Three is murder | The Lab Detective Ep1

Summary

The Lab Detective | Tortoise Investigates: "Three is Murder" - Episode 1 Summary

Release Date: July 22, 2025

Introduction

In the premiere episode of The Lab Detective from Tortoise Investigates, host Rachel Sylvester delves into the harrowing case of Kathleen Folbigg, an Australian mother wrongfully convicted of murdering her four infant children. This episode intricately weaves together themes of grief, justice, and scientific advancement, highlighting the profound miscarriage of justice that has broader implications for other similar cases worldwide.

---

Background: Kathleen Folbigg’s Tragedy

Kathleen Folbigg's life was shattered by the sudden and unexplained deaths of her four infant children over a decade. Each loss plunged her deeper into despair, culminating in her arrest in 2003. As Rachel Sylvester narrates:

"When Kathleen Folbigg opens her front door and finds a police officer standing in front of her, she has a reaction. I suspect a lot of us would. There's a creeping anxiety as she tries to figure out why this man has turned up at her home." [02:42]

The deaths of her children, Caleb, Patrick, Sarah, and Laura, were initially attributed to natural causes through autopsies, except for Laura's, which had undetermined causes, prompting a police investigation.

---

The Wrongful Conviction

Despite the lack of concrete evidence, Kathleen was labeled "Australia's worst female serial killer" and sentenced to 40 years in prison. Her conviction was heavily reliant on circumstantial evidence, including selected excerpts from her personal diaries. Kathleen maintained her innocence throughout the trial and into her imprisonment:

"My whole thing was circumstantial. There's not one ounce of actual evidence. They relied on the diaries as to create a so-called window into my mind." [39:36]

---

The Role of Roy Meadow and Misuse of Statistics

A pivotal factor in Kathleen's conviction was the testimony of Professor Sir Roy Meadow, a renowned pediatrician from the UK whose flawed statistical claims influenced multiple wrongful convictions. Meadow asserted that the probability of two cot deaths in a family was "1 in 73 million," a statistic later revealed to be a "reductio ad absurdum" example rather than an actual measurement:

"Sir Roy Meadow says the chances of two cot deaths occurring in the same family are the same as backing an 80 to 1 outsider in the Grand National four years running and winning each time." [15:50]

His misleading statistics, known as "Meadow's Law," posited that multiple infant deaths within a family were indicative of deliberate harm by the mother, disregarding genetic or other natural factors.

---

Parallel Cases in the UK

Rachel Sylvester draws parallels between Kathleen’s case and several high-profile UK cases, including that of Sally Clark. In Sally’s trial, Meadow’s testimony was similarly detrimental:

"When Meadow gives evidence to the jury, he tells them that the chance of two cot deaths happening in a family like Sally's non-smoking middle class is vanishingly rare. The statistic he delivers is 1 in 73 million." [16:28]

Helena Kennedy, a human rights barrister, highlights the misogynistic undertones in these trials:

"Throughout her career, Helena Kennedy is focused on the treatment of women in the courts, calling out the prejudices of judges, the misconceptions of jurors, the inequalities in the law. And she is convinced that misogyny was woven through these trials." [14:16]

---

Kathleen’s Trial and Evidence Manipulation

The prosecution's case against Kathleen heavily relied on selective diary entries, portraying her as a "cruel" and "short-tempered" mother. Kathleen explains the distortion of her writings:

"And psychologists in the very beginning said, you know, Kath, if you ever got a thought, you just write it down in one of these books... there's nothing organized or sensible about them." [36:51]

These entries were stripped of context and used to fabricate a narrative of guilt, despite Kathleen’s clear expressions of grief and self-reproach rather than intent to harm.

---

Scientific Breakthrough and Exoneration Efforts

After over a decade in prison, Kathleen's case caught the attention of Carola Vinuessa, a geneticist who reevaluated the genetic factors related to sudden infant deaths. Her research suggested that Kathleen was likely innocent and that genetic predispositions could explain the multiple infant deaths.

Rachel Sylvester emphasizes the transformative power of science in rectifying miscarriages of justice:

"This is a story about the power of science, and the determination of those searching for the truth." [05:00]

---

Broader Implications and Continuing Injustice

The episode underscores that Kathleen’s wrongful conviction is not an isolated incident but part of a troubling pattern where mothers are unjustly accused based on flawed scientific interpretations and societal biases. The misuse of statistics and inherent misogyny in judicial systems globally have led to multiple innocent mothers being imprisoned.

---

Conclusion

The Lab Detective serves as a poignant exploration of how scientific misinformation and societal prejudices can intertwine to devastating effect. Kathleen Folbigg's story is not only a tale of personal tragedy but also a call to scrutinize and reform the systems that govern justice, ensuring that truth and science prevail over biases and flawed methodologies.

