are you left with? The two boys. And that destroys the whole Crown argument right there.
- [37:50]
B
Absolutely. And I think, you know, in the end, at the second inquiry, when the second inquiry was finally called following this extraordinary petition, eventually, it took a bloody long time. It took a bloody long time. So what happened, as we all know, is, you know, the first inquiry came back with Reginald Blanche saying, the evidence I've heard reinforces her guilt. Then these 27 international scientists, they produce a paper saying, well, actually, we've taken this further. We've carried out these experiments in several labs around the world. We've discovered that this CALM2 mutation is pathogenic and almost certainly triggered the deaths of the two girls. And then there's the petition, this extraordinary petition in March of 2021, signed or endorsed if you like, eventually by three Nobel laureates and 150 scientists and science advocates saying, on the basis of this new, fresh scientific evidence, we are calling for Kathleen to be pardoned and released. And then Mark Speakman then sits on this for another year before the second inquiry is called.
- [39:03]
A
Now, this was unprecedented, that scientists felt that they had to come out. Scientists generally do not dabble in criminal justice. They stay in their lane and they expect the criminal justice system to do its job. So the fact that these scientists felt the need to write this letter, this open letter, which incidentally again for our listeners, is not dissimilar to what happened to Soros Meadows back in the UK after the Clark etc cases. The Royal Statistical Society wrote a letter saying that his evidence was manifestly misleading, I think was one of the terms that they used, because they were horrified with how he had totally butchered the statistics because he didn't know what he was doing. And the Royal Statistical Society wrote this letter. Now that at the time was unprecedented. Right. Roy Meadows was eventually struck off before he was reinstated as a doctor. But there was serious implications. And the same thing happened here. The law made a huge mistake and it took a bunch of scientists to write an open letter to really put pressure on Marc Speakman, who then sat on it for a year, to call the second inquiry.
- [40:12]
B
Yes, this actually couldn't have happened, in my opinion, without the support of the Australian Academy of Science. And I want to mention two people in relation to that. One is Anna Marie Maria Arabia, who is the CEO of the Australian Academy, because she kind of led that drive, if you like, to simply kind of say it straight out, that from a scientific point of view, there was the strongest possible evidence that these convictions were unsafe. And the other person who kind of chimed in on that and lent his voice to it was Professor John Shine, who was then the president of the Australian Academy of Science, who kind of backed this very much and made multiple statements. And particularly when Mark Speakman was not reaching a decision on the petition, he made multiple statements through that whole period saying, look, the time has come, actually, for a decision to be made on this and for Kathleen to be pardoned and released. Mark Speakman, I'm just going to say this because this was his kind of argument. His argument was that he didn't receive all of the paperwork that needed to be considered until later on in 2021. And then, of course, finally when he announced a second inquiry, he declined to actually go ahead and pardon Kathleen and release her, which he had the power to do. But instead he called the second inquiry. But as you, Xanthi, I know, will agree that the whole tone and format of the second inquiry was completely different.
- [41:49]
A
Absolutely. I watched a lot of it online with one of my colleagues, actually. Cause I was running the Justice Clinic at the University of Newcastle at this point, and it was very different. And to me, the sense was that the convictions were gonna be overturned. But what I was actually shouted. And I do not raise my voice, Quentin, very often, but I remember shouting at the school. And we had students in the office next door because they, they still mentioned Saroy Meadows in that second inquiry in. Would that be 2022?
- [42:19]
B
Yeah. So it started in, I think, November 2022, and when Michael Toft Overgaard and Meta Nyergaard, the two professors from Denmark, gave their initial evidence and because their initial evidence was actually very. Was quite groundbreaking because they discovered further evidence, evidence supporting the idea that this cardiac mutation was pathogenic. It was then kind of postponed the inquiry until I think it was February 2023, and then it recommenced and the main part of the inquiry took place in early 2023. And then Tom Bathurst, the judge who was heading up that inquiry, gave his opinion during the kind of final days of the hearing that there was indeed now reasonable doubt surrounding her convictions. And then not long after that, he wrote a short memo for the new Labour Attorney General, Michael Daly. And In June of 2023, Mr. Daly got up and said, right, I've advised the governor that Kathleen should be pardoned and released. And she was released kind of very suddenly. And then it was six months after that, in December 2023, that the case finally went before three judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal who agreed, you know, unanimously, that she should be acquitted on all charges. And so at that point she became, in the eyes of the law, an innocent woman. Kathleen Folbig spent 20 years in jail hoping and praying for this moment.
- [43:53]
A
I hope that no one else will ever have to suffer while what I've suffered.
- [44:05]
I am grateful that updated science and genetics has given me answers as to how my children died. For almost a quarter of a century, I faced disbelief and hostility. I suffered abuse in all its forms, but not anymore.
