How A Broken Law Sent Kathleen Folbigg To Prison

After 20 years in prison, Kathleen Folbig, once labelled Australia’s worst female serial killer, was released in just 56 minutes. New genetic evidence cleared her of killing her four children, flipping one of the country’s most infamous cases on its head. 

Kathleen’s story is one of loss and a justice system that got it badly wrong. But her fight isn't over.

In this episode, investigative journalist Quentin McDermott, author of Meadow’s Law, joins us to unpack how a flawed theory about SIDS helped send Kathleen to prison—and the science, advocacy, and determination that finally set her free.

You can find Quentin's book here. 

CREDITS 

Guest: Quentin McDermott

Host: Claire Murphy

Senior Producer: Tahli Blackman

Audio Producer: Jacob Round

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on fifty six minutes.
That's how long it took for a woman who was
once known as Australia's worst female serial killer to be
released from prison after twenty years. Kathleen Felby went from
one of the worst types of criminals, one even fellow

(00:29):
inmates can't stand, one who would take the life of
a child, to fifty six minutes later being a free
woman cleared of the deaths of her four babies Caleb, Patrick,
Sarah and Laura between nineteen eighty nine and nineteen ninety three.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
I hope and pray that one day I would be
able to stand here with my name cleared. For almost
a quarter of a century, I faced disbeliefment, hostility, I
suffered abuse in all what's formed. My children are here
with me today and they will be close to my
heart for the rest of my life. The system preferred
to blame me rather than accept that sometimes children can

(01:05):
and do die suddenly, unexpectedly, at heartbreakingly.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Kathleen Folbig could actually be the focus of two completely
separate episodes of True Crime Conversations. One would focus on
her childhood, marred by the murder of her mother at
the hands of her violent father, a man with known
criminal ties who reportedly stood over her mother's body in
the street and told the neighbor that he just had
to do it after she'd left him with little Kathleen.

(01:34):
Or maybe we'll look into the aunt and uncle who
would take her in only to hand her over to
the state, Or the foster family who eventually raised her,
only for her foster mother to end up shunning her
when her new grandson arrived in the world. Despite all
that hardship, a young Kathleen still managed to make a
life for herself. That resilient young woman made incredible friends,

(01:57):
friends who had become invaluable to her in the fight
that she would face later. She met and married her husband,
Craig Folbig, got a job, and then started a family,
a decision that would alter the course of her life
once again and again lead her to tragedy, heartbreak, and
a criminal conviction that should never have been. Little Caleb's

(02:19):
death in nineteen eighty nine at aged just nineteen days
was attributed to Syd's sudden infant death syndrome, as was
his sister Sarah who died in nineteen ninety three, aged
ten months. Both children had issues with their respiratory systems,
conditions like sleep apnea. Patrick, who died in nineteen ninety
aged eight months, suffered from seizures, which doctors say contributed

(02:40):
to his death in nineteen ninety but by the time
Little Laura, who lived longer than any of the Folby children,
making it to eighteen months and twenty two days, was
pronounced dead. Police were starting to get suspicious when a
call came in from detectives in the New South Wales
regional town of Singleton, where Kathleen and her husband then lived.
Professor John Hilton, the pathologist who'd performed the autopsy on

(03:04):
little Sarah a few years before, was told just the
name Phoebic and the number four. He responded with, one
is tragic, two is unusual, three is suspicious, or he said,
is fucking murder. Now those words weren't completely Hilton's alone.
The saying had actually come from another academic, one whose

(03:27):
theory had condemned many more women than just Kathleen Folbig.
I'm Claire Murphy and this is True Crime Conversations, a
podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to
the people who know the most about them. In the

(03:47):
nineteen nineties, Australian parents were being educated on something that
had been classified in the late seventies but that many
were not really aware of.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
There are three simple ways you can help produce the
risk of sudden infant death syndrome. One, put your baby
on the back to sleep. Two make sure your baby's
head remains uncovered during sleep, and three always keep your
baby in a smoke free environment.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, as it's known, was
a terrifying condition that it impacted parents around the world.
One day, your baby is alive and happy, and then
you wake the next to find their lifeless body in
their cot where you'd lovingly place them to sleep the
night before. Their short lives snuffed out they simply stop breathing.