As Rachel Sylvester aptly puts it:

"This is also a story about how science can shape and reshape the law, and about all the ways that our ideas of women, of mothers, of motherhood, shape the law, too often in ways that are invisible but intractable." [07:00]

---

Stay Tuned

The episode concludes with a promise of further exploration into how Kathleen’s case was eventually challenged and the scientific breakthroughs that led to her potential exoneration in upcoming episodes.

---

Credits

• Reporter: Rachel Sylvester
• Producer: Gary Marshall
• Executive Editor: Basia Cummings
• Music Supervisor: Karla Patella
• Sound Design: Rowan Bishop
• Artwork: Lola Williams
• Fact-Checking: Ada Barume and Madeline Parr

---

The Lab Detective is available for subscription on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the Tortoise app. Join Rachel Sylvester as she unravels the intricate layers of this profound miscarriage of justice.

Transcript

[Chloe Hegemotheo]

Hello, I'm Chloe Hegemotheo. I'm a narrative editor at the observer and the host of the Tortoise Investigates podcast. Lucky boy. I'm popping up here to say thank you all for continuing to listen and to support Tortoise Investigates from the observer. If you like what you've heard already. The good news is there are more observer podcasts that you may not know about yet. There's the news meeting, where Tortoise journalists and special guests battle it out to see whose story will lead the news the Sense Maker, one story every weekday to make sense of the world and the Sloan Newscast, a weekly investigation into a story we think you should know about. We're proud to bring you our journalism in audio, so make sure you follow all our shows so you don't miss a single Observer Podcast episode.

[Progressive Insurance Ad]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

When it's hot out and you're looking for something to hit the spot, Luigi's Real Italian Ice totally saves the day. Luigi's is made with real fruit juice. No high fructose corn syrup. No dairy, no fat, just ice cream. Spicy fruit goodness that's low in calories and high in. Give me some of that, please. Tons of flavors. Lemon, strawberry, mango, blue, raspberry, even red, white and blue swirl. No mess, no scooping. Just peel the lid and chill. Treat your real self with Luigi's. Find Luigi's Real Italian Ice at your favorite grocery store. Ben hadn't had a decent night's sleep in a month, so during one of his restless nights, he booked a package trip abroad on Expedia. When he arrived at his beachside hotel, he discovered a miraculous bed slung between two trees and fell into the best sleep of his life. You were made to be rechargeable. We were made to package flights and hotels and hammocks for less. Expedia. Made to travel.

[Rachel Sylvester]

The observer do you remember the moment the police knocked on the door?

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

I'd been, you know, pottering around the house, just cleaning, and the detective knocked on the door. And as soon as I saw him, my face just dropped. You got to be, you know, serious here.

[Rachel Sylvester]

When Kathleen Folbig opens her front door and finds a police officer standing in front of her, she has a reaction. I suspect A lot of us would. There's a creeping anxiety as she tries to figure out why this man has turned up at her home.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

It's quite confronting. It was sort of like, you know, good grief, something's gone horribly wrong here.

[Rachel Sylvester]

It's 2001 and Kathleen is 34. She's a young woman who likes hanging out with her friends, going to the gym, the usual kinds of things. But she's also endured unfathomable loss. Over the past 10 years, she's faced the trauma of losing not just one, but four of her infant children. Ambulance. Emergency.

[Helena Kennedy]

I need an ambulance.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

My baby's in a breathing.

[Rachel Sylvester]

In your name.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

It's heavy.

[Rachel Sylvester]

The youngest was just 19 days old when he died. The oldest was 18 months. They all died unexpectedly in their sleep, one after the other. So she's already living a nightmare. She's a grieving mother struggling to cope. And now she's trying to process what this detective is telling her, that she's being arrested on suspicion of murder. She's being accused of just about the worst crime possible, killing her own children.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

And then it just. Everything was just so fast after that.

[Rachel Sylvester]

In the chaos, she's clinging to a basic human instinct that the truth will protect her.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

I was believing wholeheartedly, 120% that the system was going to do the right thing.

[Rachel Sylvester]

But in 2003, Kathleen is convicted of murder. She's sentenced to spend 40 years in prison, all for a crime she says she didn't commit.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

