Australian authorities on Monday pardoned a mother who was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the deaths of her four children in 2003 after an independent report attributed the cause of death to a genetic mutation.
Kathleen Folbigg, 55, has since been released after also receiving an unconditional pardon from New South Wales Governor-General Margaret Beazley, according to Australian public broadcaster ABC.
New South Wales Attorney General Michael Daley told a press conference in Sydney that the pardon had been chosen to “release Folbigg without delay”.
The final report of the second review inquiry into the case, conducted by former judge Tom Bathurst, could recommend that the New South Wales Court of Appeal overturn Folbigg’s conviction.
Last year, Australian authorities ordered a reassessment of Folbigg’s case after a group of scientists suggested the deaths may have been due to a rare genetic mutation.
Folbigg’s four children, Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura, died between 1989 and 1999, when they were between 19 days and 18 months old, and medical authorities had initially ruled the deaths due to asphyxiation to be of natural causes .
However, the death of the fourth child led police to suspect Folbigg, who was eventually convicted of the murder of three children and the involuntary manslaughter of a fourth, charges the woman always rejected.
The pardon came after Tom Bathurst concluded that “there is reasonable doubt about Kathleen Folbigg’s guilt for each of these crimes,” said Michael Daley.
In 2020, a team of scientists coordinated by Spanish immunologist Carola García de Vinuesa and led by Dane Michael Toft Overgaard concluded that the deaths of Folbigg’s children may have genetic causes.
The study, published in the specialist journal of the European Association of Cardiology, linked a genetic mutation found in Sarah and Laura to a higher risk of sudden cardiac death.
In addition, the study, conducted by an international team of 27 scientists, found that the children carried rare variants of a gene that other studies have suggested can cause the death of mice from epileptic seizures.
Source: DN
