Kathleen Folbigg to marry childhood sweetheart Robert Muir in 2026
Two years after being acquitted of killing her four children, Kathleen Folbigg has sent out invitations for her wedding to her childhood sweetheart. But there will be one notable absence.
Two years after being acquitted of killing her four children, Kathleen Folbigg has sent out invitations for her wedding to her childhood sweetheart.
But one of the school friends who championed tirelessly for Ms Folbigg’s release during her 20 years behind bars will not be attending.
Ms Folbigg, 58, will wed Newcastle businessman Robert Muir in Newcastle next year and has already sent out invitations under her changed name.
Ms Folbigg told The Saturday Telegraph how happy she was to find love later in life.
“For me it was a lovely, beautiful surprise that I ran into Bob again all these years later,” she said. “We have known each other since we were 11 years old and even though our lives drifted apart, 46 years later we have found each other and while both of us weren’t anticipating love would enter our lives, we are thrilled it has.”
Mr Muir told The Saturday Telegraph: “We knew each other as kids, lost touch for 46 years, and then found our way back to one another.
“Reconnecting has been the greatest gift, and I can’t wait to marry my best friend.”
Despite their joy, Ms Folbigg’s close school friend Megan has not received an invite and said she “does not want one” after closing down the Justice for Kathleen Folbigg support group because “I do not believe in her any more.”
She said she was angry at claims Ms Folbigg made about being homeless and struggling for cash after she was cleared and released.
“I have wasted 20 years of my life defending her,” Megan said.
Ms Folbigg, once labelled the nation’s worst female serial killer, had her convictions for killing her four children quashed after new medical evidence led to her being pardoned by the NSW Attorney-General.
She always maintained her innocence over the deaths of Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura Folbigg between 1989 and 1999, and was supported during her time in jail by a close group of former school friends.
One of them, Tracy Chapman, wrote a book with her on the “incredible friendship and fight for justice” called Inside Out.
In it she wrote she was “shocked” that Ms Folbigg’s prison pay was being docked to repay the $250,000 Victims Compensation payment her late husband Craig received for the death of their four children.
However Attorney-General Michael Daley told a Budget Estimates inquiry that he had been advised the deduction from her money to repay the debt “did not occur”.
Megan said Ms Folbigg’s friends were shaken to hear that claim denied by the Attorney-General.
She said subsequent claims, published in The Sunday Telegraph, that she had been used as a strip search “dummy” to train new recruits in prison had been denied by prison staff, who said prisoners were protected by CCTV cameras.
When Ms Folbigg was released from prison she was penniless and was supported by her friends, particularly Ms Chapman who housed her on her property and funded her clothes and lifestyle.
As her legal team prepared submissions earlier this year for her to receive compensation for her time in jail Ms Folbigg told media she was struggling.
“I’ve moved back into Newcastle, returning back to where I went to high school and stuff, but I just can’t find a rental, it’s so hard and I guess I’m single, have a dog, no job,” she said.
“I’ve been lucky enough that my friend has let me put my stuff in storage and sleep on the couch.”
However in messages to Megan, seen by The Saturday Telegraph, she wrote that it was “strategy” to claim she was homeless and “sleeping on a couch” of a friend.
Ms Folbigg wrote. “I admit that the story was exaggerated.”
Megan wrote back warning against “an exaggeration that will cause an accusation of lying”.
“For years I had gone on TV shows defending her with the words that she was nothing but brutally honest,” Megan said. “Now I don’t know what to believe.”
Megan said she understood that the friend whose “couch” Ms Folbigg was sleeping on was in fact her new fiance Robert Muir, who lives in a luxury home in Kotara.
The couple reconnected as plans got under way for a school reunion earlier this year and Mr Muir now has a photograph of them together in Year 6 on his closed social media account.
Guests at the wedding reception in Newcastle are being offered an ocean-front room on the night of the wedding reception at a discount of $200.
In August Ms Folbigg received $2 million in compensation for her time in jail, an amount her lawyer Rhanee Rego said was “a moral affront – woefully inadequate and ethically indefensible”.
Mr Daley explained the payment was based on the fact that there had been no legal wrongdoing or malicious prosecution during any of the hearings up until brand new evidence was presented that cast reasonable doubt on her conviction and Ms Folbigg was acquitted.
Originally published as Kathleen Folbigg to marry childhood sweetheart Robert Muir in 2026