I've always said I would want my worst enemies to ever go through this sort of stuff. It is something that will be with me for the rest of my life.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Then, after spending more than a decade in prison, a different kind of detective enters her life. Do you almost think of yourself as a detective rather than a doctor? It's a good question. Sometimes I think I would have liked to be a detective. This detective doesn't work for the police. In fact, she's got nothing to do with the criminal justice system. She's a scientist called Carola Vinuessa, and she specializes in genetics. Working at the frontier of science, she spends her days combing through the genes all of us humans have, looking for clues that others miss. And what Carola uncovers changes everything. She finds evidence that Kathleen has been wrongly imprisoned. And her research might just change the lives of more mothers, too. So do you think there are other mothers in prison who have been wrongly accused? I think there needs to be a frame, fundamental change in the way some of these legal cases are assessed. There are mothers in prison that haven't had the full genetic investigation and where natural causes of death haven't been excluded. And I think that's, for me, that's worrying. This isn't just a story about a single miscarriage of justice. It's also a story about how science can shape and reshape the law, and about all the ways that our ideas of women, of mothers, of motherhood, shape the law, too often in ways that are invisible but intractable. So that even when the science points in a different direction, we fail to see where it's leading us until it's too late. Where somehow losing your infant child is only the beginning of the horror. I'm Rachel Sylvester. I'm the political editor of the observer. And from Tortoise Investigates, this is the Lab Detective. Episode one three is murder. I mostly write about British politics, so it might seem strange for me to be reporting on a murder case on the other side of the world. But for me, politics isn't just about who's up and who's down at Westminster. It's about how the systems that govern us work. And when it comes to mothers accused of murder, something has clearly gone wrong. I was intrigued by Kathleen's case when I first heard about it. It's a fascinating blend of murder mystery and scientific discovery. So I started to speak to the lawyers, pathologists and pediatricians who know the details of her trial. And to my surprise, they were all saying the same thing, that Kathleen's story isn't a terrible anomaly. Look beyond Australia and you start to see that her case actually fits into a troubling pattern of mothers accused of murder when their children die, often on the basis of scant circumstantial evidence. So there was a bigger question to investigate. And most concerning of all, I was being urged to look at the case of another mother who's only just been sentenced to life in jail in 2024. A case where science could still solve a mystery that. And change the narrative.

[Peter Fleming]

It's so interesting to look at the context of the time because, Rachel, there was a sort of sense in which you were almost having to prove that the women were innocent, but it wasn't, you know, proof beyond reasonable doubt.

[Rachel Sylvester]

There have been a number of these cases around the world, and Helena Kennedy, the human rights barrister, watched many of the British trials up close. In the late 1990s, an apparently healthy baby would go to sleep, and by the time the parents next checked on them, they would discover them dead. There would be no obvious reason, and the parents were often left with More questions than answers. At the time, these were labelled cot deaths. Science was still getting to grips with how or why a child would suddenly die. And into that vacuum of information poured suspicion, aimed almost always at the mothers.

[Peter Fleming]

And ghastly things happened where people were treated as if they must have been responsible. You were suspicious first and then, you know, the sympathy might come later if the suspicion fell away. In that period in the 90s, I became a Queen's Counsel and, you know, there weren't that many of us, but particularly and working at that level in the criminal law.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Helena Kennedy was busy with her own cases, but she also started to observe something that was happening around her in the courts.

[Peter Fleming]

What was interesting about this period then was that there came to be a series of cases, cases of women who were accused of killing babies.

[Rachel Sylvester]

In the space of only four years, four mothers were charged with killing their children.

[Chloe Hegemotheo]

Trupti Patel, Angela Canning's, Donna Anthony, and.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Perhaps the best known case, Sally Clark. These women were all over the front pages. There was an almost ghoulish fascination with the idea of murderous mothers, all charged.

[Chloe Hegemotheo]

With murdering their babies, all claimed they were victims of cot deaths. A key witness at their trials, the pediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow.

[Rachel Sylvester]

And scrolling through the archive footage and newspaper articles, it's the photographs of the mothers that stay with you. They all have the same haunted, bewildered looks on their faces as they're taken into court. These are the images that were splashed all over the media under headlines about baby killers. Each one bears an almost identical hallmark. A grieving mother turned into a monster. And that's who the public, the media, the prosecutors focused on too, all demanding an answer that the mothers couldn't provide. If you didn't kill them, then who did? But if you zoom out of those pictures of the mothers arriving at court, there's a man just outside the frame. He's present, either in person or in spirit at all of the trials. The connective thread that ties them all together, Roy Meadow.

[Peter Fleming]

Here we are, we're still talking about him. What is it, 30 years later? I mean, so long after the events.

[Rachel Sylvester]

His name is Roy Meadow.

[Peter Fleming]

I think I was doing another. A case in the Old Bailey at the time. I think it was probably a terrorism case or something. We would all be up in the bar mess, you know, in the lunchtime thing. And so you'd hear the lawyers and the expertise of Roy Meadows. It was impossible to undermine his authority, his sense of authority.