- [44:21]
B
Now the. The court says she's a mother who experienced unspeakable loss.
- [44:26]
A
My children are here with me today.
- [44:30]
And they will be close to my heart for the rest of my life. But you and I both know long before this long there was always reasonable doubt. This case is so infuriating it should never have gone to court. Alan, Carla, the pathologist, should never have raised concerns about Laura's post mortem because it was clear she died of natural causes. And so so many people, and Professor Meadow and various other people have a lot to answer for. I think Tedeschi being one of them, the way the case was run. But there was always reasonable doubt. And obviously I wrote that in God 2014, 2013, when my book came Out. It just took a decade for the science to catch up.
- [45:12]
B
Yes. And I think, you know, Mr. Tedeschi, I mean, there's no question that Mr. Tedeschi, when he was senior Crown Prosecutor, was an extraordinarily effective Crown prosecutor.
- [45:23]
A
That's a very polite way to put that. I have some other thoughts about Mark.
- [45:27]
B
Tedeschi and extremely persuasive. But one of the passages that, you know, in his closing address, I think was, to be frank, shameful, really, where he said that, you know, and again, I'm going to paraphrase, but he said, look, it's possible, yes, of course, you know, that all four of these children, each of them in turn, could have died from natural causes. But it's also possible that Farmer Joe would wake up one morning, he'd look out of the window, he'd see four piglets born to a sow. Not a great metaphor, by the way, to use in a case like this. And the piglets had sprouted wings and flown away. So what he was saying there was apart from this kind of misogynistic metaphor, he was saying, yes, it's possible that they might, well, each of them have died with natural causes one after the other, but pigs might fly. And I think the reason, I think that's shameful, apart from the choice of metaphor, is because it was, as you indicated earlier, was simply untrue. He was saying this is not literally not possible. It is literally impossible. And of course, that isn't the case because there were previous cases of multiple infants in families dying from natural causes.
- [46:39]
A
Well, I'm not a fan of Tedeschi, but I'll keep it polite. And that's because he liked winning the unwinnable cases. And I do not approve of the way he won them because to me, a Crown Prosecutor is not there to win for their ego, because they like winning. The Crown Prosecutor is there to prosecute people who are believed to be guilty. They should believe that they're guilty. It's not about just a game of winning. And I don't think he probably chose the metaphor. I think that was probably intentional. And the fact that he would have known that there was evidence in families similar demographic to the Fallbigs, that. That, to me, is just horrendous that somebody would. Would rather send an innocent woman to prison for ostensibly the rest of her life. As it looked then, she was given 40 years originally, and that was reduced at appeal to 30, but 40 years, and he probably knew then that there was reasonable doubt. That, to me, is unforgivable but come back to the book. You called it Meadows Law. So I think the listeners are going to understand now why, because this really started with Sir Roy Meadows. Without his law and the evidence he'd given in the uk, she may never have gone to trial. Anything else you want to tell us about the book? Tease us a little bit. What else? What other revelations there are in the book?
- [47:57]
B
There are, I think, one or two significant revelations in the book in the kind of zeitgeist of the time, and particularly as we talked about earlier, when Laura, poor Laura, died in 1999, Meadows Law was in the ascendant. And Professor John Hilton, no less, who had carried out the autopsy on Sarah and decided that she had died from SIDS when he was told about this. This is one of the revelations in my book. When a police officer came to him and said, there's been a fourth one in the Fallbig family, he said, four is fucking murder. Now, that was Professor Hilton. So that's one revelation. And to his credit, he then. His view obviously changed over time and he became convinced in the end of Kathleen's innocence, and he argued strongly for that and for the natural causes of death for each of the children when it came to the first inquiry. But one of the other big revelations I have in my book is that Kathleen's own senior counsel, the public defender, Peter Zara, clearly believed that she was guilty.
- [49:06]
A
Really?
- [49:07]
B
Yes. And this is based on a very brief private conversation he had with a clinical psychologist who I'm sure you know, Sharmila Betts.
- [49:17]
A
Mm, I do.
