Could she be innocent?

She has been called Australia’s worst female serial killer, but now some of the world’s most brilliant scientific minds say Kathleen Folbigg’s four children could have died of natural causes.

- GENEVIEVE GANNON

On New Year’s Day this year, there was an attack in the high-security women’s wing of Australia’s biggest prison. An inmate busted into a cell where another prisoner, with tired, hazel eyes and greying hair, was lying on her bunk, resting. After 18 years in protective custody, Kathleen Folbigg was being integrated in with the main population at the Clarence Correctional Centre, and some of her new cellmates were not happy about sharing their quarters with a convicted baby killer. The inmate seized Kathleen and beat her until she bled, warning that her friends would be targeted too if she didn’t leave. With bruises and a black eye, the 53-year-old was returned to protective custody, where her meagre freedoms were curtailed.

“But I’m safe (as I can be). So are my friends and that’s what really matters,” she wrote of the incident.

It had been almost two decades since Kathleen Folbigg was convicted of killing her four infant children, Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura, and the hatred for her still ran deep. Though, as her letter states, she is not friendless. Kathleen has always had a group of devoted allies who believe she is innocent, and now some of the finest scientific minds in the world have added their voices to the chorus of support.

Rhanee Rego, one of the lawyers who has worked unpaid on Folbigg’s case for almost five years, puts it simply: “It’s the worst miscarriage of justice in Australian history.”