Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective sy aside of life the average person is never
Speaker 1: exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world.
Speaker 1: This is Part two of my chat with Quintin McDermott.
Speaker 1: Quentin is the author of a book called Meadows Law,
Speaker 1: which is about the death of Kathleen Folbig's four children, Calib, Patrick, Sarah,
Speaker 1: and Laura. In Part one, spoke about Kathleen's conviction for
Speaker 1: the manslaughter of Calib and the murders of the other
Speaker 1: three children. In Part two, we talk about the fight
Speaker 1: that led to Kathleen being released from prison and her pardon.
Speaker 1: I think you'll be shocked by what you learn about
Speaker 1: one of the most controversial criminal cases in Australian history. Quentin,
Speaker 1: Welcome back, Thanks Gary, it's good to be here, have
Speaker 1: a bit of a break, refreshed our refreshed our brains
Speaker 1: on this matter. And yeah, it is complex and I
Speaker 1: think it's something that we talk about this case, that's
Speaker 1: one of the most controversial, high profile cases we've had
Speaker 1: in the country. And I don't think that's overstating that
Speaker 1: the stakes were very high and the hopefully lessons are
Speaker 1: learned from what occurred and things can be improved. We
Speaker 1: left part one and we got in our own inevitable way.
Speaker 1: We explained how it got to the point where Kathleen
Speaker 1: Fobbick was charged with the murder of four children. The
Speaker 1: trial trial rent for seven weeks. It resulved in her
Speaker 1: being convicted for murder of the three children, yes, and
Speaker 1: manslaughter of the Caleb, the first child. Do you want
Speaker 1: to tell us the trial, your view and the trial
Speaker 1: that occurred.
Speaker 2: Yes, so just very broad brush.
Speaker 3: My view of the trial is that the defense was deficient.
Speaker 3: To be blunt in one sense, it's very unfair of
Speaker 3: me to be saying this because her senior council, Peter Zara,
Speaker 3: and indeed junior council have since passed away, and so
Speaker 3: I've been in writing this book. I've been unable obviously.
Speaker 1: To talk to give them the right.
Speaker 3: But one interesting a couple of interesting things about the
Speaker 3: trial and the defense I think are the are these
Speaker 3: that first of all, there was only one medical expert
Speaker 3: witness appearing for the defense, and there were multiple medical
Speaker 3: experts appearing for the prosecution. Now, part of this may
Speaker 3: have been down to the resources that were available for
Speaker 3: the defense. You know, she was being defended by Peter Zara,
Speaker 3: who was the senior public defender.
Speaker 2: It was legal aid, and.
Speaker 3: So obviously their resources were not considerable, and that I
Speaker 3: think presented real challenges to the defense prior to the
Speaker 3: trial in amassing the evidence they wanted to present. And
Speaker 3: then the second thing is that only very recently, when
Speaker 3: I was researching the book, did I discover that almost
Speaker 3: certainly Peter Zara, her senior council, believed that she was guilty.
Speaker 3: Now this was a really remarkable revelation. He had a
Speaker 3: kind of private conversation following a law conference seminar with
Speaker 3: a clinical psychologist, Char Milerbett's doctor, Char Milibets, where she
Speaker 3: said to him, you know, mister Tsara, clearly this was
Speaker 3: a horrible miscarriage of justice. I'm paraphrasing, and she said,
Speaker 3: you wouldn't think that if you'd read the diaries. So
Speaker 3: that's that's, you know, that's that's one remarkable aspect I
Speaker 3: think of the trial.
Speaker 1: Kathleen didn't give evidence at her trial. My understanding, that's correct. Again,
Speaker 1: that's you know, it doesn't surprise. It seems to be
Speaker 1: the thought within the legal fraternity. It's very unwise to
Speaker 1: put put an accused person in the witness box because
Speaker 1: it opens them up to all sorts of cross examination.
Speaker 1: Do you think she might have been better served just
Speaker 1: and this is you know, two outsiders looking in. Do
Speaker 1: you think she might have been better served in hindsight
Speaker 1: to explain what the diaries were about? Because in isolation,
Speaker 1: a lot of people and you touch on the fact
Speaker 1: that even her defense might have drawn some strong inferences
Speaker 1: from the diary. Do you think it would have served
Speaker 1: a better to get in there and explain what the
Speaker 1: diary was all about.
Speaker 3: Gary, My sense of it is that in terms of
Speaker 3: her psychological state at the time. She was in no
Speaker 3: fit state, quite frankly, to give evidence and to be
Speaker 3: cross examined by Mark Tdeski, who, and I mean this
Speaker 3: in a flattering way if you liked mister Tedesky, I think,
Speaker 3: would have kind of torn her apart in the witness box.
Speaker 3: And indeed she kind of recognized this herself, I think,
Speaker 3: but she also went on later to regret the fact
Speaker 3: that she hadn't given evidence. My kind of primary beef,
Speaker 3: if you like, with the defense is that they didn't
Speaker 3: cast the net wide enough to find psychological and psychiatric
Speaker 3: experts who could have given evidence about the diaries and
Speaker 3: given an entirely different interpretation to the interpretation given by
Speaker 3: the prosecution. So, for example, in one case, in relation
Speaker 3: to one diary entry, mister again I'm paraphrasing, but mister
Speaker 3: Tedesky essentially said, what could she possibly mean by this
Speaker 3: other than I killed children or I killed this child.
Speaker 3: Now Never, at any point in any of her diary
Speaker 3: entries anywhere did she ever admit to any agency in
Speaker 3: killing harming, let alone killing any of the children. She
Speaker 3: never admitted in her diaries to harming the children physically. Okay,
Speaker 3: I think that would have had a big effect on
Speaker 3: the jury. And I just don't believe, to be frank
Speaker 3: that Peter Zara hit back hard enough on this, and
Speaker 3: I think that one of the reasons for that, as
Speaker 3: I say, is because deep down they actually believed that
Speaker 3: the diaries were damning.
Speaker 1: Okay, it makes for a complex situation, doesn't And we're
Speaker 1: talking in the very matter of fact way. But the
Speaker 1: trauma associated when I've said about Kathleen going into the
Speaker 1: witness box, she's lost four children. Regardless of how that's happened,
Speaker 1: there's trauma associated with that. I don't care who you are.
Speaker 1: She's been charged with a charged with murdering the four children.
Speaker 1: Looking at I think the media were doing their job.
Speaker 1: The worst female serial killer and the camera, everything that
Speaker 1: goes into play play there. So the stakes were very high.
Speaker 1: The trial went for seven weeks, she was convicted. I
Speaker 1: think she was sentenced to initially forty years thirty years
Speaker 1: on the bottom. They appealed the sentencing and I think
Speaker 1: it was reduced to thirty years twenty five years on
Speaker 1: the bottom. That was where we're at. Can you take
Speaker 1: up the case from there, because for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 1: that could have been the last that we heard of Kathleen.
Speaker 1: She would stay in jail, But that's so far from
Speaker 1: the case. What were the things that started to turn
Speaker 1: it round where people believed believed her innocence and people
Speaker 1: started fighting for the justice.