[Rachel Sylvester]

In a story about mothers, there's a male doctor at the center of it. He's in his 90s, now long retired, and his name is no longer referenced in courts in the way it once was. You could almost leave his name to the history books, but that would be a mistake. In the late 1990s, Sally Clark lost her two young boys. When Christopher died at just 11 weeks in 1996, the forensic pathologist who examined him determined the cause of death was sids, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, the scientific name for cot death. It was, he said, a tragic and unexplainable event. But almost a year later, a very similar thing happened, this time to their newborn Harry. The same pathologist who'd examined Christopher carried out a post mortem on Harry. He found injuries that he believed to be non accidental and concluded that there was evidence that Harry had been shaken several times. It was his belief that shaking had caused his death and that made him reconsider his conclusion about Christopher. At the time, the injuries he'd found on Christopher's body seemed consistent with resuscitation attempts. But with a second infant death in the family, the interpretation changed. Now he thought it was more likely from intentional suffocation. Sympathy turned to suspicion.

[Peter Fleming]

And I remember that Sally Clark, one of the first questions asked of her when she was giving evidence in the witness box was about her career. And the suggestion was being made that she was a career woman and therefore she wasn't made for motherhood.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Throughout her career, Helena Kennedy is focused on the treatment of women in the courts, calling out the prejudices of judges, the misconceptions of jurors, the inequalities in the law. And she is convinced that misogyny was woven through these trials.

[Peter Fleming]

So it sort of was a poison in the courtroom.

[Rachel Sylvester]

And at the heart of it all was Roy Meadow. He was called as an expert witness. Meadow had been professor of pediatrics and Child Health at St. James's University Hospital in Leeds. Walking into the court, he had considerable pedigree behind him. He'd been awarded a prize by the British Paediatric association for his work and knighted for his services to child health. Through his work, Meadow had become convinced that many apparent cot deaths were actually something else. Murder. He used to say there's no evidence that cot deaths run in families, but there's plenty of evidence that child abuse does. By the time he gave evidence as an expert witness at Sally Clark's trial, he claimed to have found 81 cot deaths that were in fact murder.

[Peter Fleming]

And he said and said what other people thought, which was that one sudden infant death was a tragedy, that two was suspicious but three is murder until proved otherwise. The assumption was that if there was more than one of these deaths in a family, that you were sort of basically looking at a woman who was, you know, having babies and then killing them.

[Rachel Sylvester]

This theory he used to became known as Meadow's Law.

[Chloe Hegemotheo]

It's the murder trials that have brought the pediatrician into the public eye. At Sally Clark's trial, he said two cot deaths in one family was a one in 73 million chance.

[Rachel Sylvester]

When Meadow gives evidence to the jury, he tells them that the chance of two cot deaths happening in a family like Sally's non smoking middle class is vanishingly rare. The statistic he delivers is 1 in 73 million. It's a staggering figure and in the courtroom it's taken on trust.

[Peter Fleming]

There was a sort of tugging of the forelock to him and of course the defence also had an expert to call, but not an expert who had a knighthood and where the judge deferred to him and said, oh, Sir Roy, do you need a seat? Please make yourself comfortable. And there was that chatting as between men of a certain class background. And so I think that there was a sort of, you know, bowing to the grandeur of.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Sir Roy Meadow says the chances of two cot deaths occurring in the same family are the same as backing an 80 to 1 outsider in the Grand national four years running and winning each time. And how significant do you think Roy Meadow's evidence was?

[Peter Fleming]

Oh, I think Roy Meadow's evidence was critical. I think the conviction was secured by having such a grandee from the medical world holding forth with such confidence about what he perceived to be the guilt of the person in the dock.

[Rachel Sylvester]

After a 17 day trial, Sally Clark was convicted by a majority of 10 to 2. She was sentenced to life imprisonment. What did you feel when you heard that statistic being used against Sally Clark?

[Helena Kennedy]

I was horrified, absolutely horrified.

[Rachel Sylvester]

While Sally was in prison trying to appeal against her conviction, Roy Meadow became the go to expert. He would go on to provide expert testimony in multiple cases and his evidence, steeped in the logic of Meadows law, helped to secure the convictions of at least six other women. The thing is, even at the time of Sally Clark's trial, people like Peter Fleming knew he was wrong.

[Helena Kennedy]

It's total rubbish, absolute, complete errant nonsense. There is no evidence whatsoever to say that in fact, it's a complete travesty of the truth. So I knew him. I mean, you know, paediatrics is not.

[Rachel Sylvester]

A big field like Roy Meadow. Peter Fleming is a paediatrician and for.

[Helena Kennedy]

About the past 40 years, I've been involved in research into trying to understand and prevent infants and children dying unexpectedly.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Over the years, he's worked in hospitals in Bristol and. And as a professor at the university. The thing he's best known for is the Back to Sleep campaign. It was a public health initiative which encouraged parents to lay their babies on their backs instead of their stomachs when putting them down to sleep. It's still used today because his research discovered that by doing this, you significantly reduce the chance of cot death. In the 1980s, around 2,000 babies a year died from unexpected death. Now, thanks to Peter's work, that number is approximately 150. It's an incredible achievement. At the other end of the country, Roy Meadow was doing his own research.

