Australian Story: June 12

ABC revisits the case of Kathleen Folbigg, released from prison after 20 years.

Australian Story speaks to scientists who did the groundbreaking research that found two of the Folbigg children could have died as a result of genetic mutations.

Once dubbed Australia’s worst female serial killer, Kathleen Folbigg has now been set free after a decade-long campaign by a loyal band of friends, lawyers and scientists who gathered new evidence questioning her guilt.

Australian Story has followed the twists and turns of Folbigg’s story since she was convicted of killing her four children in 2003. She has always claimed her innocence.

In a two-part series in 2004, Australian Story spoke with the two detectives who investigated her case and with Folbigg’s friends and family.

In 2018, Australian Story produced a program which kickstarted the scientific research which ultimately freed her. Nine days after the program aired, a new inquiry into the Folbigg case was announced.

After numerous appeals and two independent inquiries, former NSW Chief Justice Thomas Bathurst this week found there’s a ‘reasonable possibility that three of the children died of natural causes.’

Now we talk to the scientists who did the groundbreaking research that found two of the Folbigg children could have died as a result of genetic mutations.

“I think it seemed that the legal team in Australia had finally accepted that the science had to be looked at in detail and taken seriously”, says geneticist Prof Carola Vinuesa, who began researching Folbigg’s DNA after watching the 2018 Australian Story episode.

Kathleen Folbigg was pardoned this week.

“One of the really clear conclusions of the Folbigg case is that we need a better system for evaluating cases where there’s a possibility… of a wrong conviction”, says Profess Stephen Cordner from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine.

8pm Monday on ABC.