(04:36):
In the United States, SIDS is the leading cause of
death for infants age between one month and one year,
and in fact, it takes the lives of around three
hundred babies a year in the UK and one hundred
babies a year here in Australia. While this sounds like
a terrible amount of little lives, lost before the education
programs used to be so much worse. It was in

(04:57):
the nineteen eighties that Roy Meadow stepped into this tragic conversation.
He in nineteen eighty nine wrote a formula in his
book The ABC of Child Abuse. That formula would see
women like Kathleen Folbig treated as criminals rather than victims.
It stated that one sudden infant death is a tragedy,
two is suspicious, and three, according to his formula, is

(05:21):
murder until proved otherwise. Quentin McDermott is an award winning
investigative journalist and the author of Meadow's Law, The True
Story of Kathleen Folbig and the Science that set Her Free.
He has spent years investigating Kathleen Folbig's case, spending time
with her and her crew of supporters who have worked
tirelessly for her freedom. He sat down with us to

(05:43):
explain just how Meadow's Law put women like Kathleen in
a place where they could not possibly defend themselves, forcing them,
while suffering through the worst thing that could ever happen
to a mother, to fight for their lives. I'd like
to kick it off with you, maybe gives an understanding
of how Meadow came to his law and what dares

(06:06):
he was basing his law off of, and how that
was received by the sort of wider medical and legal
communities when it started to infiltrate into those spaces.

Speaker 4 (06:15):
Roy Meadow came up with his theory, which, as you say,
was you know, one death is a tragedy, two is suspicious,
and three is homicide. Unlet's proven otherwise, following his own
experience as a British pediatrician. Now he wasn't the only
person to come up with this theory. There were two
medical examiners in the United States who at the same

(06:35):
time came up with a very similar theory. And what
stood out for me in looking at this but a
couple of things. First of all, that this was based,
I think, in Roy Meadow's cases, was based simply on
his practical and clinical experience as a pediatrician, but not
on any kind of justified statistical analysis of the cases

(06:58):
of infants who died suddenly and unexpectedly in families. And
the second thing that stood out for me was that
in the case of the medical examiner in the United States,
their inclination was to blame the mothers rather than the father's.
So one of these medical examiners wrote to a pediatric
learned publication saying exactly that that in almost all of

(07:22):
the cases where there'd been sudden unexpected deaths which were homicides,
it was the mother who had carried out the killing.
And so that of itself kind of set a framework,
if you like, which suggested that in any case where
there had been three or more sudden unexpected deaths of
infants in a family, not only was that homicide, but

(07:44):
almost certainly it was the mother who had carried out
the homicide.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
When you consider Kathleen Folbig's case, why do you think
suspicion then only fell on them after the death of
their fourth child? Because if we look at Meadow's law,
as you've suggested, they should, after the third death be
really considered a homicide case. So why did it have
to be four children's deaths before they looked at the
phobies in that light rather than just as them suffering

(08:11):
just immeasurable tragedy.

Speaker 4 (08:13):
Look, I think that's a fantastic question as well, and
in fact, no one else has ever asked me that.
But I'll tell you what happened in her case was
that in each of the first three cases where the
children tragically died, there was no suspicion raised purely and simply,
I think, because in terms of the circumstances surrounding each death,

(08:34):
the doctors and the police found nothing that was suspicious. Now,
following the death of her third child, Sarah, two things
happened of note. First of all, as a kind of routine,
if you like, the police came to their home on
the night that Sarah died, and they carried out a
pretty farer kind of look at their place, and you know,

(08:55):
I think really just as a matter of kind of
routine in order to just double check that there was
kind of nothing suspicious, and they didn't believe that there
was anything suspicious. This is the police. And the second
thing that happened with Sarah's death is that her post mortem,
her autopsy, was carried out by a very eminent forensic
pathologist called John Hilton, and he examined the body, he

(09:19):
carried out the autopsy, and he came to the conclusion
that she had died from Sid's sudden infant death syndrome
and he couldn't see anything suspicious in her death. And
so at that point you know, the death was kind
of squared away as being SIDS and Caleb had been ascribed.