[Helena Kennedy]

I was a professor in Bristol, he was professor in Leeds, so we knew each other. He was never involved in research into unexpected deaths of infants. He was a kidney doctor, really. He did a lot of work on children's kidney function and a number of other things. But he became interested because of this concept that mothers sometimes harmed children to get attention for themselves, which certainly occurs. It's very rare, but it does occur. He just, if you, like, took the assumption that if mothers sometimes harmed their children, sometimes they would kill their children.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Peter's work is fascinating. I could have talked to him for hours, but. But there's a very specific reason I wanted to hear from him and it's how his professional relationship with Meadow came to an end. In 1993, Peter and his team were commissioned by the government to do a study of unexpected deaths in infancy. Over three years, they investigated infant deaths in roughly half a million births in England. And by the end of the decade they were pulling together their research so that they could publish it.

[Helena Kennedy]

We got to close to the final draft of the book and it occurred to me that I would invite Roy Meadow to write the foreword to this book because it was well known everywhere that he had a very different view to me. You know, we were both reasonably well known in the field and we were polite about it, we didn't dislike each other, but, you know, we just had very different views.

[Rachel Sylvester]

So Peter shared the draft with Roy under the usual conditions for material that hasn't been published yet. Do not share and do not reproduce. Essentially, this is for your eyes only.

[Helena Kennedy]

It's strictly confidential until it actually comes out. And he read the book. And in one point in the book there was some information about risks which was put in to point out that for young mothers who smoked and living in deprivation, the Risk of a second or third baby dying was not that low. It was quite a significant risk. And as a reducto ad absurdum, we put in that, you know, the risk for these young mothers might be, for a second baby dying might be as low as 1 in 8,000, which is not rare at all, whereas for the others it was 1 in 73 million.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Tucked away on page 92 of Peter's book, there's a table of figures. It's a detailed breakdown of how very specific factors impact the chance of sudden infant death syndrome. Things like, does anyone smoke in the family? Is there at least one person earning a wage? And below the table, Peter's team writes that for a family with none of the risk factors they were looking at, the chance of two SIDS deaths is approximately 1 in 73 million. But Peter told me that that number is a reductio ad absurdum. In Latin it means a reduction to absurdity. The purpose of the statistic was purely illustrative. It was not an accurate measurement, still less a predictive tool. And there was a bigger problem.

[Helena Kennedy]

We weren't looking at any of the other factors which we know to be important.

[Rachel Sylvester]

I've seen the page that Roy Meadow read. It clearly states that the figures in the report do not take into account other factors, factors like genetics. So you had no idea he was going to use that at the trial?

[Helena Kennedy]

Absolutely. No, no. In fact, the day after, obviously it hit the news. I contacted Michael Mackey, who was Sally's solicitor, and said, look, this is completely wrong.

[Rachel Sylvester]

What Peter didn't know at the time, he shared it, was that Roy Meadow was giving evidence at Sally Clark's trial and that figure he'd used in his book was now being splashed in newspapers. Used to suggest that the actual risk for someone with Sally Clark's background would be that low.

[Helena Kennedy]

I'm the senior author on this book and this is just not right. And I offered to give evidence. In fact, one of my co editors was already giving evidence on behalf of the defence, which was Professor Jim Berry, who is a pathologist from, from Bristol. But when he tried to give evidence and point out the error in this, the judge stopped him because he's not a statistician, he's a pathologist.

[Rachel Sylvester]

But neither's Roy Meadow.

[Helena Kennedy]

No, exactly. But you know, it was, it was a terrible, it was awful. And because of that, you know, almost immediately Sally Clark was convicted.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Despite Peter's efforts, they failed to effectively challenge the their own statistic. It should never have been in the courtroom, let alone used to wrongly accuse an innocent mother.

[Peter Donnelly]

Suppose I told you a story that I walked into a shop the other day and I was amazed to find an Arsenal football jersey from 1987 when they won the League Cup. And I'd say, that's incredibly rare. And then if someone else said to you, actually, I walked into that shop Peter was talking about and I found a Liverpool football shirt from when they won the league in 1990. You'd probably go from thinking this was just a random shop that happened to have secondhand clothes to thinking this is a shop that sells replica football, old vintage football jerseys. So your view of how likely the second thing's to happen changes with the first piece of information.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Peter Donnelly has a particular skill. He can make statistics understandable. He's now professor of Statistical Science at Oxford University and chief executive of a company called Genomics. And he uses a lot of analogies to turn the numbers into words. At the time of the Sally Clark trial in 1999, he was a world leading specialist in applied probability, rising rapidly up the academic ladder. There might not have been a statistician in the courtroom, but there was one following the trial and Peter was drawn towards that 1 in 73 million figure.