Speaker 3: Can I just preface if I may, sorry, there is
Speaker 3: one other aspect of the trial that needs to be mentioned,
Speaker 3: which is indeed the forensic evidence. So the forends evidence
Speaker 3: in the trial, essentially to cut it, to cut it
Speaker 3: to its most basic element, was that you can smother
Speaker 3: an infant without leaving any physical trace. And kind of bizarrely,
Speaker 3: in my opinion, and this all relates to Meadows law,
Speaker 3: that if there is no physical trace of smothering, which
Speaker 3: there wasn't certainly no definite traces of physical smothering in
Speaker 3: any of the four cases, that is of itself or
Speaker 3: of any other means of killing them, that is, of
Speaker 3: itself evidence that they were smothered. Now to me, that
Speaker 3: is almost Kafkai esque, but that essentially was what happened
Speaker 3: in the trial.
Speaker 1: So just try and paraphrase that that if there's no
Speaker 1: evidence of the child Moon smothered, that could be evidence
Speaker 1: of the fact that the child was smothered because there
Speaker 1: is no physical evidence of the child.
Speaker 3: Well, I suppose there are two parts to it. Is
Speaker 3: there any evidence that they were killed by any other means?
Speaker 3: The answer is no. Is there a substantial evidence or
Speaker 3: that you know or is the likelihood of four children
Speaker 3: dying financial causes so unlikely that they must have been murdered. Well,
Speaker 3: if there is that, then they must have been smothered.
Speaker 3: And what adds to this argument, if you like, is
Speaker 3: the fact that infants can be smothered without leaving any
Speaker 3: physical traits, and therefore she smothered them. Now, Mark Tadesky
Speaker 3: at the trial gave various kind of scenarios as to
Speaker 3: why she might have or how she might why she
Speaker 3: might have smothered them. One of them was that she
Speaker 3: might have smothered each of them in turn. She might
Speaker 3: have suffocated each of them in turn in order to
Speaker 3: get them to go to sleep, okay, as opposed to
Speaker 3: killing them in a rage. That was another alternative scenario,
Speaker 3: that she flew into a rage on each occasion and
Speaker 3: she smothered them. And I think, I mean they knew
Speaker 3: about a case in the United States there of a
Speaker 3: babysitter who would use this suff vocation technique, allegedly in
Speaker 3: hundreds of cases where she was babysitting children and she
Speaker 3: would smother, she would suffocate them, you know, temporarily to
Speaker 3: put them to sleep. And then most unfortunately, she had
Speaker 3: actually killed a couple of children, and she confessed to
Speaker 3: this and was charged, And so that was one scenario.
Speaker 3: But again it's the whole basis for this was that
Speaker 3: you can smother an infant without leaving any physical evidence,
Speaker 3: and therefore that the means by which she killed them
Speaker 3: must have been smothering. Now, in the case of Laura,
Speaker 3: that was in fact highly unlikely because once a child
Speaker 3: of Laura's age is attacked in this way, they are
Speaker 3: going to struggle, and they have teeth, and the teeth
Speaker 3: are going to leave marks, almost certainly on the inside
Speaker 3: of the mouth. And in Laura's case, at her autopsy,
Speaker 3: doctor Carla found no evidence of this. He found no
Speaker 3: evidence that she had been smothered or that there were
Speaker 3: teeth marks inside her mouth indicating a struggle. So really
Speaker 3: the active evidence, if you like, for smothering was non existent,
Speaker 3: so that in effect reversed the burden of proof to
Speaker 3: make it incumbent on the defense to prove that they
Speaker 3: had died from natural causes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, once she was convicted, who were the people
Speaker 1: that still believed in Kathy, Like you had had people
Speaker 1: campaigning on the outside. Who were the people of significant
Speaker 1: people that were fighting to get this weather overturned.
Speaker 3: Well, it was essentially her closest friends. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: I think one, I can't imagine how hard it must
Speaker 3: have been for Kathy at the trial, because you know,
Speaker 3: her own foster mother was kind of sitting with Craig
Speaker 3: Folbig's family. Craig himself had turned against her. He was
Speaker 3: an absolutely key witness for the prosecution, and I would
Speaker 3: surmise that his evidence was crucial in the jury reaching
Speaker 3: the Verden. They did so her own husband and they
Speaker 3: were still married at the time of the trial. So
Speaker 3: Craig had turned against her, and really the only person
Speaker 3: she had on her side was this Salvation Army major
Speaker 3: who Joyce Harmer, who was amazing, and Joyce's husband, Hilton,
Speaker 3: who took care of her during the trial, and I
Speaker 3: think shielded her from the worst of the media. But
Speaker 3: so she was kind of bereft and then for various reasons,
Speaker 3: certainly her two closest friends were unable to attend the trial,
Speaker 3: and so she was literally on her own apart from
Speaker 3: Joyce Harmer's support. And then after the trial, really it
Speaker 3: was Tracy Chapman and Meghan Donoghan and you know, one
Speaker 3: or two other close friends who were kind of there
Speaker 3: to support her.
Speaker 2: There was an.
Speaker 3: Initial appeal, where as you mentioned, her sentence was cut
Speaker 3: from forty years to thirty years with a twenty five
Speaker 3: year kind of minimum period in prison, which incidentally would
Speaker 3: have meant that she would not even if she was
Speaker 3: granted parole, she would not be granted parole for another
Speaker 3: three years from now until twenty twenty eight. But then
Speaker 3: after that there was a second appeal. What happened was
Speaker 3: it was discovered that during the trial, a member of
Speaker 3: the jury, well let me go back to the beginning.
Speaker 3: During the trial, this infamous or famous line she wrote.
Speaker 3: Obviously I am my father's daughter was ruled in admissible,
Speaker 3: but when Craig was giving evidence, whether intentionally or unintentionally,
Speaker 3: he dropped into his evidence the fact that he had
Speaker 3: read this line in her diary. It was a kind
Speaker 3: of egregious, you know, flouting of the ruling of it inadmissibility.
Speaker 1: And that worthing of what she said, I am my
Speaker 1: father's daughter. It looks like I'm my father's daughter. Forget
Speaker 1: the exact words, given the fact that her father had
Speaker 1: murdered her mother, and the inference being fairly strong and
Speaker 1: probity against against her in that.
Speaker 3: Regard, exactly well it was it was It was deemed
Speaker 3: by I mean Petersarrap quite rightly put forward the argument
Speaker 3: that it was enormously prejudicial to for the jury to
Speaker 3: be told about this line that she had written, because
Speaker 3: they would automatically assume that what she was, as you say,
Speaker 3: what she was referring to was the fact that her
Speaker 3: her father had murdered her mother. But as I say,
Speaker 3: it was ruled in admissible, and then Craig Folbig mentioned
Speaker 3: it in his evidence, and then they came down with
Speaker 3: the guilty verdict. And then after the trial, after she
Speaker 3: she had been convicted, of course, the media went wild.
