KATHLEEN FOLBIGG

                    Kathleen Folbigg outside court after having bail refused for charges of murdering her children in April 2001.

Convicted and sentenced in 2003 for the manslaughter of her first child and the murder of her next three children, Kathleen Folbigg is one of Australia’s notorious female child killers.

Despite multiple failed attempts to clear her name, Folbigg continues to deny killing her children and her supporters argue she has been the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

Folbigg’s first child, a boy named Caleb was born in February 1989. He was found dead in his bed 19 days later.

Her second son Patrick died at seven months of age in October 1990.

Folbigg’s first daughter and third child Sarah was born in October 1992. She died aged 10 months, in August the following year.

Laura was Folbigg’s second daughter to die. She was aged 18 months at the time of her death in March 1999.

                           Laura Folbigg was one of four children smothered to death by their mother, Kathleen Folbigg.

In sentencing Folbigg to at least 30 years behind bars, which was later reduced to 25 years on appeal, NSW Supreme Court Justice, Graham Barr, said the child killer carried out the murders by suffocating her babies.

The court heard Caleb died from an act of smothering “carried out in the heat of uncontrollable anger by a young and inexperienced woman of prior good character”.

Patrick died after Justice Barr said Folbigg “decided to rid herself of the child whose presence she could not longer tolerate”.

“The stresses on the offender of looking after a young child were greater than those which would operate on an ordinary person because she was psychologically damaged and barely coping,” Justice Barr said of Folbigg, who was aged just 18 months when her father murdered her mother.

“The attacks were not premeditated but took place when she was pushed beyond her capacity to manage. Her behaviour after each attack contained elements of falsity and truth … she falsely pretended the unexpected discovery of an accident and falsely maintained her innocence.

“However her attempts to get help, including what I think was a genuine attempt to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Laura, were genuine and made out of an immediate regret of what she had done. Her anger cooled as fast as it had arisen.”
 

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