[Peter Donnelly]

I remember thinking, this doesn't feel quite right. The fundamental statistical mistake that the pediatrician made was there weren't any factors that we weren't aware of that the chance of a second cot death was exactly the same as the first cot death. It's a very worrying thing to hear because implicit in that is the idea that the only possible thing that makes second and third cot deaths more likely is a mother who's murdering her child. And it completely ignores the possibility that there are other factors that might make multiple cult deaths likely.

[Rachel Sylvester]

So what exactly was wrong with what he did?

[Peter Donnelly]

To multiply those two numbers together, 1 in 8,000 times 1 in 8,000, it needs to be the case that if you have one clot death in a family, the chance of a second clot death is exactly the same as if you'd never had one. That's what statisticians would call an assumption of independence. It's like when you toss a coin. If you toss a coin the first time, you get a heads. Actually, when you toss the coin the second time, it's as likely to be heads or a tail. It's not influenced by what happened the first time, that tossing coins are independent, but many, many other things in life are not.

[Progressive Insurance Ad]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash. Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

[Chloe Hegemotheo]

Hello, it's Tominie from the Observer. Upgrade your Sundays with a subscription to the print edition of the paper delivered right to your door. The observer is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. It's always been independent and now it's newly inspired. It's everything you'd intelligent reporting, bold ideas and culture that matters. For a fresh Sunday ritual that helps you slow down, relax and make sense of the world, subscribe [e-mail] print for a 12% discount versus the COVID price.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Peter Fleming's findings on that table on page 92 were only looking at specific factors. They didn't consider things like sleeping positions or genetics.

[Helena Kennedy]

And that was not intended as saying the risk is actually that for these families. It was just that if we look at only these factors and ignore everything else, that would. However, he misinterpreted that and used it to suggest that someone with Sally Clark's background, the risk would be that ridiculously low risk.

[Rachel Sylvester]

And when Roy Meadow presented the alarming 1 in 73 million figure to the jury, he didn't take this into account. At the time, genetics was in its infancy. Lawyers and juries were not well versed in science or maths, and neither, it seems, was Meadow. Do you think he was the right person to be providing that expert opinion?

[Peter Donnelly]

I think that's a funny thing where we often accept that certain things need expertise. If I told you I was going to build a bridge over the next six weeks and you were then going to drive your car over it, you'd ask whether I had any engineering qualifications. You wouldn't just assume that's something someone could do. But with statistics, it's much more common for a wide range of people from different backgrounds to think they have the expertise and knowledge in statistics. And often for very simple things that's true, but in more complicated situations that can be misleading. So there's definitely an issue that it's not seen as an area that requires specialist expertise. Another factor in my experience, is that lawyers, who are often extremely smart and capable people, some of them have as a badge of honor the fact that they can't understand mathematics or statistics. So while they have a lot of experience of challenging experts on these sorts of cases on medical evidence and so on, that's something that they've many years of practice in doing I think they feel less comfortable on the statistical side and hence less naturally able to ask the right questions of an expert.

[Chloe Hegemotheo]

Earlier this year, Sally Clark walked free on appeal after Professor Meadow had said there was a one.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Sally Clark was eventually freed in January 2003. Her conviction was overturned after appeal court judges found that Roy Meadow's evidence was unreliable. The Royal Statistical Society had expressed its concern about the misuse of statistics in court. Sally Clark, an innocent mother, had spent three and a half years in jail for a crime she didn't commit. After her release, she struggled to cope and eventually she died from alcohol poisoning. The implications ricocheted through the justice system. Two other women who'd faced similar allegations were cleared. Angela Cannings had her conviction overturned after spending more than a year in prison for the murder of her two sons. Tonight, Angela Cannings is a free woman. Another mother proved innocent of killing her babies. Donna Anthony was freed after more than six years in jail for killing her two babies.

[Chloe Hegemotheo]

Donna Anthony was jailed on Meadow's evidence.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Her lawyer believes she now. And five months after Sally Clark was released, another mother, Trupti Patel, was acquitted of murdering three of her children.

[Chloe Hegemotheo]

Professor Meadow had said at her trial it would be very unusual to have three cot deaths in one family. Her maternal grandmother had lost five of her children.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Her grandmother had testified that she herself had lost five children in infancy. It was another indication that there could be a genetic cause of such deaths, an alternative explanation to murder by the mother. Over this period, there have been astonishing developments in genetics. In the same year as Sally Clark's conviction was overturned, the entire human genome was sequenced for the first time. It was the genetic equivalent to mapping the world and opened the door to new ways of diagnosing and preventing disease. It made it possible to identify potentially life threatening conditions that might be able to explain things like sudden infant deaths. But the implications were still unclear and the science was not advanced enough to be used in criminal trials. Instead, Meadow and his misleading law had been allowed to dominate the criminal justice system, leading to multiple miscarriages of justice in the uk, Roy Meadow was totally discredited. But there's a reason we've started the story here, because a narrative took hold back then. Mothers are supposed to be nurturing, loving, selfless. Throughout history, those who appear to transgress those ideals have been an endless source of fascination and fear. In Greek mythology, there's Medea, who murders her own sons in revenge against her husband. And despite all good reason, in parts of the system around the world, the murder myth stuck. Cathy did you kill Caleb.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

