Mother’s Guilt podcast: Kathleen Folbigg’s jailing a bigger injustice than Lindy Chamberlain

Kathleen Folbigg’s two decades in jail may ultimately prove to be a miscarriage of justice worse than Lindy Chamberlain’s wrongful conviction for murdering her daughter Azaria. Listen to our exclusive Mother’s Guilt podcast.

Kathleen Folbigg’s conviction will supersede Lindy Chamberlain in terms of wrongful convictions, according to a leading legal expert.

Dr Robert Moles, a legal academic and researcher from Flinders University and the Network Knowledge project that uncovers miscarriages of justice, said the two cases had distinct similarities, but the Folbigg case was “unprecedented”.

Lindy Chamberlain was wrongfully convicted for murdering her eight-week-old baby, Azaria, who she maintained was taken by a dingo from their camp at Uluru in 1980.

Kathleen Folbigg was sentenced to 25 years in jail in 2003 for the smothering deaths of her four infant children, who she claimed all died in their sleep.

Both cases were circumstantial.

LISTEN: Episode 4 of our SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE podcast Mother’s Guilt – The Kathleen Folbigg Story, is now live. Press play here.

Click here for the full Mother’s Guilt episode rundown.

New scientific evidence strongly suggests two of the Folbigg children – Laura and Sarah – inherited a genetic mutation linked to cardiac arrhythmias and sudden death in the young. More than 150 scientists from around the world are calling for Ms Folbigg’s pardon based on the strength of the science.

Lindy Chamberlain was wrongly convicted for murdering her eight-week old baby, Azaria.

Dr Moles believes both Lindy Chamberlain and Kathleen Folbigg were tarred with suspicion due to the way they presented to the public.

“Mothers being blamed for not behaving in ways in which popular conception thinks they ought to be behave,” Dr Moles told Episode 4 of the Mother’s Guilt Podcast.

Both women were described as “cold” and “unemotional” as they faced trail for the murders of their babies. They both eventually lost.

Kathleen Folbigg has spent almost two decades in jail for the murder of three and the manslaughter of one of her children. Picture: Craig Greenhill.

“There is no proper concept of how should a mother behave when she’s grieving for the loss of a baby, or two, or three, four. So we’re applying a test that’s totally inappropriate and using that as some sort of grounds for suspicion, instead of doing a properly conducted scientific inquiry into the actual cause of death,” Dr Moles said.

Ms Folbigg told psychotherapist Dr Kamal Touma, who she met with six times, that she shut down when it came to memories of her children as a coping mechanism.

“I think it was a subconscious thing, I’d go blank, I’m not going there, and I do realise now it came across as me being incredibly cold and not caring. I did that to protect myself more than anything else,” she said in a recorded session.

Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton spent three years in prison for a murder she didn’t commit.

Ms Chamberlain-Creighton, who has now remarried, was described as “cold, callous, emotionless, and blank” as she faced trial. She spent more than three years in jail before new evidence proved “foetal blood” in the Chamberlains’ car was not blood at all. She was acquitted in 1988 and awarded $1.3m in compensation four years later.

Ms Folbigg has served 19 years of a 25 year sentence.

“So if we look back to the case of Sally Clark (wrongly convicted of murdering her two children in the UK) for example, in the UK, or of Lindy Chamberlain in Australia, there is a tendency to attach suspicion to a mother when a baby has died,” Dr Moles said.

“And to then start saying things like, ‘I don’t think she behaved normally’ … and then she gets cast into that role of being a person who’s not sufficiently caring about the children. And suspicion builds into accusations which then build into a conviction which (is) not soundly based in any scientific knowledge.

Dr Robert Moles believes the Folbigg case is bigger miscarriage of justice than the Lindy Chamberlain case.

“In the Folbigg case, there has never been any scientific evidence of interference in the death of the babies by a third party.”

He said he had never seen a case as strong as Ms Folbigg’s in terms of scientific evidence to support a quashing of the conviction.

“We’ve had 3000 convictions overturned in America over the last 20 years, we’ve had 550 overturned in the UK, and the last 20 years 3500 and not one of those will you find a case where you’ve had 151 experts all agreeing the evidence (presented in original trial) is wrong. There’s never been a case as strong as this in any other jurisdiction, and I’ve never heard of a case as strong as this,” Dr Moles said.

FOR MORE: Click here for the full Mother’s Guilt episode rundown