Speaker 3: They were finally allowed to report this line that she
Speaker 3: had written in her diary, and and and the media
Speaker 3: I think universally interpreted the line she had written as
Speaker 3: being a kind of an admission that she had killed
Speaker 3: her children. She of course, later gave a very different
Speaker 3: explanation for why she'd written it. She said, Look, all
Speaker 3: I was saying there essentially was, you know, my dad
Speaker 3: was a loser, and you know my life has kind
Speaker 3: of gone to shit basically, and you know I've turned
Speaker 3: out to be a loser as well. You know, that
Speaker 3: was her explanation for it. But for the second appeal,
Speaker 3: this was one of the grounds of appeal that that
Speaker 3: that there'd been a clear breach of the rules by
Speaker 3: a member of the jury and therefore essentially that there
Speaker 3: should be a retrial. And I think what was interesting,
Speaker 3: what I found interesting was that the appeal the Crown
Speaker 3: argued that you know, when this information went back into
Speaker 3: the jury room, it would have elicited sympathy from the
Speaker 3: other members of the jury.
Speaker 2: Now I personally find that absurd.
Speaker 1: Look, we're talking hypothetically if that's what happened, but I
Speaker 1: don't think I'm not picturing the jury room going sympathy.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, ah, right, we've cracked the.
Speaker 3: Case exactly so, and so I find that to be
Speaker 3: frank an extraordinary decision of the Appeal Court, the Court
Speaker 3: Criminal Appeal.
Speaker 1: How did it get to the point where they were inquiries?
Speaker 3: Okay, so I'll kind of flash forward, if you like.
Speaker 3: In twenty and eleven, Emma Cunliffe, who is Australian, a
Speaker 3: legal academic, she's now a professor, but who had moved
Speaker 3: to Canada. She started looking at this case. She was
Speaker 3: actually I think looking at the case of Linda Chamberlain
Speaker 3: at the time, but as she describes it, she realized
Speaker 3: when she started researching Lindy's case, in Kathleen's case, that
Speaker 3: there were all these other mothers in the UK in particular,
Speaker 3: who had been convicted on largely on the basis of
Speaker 3: Meadows law or to a great extent on the basis
Speaker 3: of Meadow's law, but who had since been acquitted, and
Speaker 3: the only mother who had not been acquitted or on
Speaker 3: appeal was Kathy. Okay, So she started looking at the case,
Speaker 3: and she's quite clear in conceding that she started off
Speaker 3: with the view that Kathleen Folbey had.
Speaker 2: You know, was guilty.
Speaker 3: And she also is very clear in saying that when
Speaker 3: she started reading her diaries she was very troubled by them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I found that found that very interesting because that
Speaker 1: was her initial reading the diaries. She saw something sinister there,
Speaker 1: but then she changed the view on it.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right, and I think that I think I
Speaker 3: think a lot of people have, probably including myself, I
Speaker 3: have gone through that kind of process of reading some
Speaker 3: of the entries in the diaries, you know. The most
Speaker 3: famous one of which is apart from my father's daughter,
Speaker 3: is probably the one where she says that Sarah, you know,
Speaker 3: left with a bit of help, with a bit of help,
Speaker 3: and you think, oh my god, what is she saying here?
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Her explanation for that has always been, and can persistently
Speaker 3: actually since the very earliest days, has always been that
Speaker 3: what she meant by that was that she left with
Speaker 3: some kind of divine or you know, supernatural help. It's
Speaker 3: a kind of semi religious kind of idea that she
Speaker 3: was taken from me by God or however you want
Speaker 3: to express it, or.
Speaker 2: A higher power. But Emma, in.
Speaker 3: You know, not uniquely was very troubled by that, and
Speaker 3: I think may will have thought that she was guilty.
Speaker 3: But the more she looked into the case, and in
Speaker 3: particular the more she deconstructed the trial itself, the more
Speaker 3: convinced she became that Kathleen was innocent. And so she
Speaker 3: wrote this book, which was a kind of seminal book
Speaker 3: really about the case which was published in twenty eleven Murder,
Speaker 3: Medicine and Motherhood that was read by, amongst other people,
Speaker 3: a close friend of Kathy's, Helen Cummings in Newcastle, and.
Speaker 2: She approached.
Speaker 3: Isabel Reid who who is a barrister in Newcastle. Isabelle
Speaker 3: read then got other lawyers involved, and so round about
Speaker 3: that time twenty eleven twenty twelve, lawyers in Newcastle and
Speaker 3: indeed the University of Newcastle's Legal Center got involved, did
Speaker 3: a lot more research the Legal Center into the case
Speaker 3: and the transcripts and everything else. And eventually in twenty
Speaker 3: fifteen a petition was put together and it was sent
Speaker 3: to the then Attorney General of New South Wales, gabrielle Upton,
Speaker 3: you know, calling for a judicial inquiry into her case. Now,
Speaker 3: one of the key aspects of that petition, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: the most crucial aspect of it, the most crucial element
Speaker 3: of it was an enormous report which was written by
Speaker 3: the esteemed forensic pathologists, Professor Stephen Cordner, and he'd spent
Speaker 3: over a year reviewing the forensic evidence in the case,
Speaker 3: and his very clear conclusion was that there were natural
Speaker 3: cause of death for all four children, and there was
Speaker 3: no evidence whatsoever that she had been smothered, and not
Speaker 3: only that, there was actually robust evidence that Laura had
Speaker 3: not been smothered because she didn't have any injuries exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: So this was presented in I think it was may
Speaker 3: Or June twenty fifteen, to the then Governor of New
Speaker 3: South Wales, and then passed on to the Attorney General,
Speaker 3: gabrielle Upton, and then Mark Speakman, her successor as Attorney General,
Speaker 3: came on board. And then following on from that, in
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen, I became involved in well, I should in fairness,
Speaker 3: I should add that after Emma Cunliffe's book was published,
Speaker 3: sixty Minutes did a store about her case, and they
Speaker 3: interviewed Emma Cunliffe, and you know, bravoed sixty Minutes, who
Speaker 3: actually followed the case right the way through pretty much
Speaker 3: to the very end, and consistently argued that there were
Speaker 3: reasons to doubt her guilt. So they did that. But
Speaker 3: then in twenty eighteen I was working at Australian Story
Speaker 3: and I produced a story, an episode, a long longer
Speaker 3: than usual episode for Australian Story about Kathy's case, and
Speaker 3: one of the things I guess there were two important
Speaker 3: elements of that story. One of them was that I decided,
Speaker 3: after reading as much of the evidence as I could,
Speaker 3: that there was a clear conflict between what Professor Cordener
Speaker 3: had said, which was that there was no forensic evidence
Speaker 3: to suggest that they'd been murdered, and what doctor Alan
Speaker 3: Carla had said, which was supporting the view that awful
Speaker 3: children had indeed been smothered. And I was able entirely
Speaker 3: independent forensic pathologist called Dr Matthew ord who incidentally was
Speaker 3: based in Canada along along with Emma Cunliffe, was suggested
Speaker 3: to us as someone to approach, and I approached him
Speaker 3: and I said, look, would you be prepared to do
Speaker 3: two things to kind of review Stephen Cordner's report, And
Speaker 3: he doctor ord had nothing whatsoever to do with the
Speaker 3: case prior to that, which I thought was a good thing.