No, there's that. It's a millisecond of non belief. It's a, you know, it's sort of like, I don't believe this is happening, this is ridiculous, you know, sort of thing. But at the same time I was also telling myself, oh, it'll be fine, it'll be fine, there's nothing to see here, it's all good.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Just as Sally Clark's conviction was being overturned on the other side of the world, history seemed to be repeating itself.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

After my last child, Laura, when she died, there was instant suspicion, you know, cause she was the fourth one in.

[Rachel Sylvester]

The space of 10 years. Between 1989 and 1999, Kathleen Folbig and her husband Craig lost four children. All of them died suddenly. Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura. For every child that died there was an autopsy. And for Caleb, Patrick and Sarah it was determined that each baby died of natural causes. But it was different for Laura. Her autopsy discovered evidence of myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle. But in his conclusion, the forensic pathologist described her death as undetermined. This was crucial because it left open the possibility of foul play. And the New South Wales Police opened a murder investigation.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

I was in shock. I'd only just lost my child, so I was grieving and in shock from that. Without, you know, really concentrating on what the police were doing.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Suspicion was mounting not just around Laura's death, but for all four of her children. The results of the original post mortems were now in question.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

When you go through something like that, you're surviving. That's how I took it. Anyway. It was a case of waking up and just deciding whether you were going to survive that day or not.

[Rachel Sylvester]

The police and others were starting to connect the deaths and now her case was headed for trial.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

The process was basically them going around me on the outside, talking to friends, family, you know, trying to build a case that I had no idea what sort of case they were trying to build.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Kathleen might not have been focused on what the police were doing, but Craig.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

Was my ex husband. It was sort of like I was in la la land really, until it was too late and realized that he'd been working with them. So that was a big destructive sort of thing, what had happened. He came across a diary. Like my whole case was circumstantial because of the diaries that they, you know, police always found, but they didn't actually find them. He actually handed one in because he found one and he read it and he was a bit not liking what was in it. So he went and handed it in rather than talk to me about it. And that started the whole thing.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Kathleen had a deeply traumatic childhood. Her father was a violent man who in a drunken rage, ambushed her mother in the street and stabbed her 24 times with a carving knife. He murdered her mother. So at the age of three, Kathleen was put into foster care. Her foster mother was tough and according to court documents, hit Kathleen with the handle of a feather duster when she misbehaved. Her foster father was a distant and cold man. In her isolation, she discovered a coping mechanism. She told me that from the age of eight, she started to keep a diary.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

And psychologists in the very beginning said, you know, Kath, if you ever got a thought, you just write it down in one of these books. So I pretty much did that. I was always writing something down somewhere. My diaries were. There was nothing organized or sensible about them. You know, I could have a page that would be starting off with, hey, what a great day I'm having to tears in the middle and then talking and swearing or carrying on at the end. So, yeah, and the language I used was just sort of was a pouring.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Of emotions, just like she'd done in other difficult moments of her life. When she lost her children, Kathleen started to write. She had diaries spanning four years between Sarah's death and her pregnancy with Laura. When the police were gathering evidence, Kathleen's relationship with Craig had ended up. And when she moved out of the family home, she left the diaries behind. These deeply personal diary entries ended up forming a key part of the prosecutor's case.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

So they pick, pick, pick, but in doing so, you remove all the context out of what it is that you're writing.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Out of more than 50,000 words, the prosecution honed in on less than 1,000, a tiny, crucial percentage. There was one line in particular that proved to be damning.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

You know, there's infamous lines where I think I say something about Sarah, my third child, where she went with a bit of help.

[Rachel Sylvester]

The critical entry, which was read out in court, was dated January 28, 1998. In it, Kathleen described how she'd become so angry at Laura that she nearly purposely dropped her on the floor and left her. She went on, I feel like the worst mother on this earth, scared that she'll leave me now like Sarah did. I knew I was short tempered and cruel sometimes to her, and she left with a bit of help.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

Now I was referring to God, as in, I didn't have a choice about this. Some man upstairs or something decided that she was leaving. No, that became weaponised and turned into a. That means she must have did something.

