Australia’s worst female serial killer’s pleading calls to friend exposed

She’s been hailed “Australia’s most hated woman” after being convicted of killing her four young children and for the first time, Australia’s worst female serial killer Kathleen Folbigg has spoken about her life and conviction.

Folbigg is serving a 30-year prison sentence for killing all four of her young children, although she and her legal team are now hoping a petition to the Governor of NSW will grant her a judicial review of the case.

She was found guilty in 2003 by a New South Wales Supreme Court jury and the petition was originally lodged with the NSW Governor in 2015, insisting there isn’t enough evidence to blame her killing her kids. The jury found she was guilty of murdering children Patrick, Sarah and Laura, while she was found guilty of the manslaughter of Caleb.

On Monday’s episode of ABC’s Australian Story, Folbigg speaks to a friend from prison and talks candidly about life behind bars, her hopes for the petition and her view of some of the events leading to her multiple murder convictions.

She explains what the incriminating diary entries (that were a crucial part of the prosecution argument) actually meant, and insists they weren’t confessions.

“You’ve got to understand that those diaries are written from a point of me always blaming myself,” she can be heard saying in one audio recording. “I blamed myself for everything. It’s just I took so much of the responsibility, because that’s, as mothers, what you do.”

In one entry, she described herself as “the worst mother on this earth” while she said she was “short-tempered and cruel” in another. A further message said one of her daughters left “with a bit of help”, although Folbigg denies it was a confession for murder.

The mother has always maintained her innocence and suggests that her children all died of natural causes – something pathologist Professor Stephen Cordner weighed in on.

“There is no positive forensic pathology support for the contention that any or all of these children have been killed,” he says.

Australian Story also visits a second independent forensic pathologist based in Canada to examine the forensic evidence in relation to the death of Laura, the final child to die.

“I think this is an eminently fatal case of myocarditis,” Associate Professor Matthew Orde says. “On the basis of the medical evidence alone, I think this case certainly needs to be re-examined quite carefully.”

Having said that, Nicholas Cowdery, who was a Director of Public Prosecutions for NSW at the time of Folbigg’s trial, doesn’t think there needs to be a judicial review.

“I have looked at the petition that Mrs Folbigg has lodged… I remain of the view that the jury was correct,” he says.

Still, he hits out that it’s taken three years to deal with the petition that was lodged and explains it shouldn’t usually take this long. Folbigg is currently half way through her sentence and has plenty of time to reflect on her life.

“My life just seems like it’s been never-ending battles and things that I have to get over and conquer,” she says.

In an #AustralianStory exclusive, Kathleen Folbigg breaks her silence from behind bars. She was found guilty by a jury of killing her four children, but a fresh forensic opinion argues natural causes are a plausible explanation for their deaths https://t.co/nNxQyiFOdr pic.twitter.com/01sZoFz076

— AustralianStory (@AustralianStory) August 12, 2018

She didn’t testify at her trial but admits she should have, although says she didn’t think she would cope sitting on a stand and being attacked over her diary entries. The guilty verdict came as a complete shock to her.

“By the time they got me downstairs, my legs weren’t even working properly,” she recalls. “I was half carried down the stairs, and out to the cells.”

Australian Story airs tonight, Monday August 13, at 8pm on ABC and ABC iview.

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