- [49:18]
B
When she met him, after some, I think it was a kind of law conference, law symposium, the year after Kathy was convicted, so in 2004. And she said to him, words, and again, I'm paraphrasing, she said to him, words to the effect of, you know, that was a terrible miscarriage of justice, wasn't it? And he said. He kind of looked at her and said, you wouldn't think that if you had read the diaries. In other words, he clearly believed she was guilty, that the diaries were damning. And one of the great failings of the defense we've kind of targeted Mr. Tedeschi. But one of the great failings of the defense at her trial, in my opinion, is that they didn't bring to give evidence a single psychologist or psychiatrist who might have given an alternative view of what she'd written in the diaries. It takes 20 years, literally 20 years until 2023 in the second inquiry, when these expert psychological and psychiatric witnesses were actually called to give evidence. And every single one of them at the second inquiry said, we find nothing in the diaries to suggest culpability and nothing in the diaries to suggest agency in deliberately harming, let alone killing, any of the children. Think how different that might have been the whole trial might have been if three or four of those witnesses had appeared in 2003 or similar witnesses. It just didn't happen. One of the things I researched, and in fact, during the first inquiry, I drew this to the attention of Kathleen's legal team, is that. But after Laura died, the police installed listening equipment into their home. Okay. And one of the conversations they recorded was between Craig and Kathleen, which I think took place kind of early one morning where Craig essentially. This was, I think, in their living room. Craig comes downstairs, you know, says hello to Kath, and he says, this is a direct quote from a police transcript. All night I've been thinking, maybe I killed the kids. Now, the whole point of him saying this, I'd have to make this crystal clear, was not as a confession, but it was as he was painting a scenario of why it was equally possible for him to have killed the kids as Kathy, because they both realized at that point, he was supporting her totally. At that point, okay, this is early on in the police investigation. He was supporting his wife, and he was saying he was basically having a go at Bernie Ryan, who was the leading detective in the investigation, and he was essentially saying, you know, I could have killed the kids, too. And in this conversation, which was secretly recorded, not only did he say, all night I've been thinking, maybe I killed the kids. But he went on to explain exactly how he could have done that and the motive he could have had for doing so. The motive being that each of the deaths in turn, placed enormous strain on their relationship. And also, you know, she was caught up with the kids and so on, and this was a way of him kind of getting her attention back, essentially, to kill them. I mean, that's horrendous, but it's a cut. This was the motive, essentially, that he put forward. Now, the revelation I made about this in the book is not only to go through this secretly recorded discussion in detail, which has never been written about in detail before, as far as I know, but also to point out that most of that conversation was suppressed at Kathy's trial, and in my opinion, it shouldn't have been. And the whole conversation after I brought it to the attention of her lawyers for the first inquiry, they, you know, submitted it, but the whole of it was redacted. At the first inquiry.
- [53:07]
A
Because it raised doubt.
- [53:09]
B
Yes, because it raised doubt. And in his report on the evidence. Okay. Reginald Blanche, the judge in charge of the first inquiry, essentially he said, you know, I'm left with the inevitable conclusion that these children were smothered, and there is only one person who could have done that. Kathleen. And so by completely redacting and suppressing this conversation, he essentially made it possible for himself to suggest that there was no other possible. But in all of the diaries that Kathy wrote and in all of the recorded conversations and statements, you know, an interview's given to the police and so on, only one of the parents at any point put forward a scenario where they might have killed the children, and that was Craig.
- [53:59]
So I'm not suggesting. I want to make it crystal clear. No one is suggesting that Craig did anything he shouldn't have, and Cathie doesn't believe he did. But the fact that this evidence was acquired by the police and then suppressed, I think is completely shameful. Out of all of this, I think the criminal justice system has a lot to answer for. I won't name names, but I think the criminal justice system as a whole in New South Wales did everything it could to keep her behind bars. Absolutely did, for the entirety of her sentence. And was very. Their minds, I think, were very closed to the real possibility that a terrible error had been made. And it was only finally, at the second inquiry in 2023, that Tom Bathurst made the right decision.
- [54:49]
Even now, when I meet people, Xanthi, you know, friends of mine or people who I just get into a conversation with about Kathleen, and they kind of go, you know, four deaths.
- [55:02]
A
God. God, so frustrating.
- [55:03]
B
They still do. And the other thing is, they say. They actually do say to me, what do you think? Did she do it?
- [55:08]
A
No, she bloody didn't.
- [55:10]
B
I mean, still, after all this time.
- [55:12]
A
I thought I knew this case, but there's obviously things you've discovered that I didn't know that other people won't know either. So fantastic job on the book. I look forward to seeing you at the Bad Sydney Crime Writers Festival in September. And anyone who's listening that wants to come along, you'll have your book there, won't you? And they can get a copy.
- [55:30]
B
Oh, 100%, yes.
- [55:31]
A
Yeah, you'll be able to get a signed copy. So that's a fantastic opportunity to come and ask any questions of Quinton that you might have. So thank you for your time today and I look forward to seeing you in a few weeks.
- [55:42]
B
Looking forward to it. Thanks very much indeed.
- [55:49]
A
If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 131114 or contact 1-800-Respect on 1-800-737.
- [56:01]
Or 1-800-Respect. Org AU. Indigenous Australians can contact 13Yarn on 139276 or 13yarn.org AU.
- [56:22]
B
The producers of this podcast recognize the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded.
- [56:31]
A
They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders.
- [56:34]
B
Past, present, and those emerging.
- [56:41]
A
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