Speaker 3: And secondly, if we can arrange for the slides of
Speaker 3: Laura's heart tissue to be delivered to you, will you
Speaker 3: examine them and kind of tell us what you think?
Speaker 3: And I didn't know what his conclusions would be. He
Speaker 3: might have he might have said he agreed to do this.
Speaker 3: But he might have said, look, I don't agree with
Speaker 3: Professor Cordner's report, and I think that the myo choditis
Speaker 3: that Laura was suffering from that I agree with Carla
Speaker 3: that it was only patche and mild. He might have
Speaker 3: said that. In the event, he said that broadly, he
Speaker 3: agreed with everything Professor Corden had written in his report,
Speaker 3: and he thought that there was a very clear case
Speaker 3: of my arcaditis which could have caused Laura's death. The
Speaker 3: phrase he used at one point he qualified it. He
Speaker 3: said that didn't that didn't prevent the possibility that she
Speaker 3: might have killed Laura. But he said that in his opinion,
Speaker 3: this was, to quote, an eminently fatal case of my acaditis.
Speaker 3: Now I was kind of, at one level stunned by this,
Speaker 3: because I thought, well, my god, you know, if this
Speaker 3: entirely independent forensic pathologist is saying this is an eminently
Speaker 3: fatal case of my arcaditis, why was she ever convicted?
Speaker 3: And after he said this, I came back and I
Speaker 3: spoke to I interviewed Nicholas Cowdrey, who was, of course
Speaker 3: the Director of Public Prosecutions when Kathleen was put on trial,
Speaker 3: and interestingly, he said a couple of things in relation
Speaker 3: to the pigs might fly quote he said, well, you know,
Speaker 3: that's not what I would that's not how I would
Speaker 3: have presented it. But in relation to this, he said, well,
Speaker 3: you know, even if this went to the Quarter of
Speaker 3: Criminal Appeal and she was found not guilty, she was
Speaker 3: acquitted of her conviction of murdering Laura, that wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 3: mean that the other convictions couldn't stand. And I found
Speaker 3: that absurd. I'm sorry as well, because it was the
Speaker 3: coincidence evidence that helped drink and case. So so we
Speaker 3: then put this story to air in August twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: and I.
Speaker 2: Think it's interesting.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm sure you've found this Gary in life
Speaker 3: as well as in investigations and so on. Timing is everything,
Speaker 3: so you know, I pay tribute, as I say, to
Speaker 3: sixty minutes, and there were one or two other great
Speaker 3: journalists who had written articles and so on prior to
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen, saying you know, there are questions need to
Speaker 3: be raised about this case, but I think the timing
Speaker 3: of this was critical of our Australian story and one
Speaker 3: of the other things that Nicholas Cowdrey said on camera
Speaker 3: was he said that he believed that the delay in
Speaker 3: deciding on the petition, which by then was more than
Speaker 3: three years, was an inordinate delay, some exceptional. And nine
Speaker 3: days later Mark Speakman got up and said, okay, we're
Speaker 3: going to have an inquiry into her convictions. And it's
Speaker 3: interesting that the key point that he said the inquiry
Speaker 3: would consider was this whole question of whether there had
Speaker 3: ever been other cases of three or more deaths of
Speaker 3: infants in a family, you know, from natural causes. And
Speaker 3: all of the medical experts who gave evidence at her trial,
Speaker 3: at Cathy's trial, had said they'd never heard of a
Speaker 3: case like that, and then you know, Mark Tdeski himself
Speaker 3: had kind of emphasized that by saying pigs might fly,
Speaker 3: and so the jury it became very, very apparent. And
Speaker 3: Emma Cunliffe pointed this out in her book that there
Speaker 3: were of course other cases where three or more children
Speaker 3: had died from natural causes, and so this was one
Speaker 3: of the one of the one of the points that
Speaker 3: we raised on Australian Story, and it was one of
Speaker 3: the one of the probably the key point that Mark
Speaker 3: Speakman raised and announcing this first inquiry.
Speaker 1: Had taken that information into the jury room and that
Speaker 1: that's what they've been presented with. It's when when you
Speaker 1: break it down, it's still complicated, but at the time
Speaker 1: I can just imagine all these things coming into play.
Speaker 1: The inquiry was an inquiry was ordered, so there was
Speaker 1: I think there was two inquiries. Wasn't it that there
Speaker 1: were too?
Speaker 2: There were two inquiries?
Speaker 3: And can I just mention one other credit cool thing
Speaker 3: about the petition. Apart from Professor Cordner's extensive and exhaustive report,
Speaker 3: there was also a report by a British mathematician, Professor
Speaker 3: Ray Hill, who had given evidence, as it happens at
Speaker 3: or presented evidence to Sally Clark's successful appeal. And for
Speaker 3: me this was a kind of epiphany. And essentially what
Speaker 3: he said was that you know, while the chances of
Speaker 3: four children in a family dying from natural causes made
Speaker 3: you know it's a rare event, the chances of all
Speaker 3: four children being killed is much rarer. And he actually
Speaker 3: produced some statistics. He said that his own rough estimates,
Speaker 3: which he had published in a paper, was that single
Speaker 3: cot deaths outweigh single infant murders by seventeen to one.
Speaker 3: Double cot deaths outweigh double infant murders by about nine
Speaker 3: to one, and triple cot death that way, triple murders
Speaker 3: by about two to one. So you know, the whole
Speaker 3: basis really for the kind of for meadows law and
Speaker 3: for the prejudice. If you like that I have three
Speaker 3: or more children die in a family, it has to
Speaker 3: be homicide. Was based on a faulty statistical assumption.
Speaker 1: The statistical analysis could be flipped to work against it exactly.
Speaker 1: So basically explains that it's with all the experts that
Speaker 1: you get in and you mentioned mentioned earlier, and I
Speaker 1: just want to read it out when we talk talk
Speaker 1: about confirmation bias from from your book, an extract from
Speaker 1: from your book, Doctor Cunliffe has made the made this
Speaker 1: comment on the basis of doctor Carla's evidence. And I
Speaker 1: recall when you said information was passed on, passed on
Speaker 1: to another expert when you were doing the research, and
Speaker 1: you were very careful not to provide too much information.
Speaker 1: I just read this out there. They'll open up some
Speaker 1: discussion there. Doctor Cunliffe made this assessment. Cognitive science, she explained,
Speaker 1: shows that when someone believes that there is a likely
Speaker 1: explanation of a phenomenon that they are observing, they are
Speaker 1: more likely than evidence that supports that conclusion and less
Speaker 1: likely to notice evidence that can test their conclusion. That
Speaker 1: is what leads to the definition of confirmation bias. I've
Speaker 1: always had, and I'm talking in a general sense here,
Speaker 1: issues and concerns when it might be the prosecutor. We
Speaker 1: go to an expert, an independent expert, because they're a
Speaker 1: medical person or a scientist or whatever, and they can
Speaker 1: be totally objective. But we say, we've got all this information,
Speaker 1: can you test this and provide this information and give
Speaker 1: us a report back. I think there's contamination time and
Speaker 1: time again when experts are providing providing their expert expert
Speaker 1: opinion based on what information have provided to them. Okay,
Speaker 1: the first inquiry always evidence that we've explained and contained
Speaker 1: in your book, the overwhelming evidence that you would think
Speaker 1: would carry carry some favor at the inquiry, which was
Speaker 1: headed up by Justice Blanche I believe that's right, but
Speaker 1: that was rejected.
