Inquiry told stress made baby killer Kathleen Folbigg do ‘terrible things’
Serial baby killer Kathleen Folbigg confided in her diaries that her father killing her mother in a rage was “thoughtless and selfish”. But she wrote that her mood swings made her do “terrible things” that led to the deaths of her children.
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Serial baby killer Kathleen Folbigg confided in her diaries that her father killing her mother in a rage was “thoughtless and selfish”.
But she wrote that her mood swings made her do “terrible things” that led to the deaths of her children.
Folbigg, 51, was giving evidence today in Lidcombe Coroner’s Court 16 years after being convicted and sentenced to a minimum of 25 years in jail for killing her four children.
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It is the first time she has given evidence after staying silent at her trial where she was found guilty of the manslaughter of her first child, Caleb, who was 19 days old, and for the murder of her children Patrick, eight months, Sarah, 10 months and Laura 18 months.
The inquiry was announced by Attorney-General Mark Speakman last year to look at specific medical and genetic evidence relating to her 2003 conviction. Former Chief Judge of the District Court Justice Reginald Blanch increased the scope of the inquiry to include the diary entries.
Folbigg sat in the dock in a teal cardigan with her grey hair pulled back in a tight bun as Craig Folbigg, her former husband and father of her four children, sat in the public gallery.
Margaret Cunneen, SC, representing Craig, asked Folbigg about the diary entry where she wrote she had “a father so selfish and unthoughtful that he took my mother from me and ruined my life from that one action.”
Ms Cunneen said: “You didn’t say he was an evil dreadful murderer?”
“I didn’t know him,” said Folbigg. “My views were not that he was evil, just the act of what he did ruined my life.”
She said her father killing her mother “was a stupid mistake, an error of judgment. Of course it was, I am sure he felt that too.”
But in another diary entry before the birth of her fourth child, Laura, she wrote that sleep deprivation and not getting help “was the main reason for all my stress before, stress made me do terrible things.”
Ms Cunneen said: “You don’t even describe your father’s killing of your mother as terrible only a selfish and thoughtless thing.”
Folbigg said: “My father killing my mother is just an assumed terrible thing.” And she said for her a terrible thing could be something simple like putting down a child while she was crying.
Ms Cunneen said: “The terrible things are smothering your children under great stress.”
Folbigg said she believed all negative emotions impacted in some way on her children and that is why her children died. “I had convinced myself in a very warped way that my children had decided not to stay with me,” she said.
Ms Cunneen said: “You know, don’t you, that babies don’t chose whether or not to live?”
In another diary entry in October 1996 Folbigg wrote that she worried that her next baby “will suffer my psychological mood swings like the others did.”
Ms Cunneen said it was “very clear” those mood swings saw Folbigg take it into her own hands to smother the children.
“I was always worrying that any negative moods from me would impact the people around me and that included my children,” Folbigg replied.
Her diary entries repeatedly talked about her fear of being left alone and wanting more assistance from Craig to help with their fourth baby. She told her diary she would call for help “this time”.
Ms Cunneen argued that meant she was afraid of what she would do to the child if left alone with it as a mood swing hit in the early hours of the morning. But again Folbigg interpreted the diary entry to read that she did not want to be the one to find a dead baby.
Ms Cunneen accused her of deliberately missing the point.
In one diary entry in December 1997 Folbigg wrote that her fourth child Laura was a good natured baby. “Thank goodness it has saved her from the fate of her siblings. I think she was warned.”
Ms Cuneen said: “You are there plainly acknowledging that if Laura had been a catnapper like Sarah or not agreeable she would meet the fate of her siblings and that would be to be suffocated by you.”
Folbigg said: “It goes to my extreme belief that something else had taken my other three children.”
Former Chief Judge of the District Court Reginald Blanch asked her: “Are you saying there was some supernatural power which took the other three children away from you and that she saved her life by being different?”
Folbigg agreed. She said it tied into an extreme “mystical belief” about the children that had been confirmed to her by a clairvoyant. She believed her dead children were happy and were talking to Laura.
But Ms Cuneen said: “It was your selfishness that was allowing you to lose control of yourself and dispense with these children.”
In a diary note just before Folbigg’s fourth child, Laura, was born in 1997 she wrote that if all of her locked away memories were to surface “they will lock me up and throw away the key - something I am sure will happen one day.”
Ms Cunneen suggested that meant “you were sure that the law would catch up with you for killing your children?”
“I am referring to my psychiatric state there,” said Folbigg, who insisted back then she did not know the expression for “throwing away the key” could be applied to jail as well as mental institutions.
Now she knew it only too well. “I only know that because I happen to be in prison and I have been in prison for 16 years,” she said.
The hearing continues
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