Kathleen Folbigg shares a rare connection with Lindy Chamberlain

Kathleen Folbigg and Lindy Chamberlain have shared a rare connection of murder convictions and acquittals that have captured, reviled and divided the nation.

For decades, Kathleen Folbigg and Lindy Chamberlain have shared a mother’s grief of losing their babies.

But the two women share an even rarer connection in the similarities of their murder convictions and acquittals – both of which fascinated and divided the nation.

Folbigg’s release in 2023 has uncomfortable echoes of Chamberlain’s long fight for justice over the 1980 disappearance of her eight-week-old daughter Azaria.

Lindy and Azaria Chamberlain.

It was in that Northern Territory camping tent, when Uluru was still called Ayers Rock, that the parallels begin.

“A dingo’s got my baby,” Chamberlain famously pleaded.

Almost 30 years later, Folbigg took Chamberlain’s place as Australia’s most reviled mother when she called an emergency operator in March, 1999, saying: “My baby’s not breathing.”

Listen to the Mother’s Guilt podcast on Kathleen Folbigg’s case:

Both were pre-tried and judged in the public’s consciousness before they ever set foot in a courtroom.

Their stories were too wild to be believable. They were said to be cold, distant, and not displaying the appropriate amount of grief.

Chamberlain was tried, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1982 for the murder of Azaria, though her body was never found. She maintained her innocence, always attesting Azaria was stolen in her sleep.

Lindy Chamberlain, who claims her baby daughter Azaria was taken by a dingo, arrives for her 1982 trial in Darwin with her husband Michael Chamberlain.

Folbigg was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 2003, later reduced to 30 with a non-parole of 25 years, for the smothering death of her four infant children, Caleb, 19 days, Patrick, eight months, Sarah, 10 months, and Laura, 18 months, over a 10-year-period. She maintained her innocence; saying they all died in their sleep.

The evidence in both cases was circumstantial and based on scientific interpretation. Years later, new evidence emerged, and the science changed.

Chamberlain was charged based on traces of foetal haemoglobin, found on Azaria’s clothes with a handprint.

In 1986, Azaria’s jacket was discovered near a dingo’s den at the base of Uluru. Chamberlain was released days later. She had served four years.

In 1999, Folbigg was convicted on incriminating diary entries blaming herself for her children’s deaths. “With Sarah, all I wanted was her to shut up. And one day she did.”

In 2019, scientists found Chamberlain’s dead children carried a rare genetic mutation linked to sudden cardiac death. By 2023, Folbigg had served 20 years.

Forensic scientists inspect the Chamberlain car at police headquarters.

Folbigg has now pardoned, and released from Grafton prison, NSW Attorney-General Michael Daley confirmed on Monday.

“The result today is confirmation that our judicial system is capable of delivering justice, and demonstrates that the rule of law is an important underpinning of our democratic system,” he said.

“Given all that has happened over the last 20 years, it is impossible not feel sympathy for Kathleen and Craig Folbigg. I am glad that our legal system in NSW contains provisions that allow for the continual pursuit of truth and justice.”

Folbigg and Chamberlain not only lost their children, but they also lost years of their life.

Originally published as Kathleen Folbigg shares a rare connection with Lindy Chamberlain