Speaker 3: Yes, so, look, it was a very in some ways.
Speaker 3: A lot of the evidence presented at the inquiry was
Speaker 3: extremely complex. You know, the neurological evidence and other evidence.
Speaker 3: But I supposed to cut to the chase the first
Speaker 3: inquiry that there were several kind of important hearings that
Speaker 3: took place. One of them was indeed, with four I
Speaker 3: think it was forensic pathologists, including doctor Carla and including
Speaker 3: Professor Cordner, where broadly speaking, the forensic pathologists all agreed
Speaker 3: that yes, there were plausible or possible natural cause of
Speaker 3: death for all four children. But Gail Finesse, who was
Speaker 3: the senior council assisting the inquiry, asked them, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, is it possible that these children, despite the
Speaker 3: fact that they may have died from natural course, is
Speaker 3: it possible that these children were smothered? And of course
Speaker 3: each of them had to say, well, yes, it's conceivable.
Speaker 3: So that was one part of the evidence. And then
Speaker 3: a second part of the evidence was this extraordinary kind
Speaker 3: of revelation that there was fresh genetic evidence demonstrating that
Speaker 3: Kathleen Folbig and her two daughters, Sarah and Laura, were
Speaker 3: all suffering from a cardiac genetic mutation, which, in the
Speaker 3: view of the leading geneticists who uncovered this was potentially
Speaker 3: faithal okay, that it was likely pathogenic. Now that there
Speaker 3: was an enormous argument. Essentially, at the inquiry about this,
Speaker 3: there were there were kind of clinicians on the other
Speaker 3: side who were deeply skeptical about this, But the geneticis
Speaker 3: the immunogeneticist, Professor Corolla of INUSA, who made this discovery,
Speaker 3: was equally clear that in her opinion, this you know,
Speaker 3: raised reasonable doubt about you know, her convictions, and that
Speaker 3: maybe they had maybe this genetic mutation had indeed triggered
Speaker 3: the deaths of Sarah and Laura. And the basis on
Speaker 3: the theory that she was putting forward, essentially, if I
Speaker 3: can kind of put it crudely, is that both Sarah,
Speaker 3: who had an infection before she died, and Laura, who
Speaker 3: had my arcaditis, that this triggered this genetic mutation which
Speaker 3: essentially causes arrhythmias in the heart and can be fatal.
Speaker 3: But at that stage, at the first inquiry, it was
Speaker 3: still at a very theoretical point.
Speaker 1: Because this is science. The genetic science is something that's
Speaker 1: evolved after the conviction.
Speaker 2: Of Cafe totally, that's right.
Speaker 1: So this is new science. This is new science.
Speaker 3: It couldn't have been carried out in you know, genetic
Speaker 3: science was in its infancy. Essentially in two thousand and three,
Speaker 3: those tests could not have been carried out in two
Speaker 3: thousand and three. It was only you know, fifteen years
Speaker 3: later that they that they could be carried out. And
Speaker 3: it was a remarkable scientific feat actually to enable those
Speaker 3: tests to be carried out on the heel prick cards and.
Speaker 1: Other just explained that the hill prick cards what when
Speaker 1: children are born, a blood sample is taken from the child,
Speaker 1: and that's what they relied.
Speaker 3: Upon, exactly certain. Yeah, that's right. So it was a
Speaker 3: remarkable feat. They established that Kathy, as I say, had
Speaker 3: this genetic mutation, carried it past it onto.
Speaker 2: Her two girls.
Speaker 3: Craigfoldbig and most unfortunately refused to give a DNA sample
Speaker 3: which could have aided the scientists considerably, and he refused
Speaker 3: to do this. But be that as it may, so
Speaker 3: that there was this fresh genetic evidence which pointed to
Speaker 3: the possibility, at least the possibility that two of the
Speaker 3: children had died from this genetic cause. And then the
Speaker 3: next element in the first inquiry, which was highly significant,
Speaker 3: was Kathy agreeing to give evidence herself about the diary
Speaker 3: entries she had written and what they meant.
Speaker 1: And that's what we talked about that before. She didn't
Speaker 1: give evidence to the troll about that, so this is
Speaker 1: the inquiry. She said, yes, I'll.
Speaker 3: Do that, that's right. And she had actually talked about
Speaker 3: some of the diary entries on the Australian story. So,
Speaker 3: you know, because we had recorded conversations that she had
Speaker 3: from prison with Tracy Chapman, her best friend, and we'd
Speaker 3: recorded them with Kathy's agreement and with Tracy's agreement.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you clarified that in light of what ended. Vikery.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, girl. We know all about that. Well.
Speaker 3: I mean, can I just say I think, you know,
Speaker 3: I think it was actually quite in some ways courageous
Speaker 3: of Kathy to do this, because I mean I think
Speaker 3: she could have been kind of severely punished for doing so,
Speaker 3: you know, talking to the media from behind prison walls
Speaker 3: probably not universally approved. But be that as it may,
Speaker 3: that was a kind of friendly discussion that she had
Speaker 3: with Tracy. A series of conversations actually, because as you know,
Speaker 3: obviously each conversation is cut off after six minutes, so
Speaker 3: a series of at least fifteen conversations in which during
Speaker 3: which she explained what she meant by some of these
Speaker 3: diary entries. So that was a kind of friendly exchange,
Speaker 3: friendly explanation. And then fast forward to twenty nineteen when
Speaker 3: she agreed for the first time to give evidence in
Speaker 3: a court about her diaries.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 3: I can only describe what happened as you know, brutal.
Speaker 3: Actually what you know, this was supposed to be an
Speaker 3: inquiry where where I think all of her friends and
Speaker 3: supporters and probably her legal team assumed that she would
Speaker 3: be asked in an entirely neutral way to explain what
Speaker 3: she meant by many of her diary entries. What in
Speaker 3: fact happened was that she was cross examined in really
Speaker 3: ferocious fashion by two senior counsel at three if you
Speaker 3: include Gailpiness, who was less ferocious, over two and a
Speaker 3: half days. And she was challenged sixty nine or seventy
Speaker 3: times during this cross examination to admit that she had
Speaker 3: killed one or more of the children, and every single
Speaker 3: time she denied it. So, you know, one absolutely fundamental
Speaker 3: point here is that Kathleen Folbig, you know, has never
Speaker 3: once intimated, let alone admitted that she has harmed any
Speaker 3: of her children. And you know, again you you will
Speaker 3: know better than I do gary in many cases where
Speaker 3: people profess their innocence of murder charges and then and
Speaker 3: then they're convicted and they go to prison, you know,
Speaker 3: they finally fess up and they say, you know, have
Speaker 3: a lot.
Speaker 1: In there that's still maintain They.
