Kathleen Folbigg: Is She Innocent?

Armed with stunning new medical evidence, a team of scientists calls for the release of Australia’s ‘most hated woman’

SEEKING JUSTICE

A respected criminologist and forensic anthropologist, Dr Xanthé Mallett has also been examining the case of convicted Australian “baby-killer” Keli Lane.

Whenever criminologist and forensic anthropologist Dr Xanthé Mallett visits Kathleen Folbigg in prison, she walks away with a new-found respect for the convicted killer. Dr Mallett is not an advocate for Folbigg, who in 2003 was found guilty of the suffocation murders of three of her children and the manslaughter of her first-born baby, but she does find “serious problems” with her case.

“I respect her strength to keep fighting,” says Dr Mallett, an associate professor at the University of Newcastle who studied Folbigg’s case for her 2014 book Mothers Who Murder: And Infamous Miscarriages of Justice. “I visit her as an objective observer, and I’ve always found myself questioning the reliability of the evidence against her.”

Now, a group of eminent scientists have gone a step further. On March 4, in a petition to the Governor of NSW, a team of 90 international scientists and doctors – including two Nobel laureates, and former Australian of the Year Professor Fiona Stanley – called for the pardon and immediate release of Folbigg, 53, who is currently serving a 30-year sentence. The scientists cite scientific evidence reveals that Folbigg’s daughters, Sarah and Laura, had a gene mutation that is likely to have caused their deaths.

“I think the justice system has let Kathleen Folbigg down,” Dr Mallett tells WHO. “The evidence just doesn’t stack up.”