[Rachel Sylvester]

In another passage, Kathleen had written about some of her past mistakes, saying, I obviously I'm my father's daughter. This was held up by the prosecution as some kind of admission of guilt. But Kathleen told the police that what she meant was that she thought her father was a loser and she took after him. She explained that the journals were an expression of her own inadequacy and guilt, compounded by the trauma of losing her babies.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

By the time I went to trial, I was so totally isolated that I had no one supporting me whatsoever. I was feeling like I was pretty much doing it alone, and that's extremely hard.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Throughout the trial, Kathleen maintained her innocence.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

My whole thing was circumstantial. There's not one ounce of actual evidence. They relied on the diaries as to create a so called window into my mind.

[Rachel Sylvester]

As with Sally Clark a few years before, the prosecution painted a picture of a woman who was never fit to be a mother.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

It's believed that there's supposed to be this ideal mother who stays at home, solely looks after their children and that the children's needs are met 150% and that the husband's needs are met 150% and the wife's needs are not met at all. So you have someone who works or, you know, might like to go for a dance with some girlfriends every now and then or goes to the gym because they want to look good or, you know, be healthy or do whatever, that's not fitting this ideal mother picture. So because I did all of those things, I therefore was not an ideal mother. If they had reports that, you know, a mother is becoming frustrated with their child, you know, so that's not an ideal mother either. So I'm like, well, I haven't met a mother yet that does not get frustrated with their children.

[Rachel Sylvester]

But the misogyny wasn't the only familiar aspect from the British cases.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

You've also got Meadows Law.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Roy Meadow wasn't there giving evidence in person. He didn't need to be. The misleading narrative he'd set out in the UK had travelled to Australia faster than it could be challenged.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

Anybody who gets past at number two is sort of like, you're in trouble because that was their stupid dogma.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Thinking back then, the Crown Prosecutor told the jury, it has never been recorded that the same person has been hit by lightning four times.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

When I found guilty, I said, you know, it's been reported that I just fainted and collapsed and they had to wait till I was conscious before they could lead me downstairs. So then after that, I switched off.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Kathleen is sentenced to 40 years for the deaths of her children, for murdering Sarah, Patrick and Laura, and for the manslaughter of Caleb. As the cell door slams behind her, Kathleen is all alone. She has no reason to believe that slowly a team of people will form around her, all asking the same question, is this a wrongful conviction? And that the answer will come from a detective sitting in a lab building, the knowledge that will eventually free her. This might be a story that taps into the deepest fear of every parent that your child will suddenly be snatched away from you. But it's also a story of hope, about the power of science and human inquiry and the determination of those searching for the truth. Coming up in episode two. I will never forget the look on her face as she was being put into that prison van. My immediate thought was, you know, there's potentially a genetic explanation for the.

[Peter Fleming]

The deaths of the children.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Looking at each other and saying, have you seen these? Right. Both of us.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

And they came back and said, we found something that was like, wow, okay, now we're getting somewhere.

[Rachel Sylvester]

The Lab Detective is reported by me, Rachel Sylvester. It's written by me and the producer, Gary Marshall. Fact checking by Ada Barume. The music supervisor is Carla Patella. Sound design by Rowan Bishop. Podcast artwork is by Lola Williams. The executive producer is Basha Cummings. The observer.

[Progressive Insurance Ad]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. You know that thing called AI supposed to make the workplace super efficient? Well, there's something better. DI Delicious Intelligence. It's tech that helps make work efficient and Yummy. Leading the DI revolution EasyCater. A workplace food platform that connects you to tons of favorite restaurants with tools to save time and stay on budget. Need tacos for 20? Falafel for 40. A variety of vegan breakfast sandwiches. Now that's a tasty prompt. Join the DI Revolution.

[Chloe Hegemotheo]

Order [e-mail] hello, it's Tominy from the Observer. Upgrade your Sundays with a subscription to the print edition of the paper delivered right to your door. The observer is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. It's always been independent and now it's newly inspired. It's everything you'd intelligent reporting, bold ideas and culture that matters. For a fresh Sunday ritual that helps you slow down, relax and make sense of the world, subscribe [e-mail] print for a 12% discount versus the COVID price.

[Rachel Sylvester]

ACAST powers the World's best Podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.

[Peter Fleming]

Lies, Exploitation and the American Dream turned Nightmare. This is Big Sugar, a deep dive.

[Chloe Hegemotheo]

Into the inner workings of the sugar industry.

[Peter Fleming]

I'm Celeste Headley and in a new.

[Progressive Insurance Ad]

Podcast I'm investigating a true crime story.

[Peter Fleming]

Like no other about the men who risked their lives to cut sugarcane in.

[Rachel Sylvester]

Big Sugar from iheartmedia, Imagine Audio and the teams at Weekday Fun and Novel.

[Peter Fleming]

I'll unravel a decades long fight to get justice.

[Helena Kennedy]

If they were right, then these workers were owed tens of millions of dollars in extra wages.

[Peter Fleming]

Listen to Big Sugar wherever you get your podcasts.

[Rachel Sylvester]

ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

[Luigi's Real Italian Ice Ad]

Acast.com.