Speaker 3: Know, well that's true too. But but anyway, so that
Speaker 3: was the thurd main.
Speaker 1: Just on on that, On that point, with the rigorous
Speaker 1: cross examination, there can be a counter argument there that
Speaker 1: if someone is tested strenuously and they stand up to
Speaker 1: that test, that might be more revealing than if the
Speaker 1: questions weren't us Is that reasonable to suggest?
Speaker 3: So, I think that's fair, and I'm not suggesting for
Speaker 3: a moment they should have been you know, it should
Speaker 3: have been a kind of cuddly, warm exchange.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Of course she should have been challenged about some of
Speaker 3: the more contentious entries she wrote in har Daries, and
Speaker 3: some of the more some of the entries which to
Speaker 3: many remain to this day troubling. Of course, she should
Speaker 3: have been challenged about that. But my point is that
Speaker 3: it was relentless. Now interestingly, one of the psychologists who
Speaker 3: gave evidence of the Second Inquiry said, use the word
Speaker 3: brutal about was his that was his assessment of the
Speaker 3: cross examination which had taken place, and in my opinion,
Speaker 3: it acted almost as a substitute for what didn't happen
Speaker 3: during the trial.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that in the book that Okay, well,
Speaker 1: now we've got an opportunity.
Speaker 3: Now we've got her on the stand, We're going to
Speaker 3: nail her.
Speaker 1: There seems to be and I was going to talk
Speaker 1: about this later, but there seems to be that real
Speaker 1: division between the legal fraternity and the medical science fraternity
Speaker 1: at Loggerheads about this whole case. It seemed to be
Speaker 1: people in different camps. Is am I reading it right? That?
Speaker 3: Yes, I think that is right, And I've written about
Speaker 3: that prior to the book, And that's certainly a major
Speaker 3: theme of the book, is that it ended up being
Speaker 3: science versus the law. Now, that is, of course, in
Speaker 3: one sense, a kind of crude summary, because there were
Speaker 3: there were some scientists who kind of didn't believe the
Speaker 3: fresh genetic evidence should carry as much weight as in
Speaker 3: the end it did. But what happened after the first
Speaker 3: what happened at the end of the first inquiry A
Speaker 3: couple of interesting things. First of all, there was an
Speaker 3: expert overseas a world expert in cardiology and genetics, called
Speaker 3: professor Peter Schwartz, who wrote to the inquiry. Once he
Speaker 3: heard about the case and the evidence, the genetic evidence,
Speaker 3: he wrote the inquiry and essentially said, you know, I
Speaker 3: can't make a judgment about this, but I think this
Speaker 3: calls her convictions into question, and essentially called for further
Speaker 3: hearings to investigate the genetics ants further. That didn't happen,
Speaker 3: so the commissioner, Reginald Blanche, handed down his report and
Speaker 3: dealt with the fresh genetic evidence in an appendix. It
Speaker 3: wasn't even part of the Essentially, it wasn't even part
Speaker 3: of the main report, which I think a lot of
Speaker 3: people found quite troubling, and given that this was supposed
Speaker 3: to be an inquiry, not a trial. And he said
Speaker 3: his judgment was that the evidence that he had heard
Speaker 3: reinforced Kathleen's guilt. I mean it was to many that
Speaker 3: was an astonishing I I.
Speaker 1: Know that there was a lot of people that took, yeah,
Speaker 1: took that quite confronting that that was a fine needs
Speaker 1: from that inquiry.
Speaker 3: Well, I think a lot of people who were kind
Speaker 3: of on her side, if you like, found that quite shattering. Actually,
Speaker 3: they just could not believe that he'd said this. He
Speaker 3: also said in his report, incidentally, that it was plausible
Speaker 3: that each of the children might have died from natural causes,
Speaker 3: But he said that given that the lies, as he
Speaker 3: described it, this was his personal interpretation of the evidence
Speaker 3: she had given in person lies and obfiscation, that the
Speaker 3: evidence he had heard reinforced her guilt. And he said
Speaker 3: and that the only means possible by which they might
Speaker 3: have been killed was by smothering, and that there was
Speaker 3: no other person who might have done that. Now, again
Speaker 3: I found personally that shocking, because there was another person
Speaker 3: who could have killed the children.
Speaker 2: Craig and the.
Speaker 3: Transcript of the secretly recorded conversation in which he laid
Speaker 3: out in detail how he could have killed the children
Speaker 3: and his motive for doing so was suppressed by the
Speaker 3: first inquiry. It wasn't it wasn't allowed into evidence.
Speaker 1: It's confusing, isn't it? And I say that, but I'm
Speaker 1: saying it genuinely. It's confusing, like the White Court's inquiries
Speaker 1: and the evidence that gets presented. So you've had an inquiry,
Speaker 1: there's been the petition. Was there any point that people
Speaker 1: were going to give up you're involved in it. By
Speaker 1: this stage, you've been covering it, you've been reporting on it.
Speaker 1: All the people coming in I know there were people
Speaker 1: from Newcastle. Newcastle University would contact me about it, and
Speaker 1: a friend, Xanthea Mallett, was a criminologist up there and
Speaker 1: we're friends, and she would quite often talk to me
Speaker 1: about this case. And I began like I would just
Speaker 1: push back for the sake of pushing back, but she
Speaker 1: was adamant that there's been a miscarriage of miscarriage of justice,
Speaker 1: and even to the point when in discussion she'd say, well, okay,
Speaker 1: let's say and talking hypothetically here, make sure we clarify
Speaker 1: that that she was guilty, there still wasn't sufficient evidence
Speaker 1: for that person to be convicted at trial. And that
Speaker 1: sort of sat with me. I understood where she was
Speaker 1: coming from. There. We're not talking about guilt or innocence here,
Speaker 1: we're talking about there wasn't enough evidence for this person
Speaker 1: to be convicted convicted at court. So that got me
Speaker 1: looking at a little bit further. Then you have done
Speaker 1: heading with reading your book, but where to from their
Speaker 1: first inquiry? And Blanche came back stronger than anyone would
Speaker 1: have anticipated. In his findings after the first inquiry, the
Speaker 1: commissioner from that inquiry, So what was the next move?
Speaker 3: Yes, and look, you know, he could have come back.
Speaker 3: I suppose he could have come back with a finding that,
Speaker 3: you know, the fresh genetic evidence was kind of interesting
Speaker 3: but hadn't been.
Speaker 2: Fully developed or whatever, you know. But he didn't.
Speaker 3: As you say, he came back with his own finding
Speaker 3: that the evidence he'd had reinforced her guilt. Now at
Speaker 3: that point, you're quite right. I think a lot of
Speaker 3: the supporters kind of fell in a heap after that.
Speaker 3: They just couldn't believe it, and one or two of
Speaker 3: them I think kind of gave up.
Speaker 2: Essentially.
