A woman once branded "Australia's worst female serial killer" has been pardoned after new evidence suggested she did not kill her four infant children
.Kathleen Folbigg spent 20 years in prison after a jury found she killed sons Caleb and Patrick and daughters Sarah and Laura over a decade.
But a recent inquiry heard scientists believe they may have died naturally.
The 55-year-old's case has been described as one of Australia's greatest miscarriages of justice.
Ms Folbigg, who has always maintained her innocence, was jailed for 25 years in 2003 for the murders of three of the children, and the manslaughter of her first son, Caleb.
Each child died suddenly between 1989 and 1999, aged between 19 days and 18 months, with prosecutors at her trial alleging she had smothered them.
Previous appeals and a separate 2019 inquiry into the case found no grounds for reasonable doubt, and gave greater weight to circumstantial evidence in Ms Folbigg's original trial.
But at the fresh inquiry, headed by retired judge Tom Bathurst, prosecutors accepted that research on gene mutations had changed their understanding of the children's deaths.
On Monday, New South Wales Attorney General Michael Daley said Mr Bathurst had concluded that there was reasonable doubt that Ms Folbigg was guilty.
As a result, the NSW governor had signed a full pardon, and ordered Ms Folbigg's immediate release from prison.
"It has been a 20-year-long ordeal for her... I wish her peace," Mr Daley said, adding his thoughts were also with the children's father, Craig Folbigg.
At the latest inquiry, Mr Folbigg's lawyers pointed to the "fundamental implausibility" of four children from one family dying of natural causes under the age of two.
The unconditional pardon does not quash Ms Folbigg's convictions, Mr Daley said. That would be a decision for the Court of Criminal Appeal, if Mr Bathurst chooses to refer the case to it - a process which could take up to a year.
If her convictions are overturned, she could then potentially sue the government for millions of dollars in compensation.
Her case has been compared to that of Lindy Chamberlain, who in 1982 was found guilty of the murder of her nine-week-old daughter, despite her claim that a dingo had taken the baby. She was awarded A$1.3m (£690,000, $US 858,000) in 1992 for her wrongful conviction.
But some advocates say the case of Ms Chamberlain, imprisoned for three years, pales in comparison with Ms Folbigg's.
"It is impossible to comprehend the injury that has been inflicted upon Kathleen Folbigg - the pain of losing her children [and] close to two decades locked away in maximum security prisons," said her lawyer, Rhanee Rego.
A team in Denmark, led by Aalborg University Professor Michael Toft Overgaard, conducted experiments designed to test the pathogenicity of the CALM2 variant.
They found that the effects of the Folbigg mutation were as severe as those of other known CALM variants, which regularly cause cardiac arrests and sudden death, including in young children while asleep.
The scientists stated: "We consider the variant likely precipitated the natural deaths of the two female children."
Both girls were suffering from infections before they died, and the scientists suggested that: "A fatal arrhythmic event may have been triggered by their intercurrent infections."
The scientists also reported that Caleb and Patrick each carried two rare variants in BSN, a gene shown to cause early onset lethal epilepsy in mice.
The recent genetic discoveries follow in the footsteps of earlier expert medical opinions which support the theory that all four children died from natural causes.
Professor Stephen Cordner, a Melbourne based forensic pathologist, re-examined the children's autopsies in 2015, concluding that: "There is no positive forensic pathology support for the contention that any or all of these children have been killed." He added: "There are no signs of smothering."
Three years later, in 2018, forensic pathologist, Matthew Orde, Clinical Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: "Fundamentally, I'm in agreement with Professor Cordner, in that all four of these child deaths could be explained by natural causes."
Now, as Lindy Chamberlain did before her, Kathleen Folbigg bides her time in jail, awaiting the outcome of the petition and a recent hearing in the NSW Court of Appeal. She continues to protest her innocence. Source: BBC