Speaker 3: The one scientist who didn't give up was Professor Vnusa,
Speaker 3: And to her eternal credit, I think she helped to
Speaker 3: kind of broaden the scope of the inquiries into this
Speaker 3: genetic mutation, which ended up with a team of twenty
Speaker 3: seven scientists around the world putting together a paper which
Speaker 3: essentially which followed on from laboratory experiments which were carried
Speaker 3: out in several different countries to examine whether this genetic
Speaker 3: mutation was actually pathogenic or not. And again I'm kind
Speaker 3: of I'm paraphrasing, but essentially they came to the conclusion
Speaker 3: that yes, it was pathogenic and that it likely killed
Speaker 3: or triggered day of Sarah and Laura, and they wrote
Speaker 3: this up in a peer reviewed paper for a publication
Speaker 3: called EuroPace, which is published in Oxford in the UK.
Speaker 3: And so based on this that there was then a
Speaker 3: move to kerl or invite actually other scientists and science
Speaker 3: advocates to endorse a second petition on her behalf, which
Speaker 3: they did, and among the scientists who endorsed this petition
Speaker 3: after reading the EuroPace paper and considering all the evidence
Speaker 3: were two Nobel Laureates, so you know, which I believe
Speaker 3: is unique in the whole kind of history of cases
Speaker 3: like this around the world putting their name to that
Speaker 3: and endorsing it. So that petition was then lodged with
Speaker 3: the Governor of New South Wales and with Mark Speakman,
Speaker 3: who was still the Attorney channel. At the same time,
Speaker 3: Kathy's lawyers had launched an appeal essentially asking for Reginald
Speaker 3: Blanche's findings to be quashed from the first inquiry, and
Speaker 3: that appeal the hearing took place, and then the judgment
Speaker 3: came down very shortly after the second petition had been
Speaker 3: lodged and the appeal finding was negative, they refused to
Speaker 3: quash the findings, and indeed they essentially agreed the judges
Speaker 3: with Reginald Blanche on all the salient points that he
Speaker 3: had made. But there was an enormous burst of publicity,
Speaker 3: which I go into in the book how it was
Speaker 3: organized and so on, surrounding the second petition, and I
Speaker 3: think what that did was I think it helped to
Speaker 3: move the dial of public opinion about Kathy's guilt or innocence.
Speaker 3: So by the time the second petition was lodged, I
Speaker 3: think public opinion was moving steadily more in Kathy's favor.
Speaker 1: Seeing her up there. It wasn't just a public opinion
Speaker 1: that was changing. Cathy's life was changing on the inside too.
Speaker 1: That when she was in prison, going in as a
Speaker 1: convicted child killer is not a good place to be.
Speaker 1: But I found it interesting at that particular point in time,
Speaker 1: even her fellow inmates started to look at her a
Speaker 1: little bit differently and treated it differently at that stage.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: Obviously, she was considered to be the lowest of the
Speaker 3: low when she was convicted and went into prison, and
Speaker 3: I don't think she was able to speak to another inmate,
Speaker 3: probably for about a year. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 3: it must have been horrific for her, and she thought
Speaker 3: the whole time that, you know, she might be poisoned
Speaker 3: or whatever. And then I don't think that Emma Cunliff's book,
Speaker 3: and this is no disrespect to Emma. Her book was brilliant,
Speaker 3: but it's an academic book. I don't think that kind
Speaker 3: of shifted the dial.
Speaker 2: Particularly.
Speaker 3: I think the first sixty minutes, which I believe was
Speaker 3: in twenty twelve, may have shifted it slightly. But then
Speaker 3: I think the Australian story in twenty eighteen certainly.
Speaker 2: Had a beneficial effect.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting that when we were filming that we
Speaker 3: were filming outside the perimeter of one of the prisons,
Speaker 3: and I spoke to a prison guard who was escorting
Speaker 3: us around, and I just asked him, you know, what
Speaker 3: do you guys think kind of thing? And he said, oh, no,
Speaker 3: you know, we all think she was innocent, which is
Speaker 3: interesting because it's the old thing of you know, if
Speaker 3: anyone knows whether someone's guilty.
Speaker 2: Or it's the prison stuff, you know. So that was interesting.
Speaker 3: And then and then Finally, when the when the second
Speaker 3: petition was lodged and it was you know, endorsed by
Speaker 3: two Nobel laureates, I think that really, you know, she
Speaker 3: then began to be treated much much better inside and
Speaker 3: to kind of enjoy the support of other inmates, which
Speaker 3: of course must have been a gigantic kind of weight
Speaker 3: off her shoulders. So then Mark Speakman did not come
Speaker 3: down with his decision on the second petition for another year.
Speaker 3: And what was happening here, and this relates to science
Speaker 3: versus the law, if you like, What was happening here
Speaker 3: was that the Australian Academy of Science had become involved,
Speaker 3: and there was there was something called Team Folbig, which
Speaker 3: was a kind of team of businessmen and philanthropists and
Speaker 3: others who had become very involved in behind the scenes
Speaker 3: in her case and in kind of pushing the science forward,
Speaker 3: and the Australian Academy of Science, their former president John Shine,
Speaker 3: Professor Shine spoke out very strongly and repeatedly saying, you know,
Speaker 3: the evidence is in essentially scientifically, the evidence is in
Speaker 3: that there is a genetic cause for the deaths of
Speaker 3: two of the children. You know, why don't you referring
Speaker 3: to Mark speakman, why don't you recognize that please and
Speaker 3: pardon and release her? Because the request in the second
Speaker 3: petition was for Kathleen to be pardoned and released, and
Speaker 3: at any point from then on the Attorney General could
Speaker 3: have made the decision. He had the power to do that.
Speaker 3: He had the power to recommend to the Governor of
Speaker 3: New South Wales that Kathy be pardoned and released, and
Speaker 3: he didn't do so. But eventually, about thirteen months later,
Speaker 3: he announced that there would be a second inquiry.
Speaker 1: This is such a complex case what we're talking about
Speaker 1: here with Kathy's situation. I can see people are defending
Speaker 1: their position, or people are doing their job with the
Speaker 1: viga that the same vigor that the prosecutors. I make
Speaker 1: this observation in the book, the same vigor in which
Speaker 1: the people involved in the prosecution of Kathy demonstrated was
Speaker 1: also demonstrated by the people that were fighting for her freedom.
Speaker 3: So that's absolutely right, and you know, is it right?
Speaker 3: Let me ask you this question, Gary, is it right
Speaker 3: that Kathy was eventually pardoned and least only after you know,
Speaker 3: members of her legal team had worked thousands of hours
Speaker 3: pro bono, money had been raised kind of to help
Speaker 3: her defense by you know, philanthropists and senior businessman and
Speaker 3: you know, scientists like Professor Vuisa had given up hundreds
Speaker 3: and hundreds of hours of their own unpaid in order
Speaker 3: to further the science that eventually helped to release her.
Speaker 3: Is it right that that you know that those factors
Speaker 3: came into play because without those factors, without that help,
Speaker 3: almost certainly she we would not be having this conversation.
Speaker 1: And there were so many times when she could have
Speaker 1: been left left there and that that's the end of
Speaker 1: the Kafi Folby story. But yeah, there's a disproportion that
Speaker 1: what you're saying there, and the resources of viable to
Speaker 1: someone taking on the power of the state is always disproportioned.
Speaker 1: We need we need to have a situation that that's
Speaker 1: protected as best at best at Kenby. But you're quite
Speaker 1: right without that that important. I know the people I
Speaker 1: was speaking to, how passionate they were about Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a wrongful conviction and we wouldn't have got to
Speaker 1: that point that these people didn't continue on the actual
Speaker 1: the process in which she was granted. So last where
Speaker 1: we were talking about it was back with Mark's speakman. Yes,
Speaker 1: second inquiry.
Speaker 3: That's right, Mark speakman overall, and again I don't question
Speaker 3: his integrity and he's emphasized repeatedly that he had to
Speaker 3: take detailed legal advice on both partitions. Was the paperwork
Speaker 3: was voluminous and so on. But I have to say
Speaker 3: this overall, taking into account both petitions, it took four
Speaker 3: years or for him to call those two inquiries. Anyway,
Speaker 3: the inquiry was called. And then at the inquiry itself
Speaker 3: there were two kind of fresh elements I suppose. One
Speaker 3: was that there was the evidence given in particular by
Speaker 3: two Danish scientists who had conducted further research into the
Speaker 3: genetic mutation and found it to be pathogenic, and their
Speaker 3: very clear view was that the genetic mutation had triggered
Speaker 3: the deaths of Sarah and Laura. And then the next
Speaker 3: and highly significant part of the fresh evidence was the
Speaker 3: expert opinions of as you've said earlier.
Speaker 2: Of nine or ten.
Speaker 3: Psychologists, expert expert psychologists and psychiatrists, all of whom agreed
Speaker 3: that the entries she had written in her diaries were
Speaker 3: not incriminatory. They were not admissions of guilt in the
Speaker 3: agency of their deaths. They were not admissions of guilt
Speaker 3: and having killed her children.
Speaker 2: They were, you know, the.
Speaker 3: Diaries were suffused with expressions of the personal guilt that
Speaker 3: any mother would feel, and the distress and the depression
Speaker 3: following the deaths of her children, but they were not
Speaker 3: in any way, shape or form admissions of guilt. And interestingly,
Speaker 3: right at the end of the second inquiry, the DPP
Speaker 3: essentially kind of threw in the towel and agreed that
Speaker 3: there was indeed reasonable doubt at that point now surrounding
Speaker 3: her convictions. So there was the fresh genetic evidence, there
Speaker 3: was the fresh evidence about the diaries, and in the end,
Speaker 3: Sophie Callen, who was the council assisting Tom Bathurst, who
Speaker 3: was the former Chief Justice in charge of it, they
Speaker 3: both agreed that there was reasonable doubt. There were some
Speaker 3: scientists who were resisting this, but I think all but
Speaker 3: one said that there was a reasonable possibility that this
Speaker 3: genetic mutation could have killed Sarah and Laura. And so
Speaker 3: in the end, really the new Attorney General decided on
Speaker 3: the recommendation of Tom Bathurst to pardon and release Kathleen,
Speaker 3: and that happened in June twenty twenty three, and then
Speaker 3: six months later in December following handing down his report,
Speaker 3: her case went to the Court of Criminal Appeal where
Speaker 3: she was acquitted formally acquitted of all five charges.
Speaker 1: So breaking breaking the pardon day, and that was, as
Speaker 1: the word would employ, she's being pardoned. She was released,
Speaker 1: but the acquittal followed on from the Court of Criminal Appeal,
Speaker 1: so saying that the convictions no longer fellid.
Speaker 3: Yes, And the acquittal was crucial, of course, because even
Speaker 3: after she was pardoned and released, Craig Folbig was saying
Speaker 3: that he still believed that she was guilty, and indeed,
Speaker 3: even after her acquittal. Sadly and unfortunately, so many potential
Speaker 3: witnesses had died in the meantime, and indeed, last year,
Speaker 3: following on from the Craig Folbig tragically died himself. So
Speaker 3: a retrial was never on the cards and it would
Speaker 3: have been frankly absurd to suggest that. But the acquittal
Speaker 3: was absolutely key because it wasn't just a case of
Speaker 3: her being pardoned for what she had done and released.
Speaker 3: It wasn't just the criminal justice system saying, okay, you've
Speaker 3: kind of served your time, you've suffered enough, will release you.
Speaker 3: It was critical because under the eyes of the law
Speaker 3: now in the eyes of the law. She is now
Speaker 3: an innocent woman. She has been acquitted of all the charges.
Speaker 1: It's significant, an amazing, amazing story, complex story that really
Speaker 1: calls in the question so many different aspects of our
Speaker 1: justice system. How is she now? Do you have any
Speaker 1: contact with her since she's moved.
Speaker 3: Yes, so, Gary, I've met her a couple of times.
Speaker 3: There was on the day of her acquittal, there was
Speaker 3: a special lunch put on kind of team Folbig for her,
Speaker 3: and of course she was, you know, very happy that
Speaker 3: the result that legal result. But I don't think, you know,
Speaker 3: there's no getting away from the fact that her loss
Speaker 3: has been terrible and the trauma that she suffered has
Speaker 3: been appalling over the years, and it's lasted for decades.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 3: Is she okay, I'm you know, yes, she's I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm in touch with her kind of from time to time.
Speaker 3: She has a very close circle of friends who were
Speaker 3: there to support her every day, and so, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm very optimistic that she'll be okay. But I mean,
Speaker 3: as I say, there's no getting away from the tragedy
Speaker 3: of this case. There's no getting away from the fact
Speaker 3: that the broader Folbig family as well as her you know,
Speaker 3: lost for children, and that that tragedy may be kind
Speaker 3: of softened by time, but it certainly doesn't leave us all.
Speaker 1: No, it's a heavy, heavy story. I want to thank
Speaker 1: you for coming on coming Nine Catch Killers. I've found
Speaker 1: it fascinating. I'm not going to thank you for dragging
Speaker 1: me back into a world that I've left. I was
Speaker 1: sitting there reading your book with my homicide hat on,
Speaker 1: just going okay this, trying to making notes. I just
Speaker 1: found it fascinating, and I just want to say everyone
Speaker 1: involved in this case, it was a difficult case around
Speaker 1: you look at and I'm not just talking from the prosecution,
Speaker 1: from the defense. There were so many complexities in there
Speaker 1: and subtle little things that you had to look at
Speaker 1: that I could imagine. It's yeah, broken a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Your book must have taken you a lot of time
Speaker 1: to prepare, but it certainly details the nuances of what
Speaker 1: happened with this matter. It's given me a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of what's happened with this case. So when I do
Speaker 1: offer an opinion, now I can offer it with some
Speaker 1: informed opinion other than just taking nah it must be
Speaker 1: gildysh was convicted.
Speaker 2: Well you don't. Gary.
Speaker 3: Even now after writing the book, the first question that
Speaker 3: almost everyone ask me is did she do it? And
Speaker 3: so my recommendation to all of those people is go
Speaker 3: out and buy the book and get it. But look,
Speaker 3: thank you for inviting me on. And I found it
Speaker 3: too to be a really fascinating exchange of views, So
Speaker 3: thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: Jeez,