(09:39):
Caleb's death had been ascribed to SIDS. Caleb was their firstborn.
And so the suspicion was raised in Laura's case mainly
because a police officer came to John Hilton and said,
this is the fourth death in the family. And I
think that kind of tipped him over the edge if
you like to exclaiming, well, I mean, he's Scottish, I

(10:02):
can't do a Scottish accent, but he said, you know,
for is fucking murder. And I think the problem then
was that John Hilton, who was an extremely eminent forensic
pathologist and who came to believe that she was innocent,
by the way, but he was working in a context
where Meadow's Law was kind of in the ascendant if

(10:24):
you like. Meadow's Law was accepted I think among many,
if not all, of the forensic pathologists working at that time,
and so he believed it was murder. They had a
meeting and essentially, you know, the alarm was raised because
it seemed to be suspicious. Now, what then happened was
that the autopsy on Laura was carried out by another

(10:47):
forensic pathologist called doctor Alan Carla, who actually found an
active potential reason for her death, which was a heart
condition called myocarditis, But because the whole context was tainted
by Meadow's law, and because they had been three other
deaths in the family, doctor Carla declared that in his view,

(11:10):
the cause of death was undetermined, and then the police
kind of at that point set off on their investigation.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
Well, can we talk about that investigation, because in this
case it does feel very extreme when you really look
at how they conducted it. They tapped the Polvig's phone,
they bugged their home, they questioned them, sometimes without lawyers,
sometimes for eight hours at a time, Like it seemed
like a very extreme investigation in this case. Would that

(11:38):
have been unusual for a case like this or was
that standard police procedure at the time.

Speaker 4 (11:42):
It's very interesting you say that, Claire. Can I just
take a step back. In the United States, there had
been the case of a woman called Wanitahyde whose children
had died. Four of them had died apparently from natural causes,
and then a medical examiner and the police decided that
they thought it was suspicious and they brought her in

(12:05):
we need to hide under the guise of you know,
can you please help us just to explain, you know,
the circumstances surrounding the deaths of your children. And it
turned into an extremely aggressive interview, at the end of
which she confessed to killing the children, but she later
retracted her confession because it had been extracted from her

(12:25):
frankly under duress. Now in Kathleen Folbek's case, something similar happened.
So Bernie Ryan, the detective who was heading the investigation,
invited Kathy to come in and be interviewed. And as
you say, no lawyer was brought in to help represent her.
She was on her own completely, Craig, her husband wasn't

(12:47):
even in the room with her, and she was interrogated
for you know, well, she spent the whole day basically
being interrogated. So for kind of seven or eight hours
she was interrogated. And it was interesting how the interview
was carried out by Bernie Ryan, because he started off
just you know, in a neutral way, asking her to
tell her story and the story of her children, and

(13:09):
it was only after about seven hours that he suddenly
hit her with this kind of chilling series of questions,
you know, did you kill Caleb, did you kill Patrick?
Did you kill Sarah? Did you kill Lauren? And he
repeated this. He asked her this twice, and of course
at that point she realized that she was actually the

(13:29):
kind of prime suspect in this investigation.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
Well, can you tell me about the conversation that police
recorded between Craig and Kathy That would sound quite condemning
at the time.

Speaker 4 (13:40):
The investigation was intensely intrusive on Kathleen and indeed on
Craig her husband. As you say, they bugged their home.
And what I find particularly interesting, and I revealed this
in my book for the first time, is that the
only time that either parent got even close to a

(14:01):
confession of having harmed their children was when they secretly
recorded conversation where Craig came down one morning and he
said to Kathy, he said, all night I've been thinking
maybe I killed the kids. Now you know that must
have been an absolutely chilling moment, both for Kathy and
indeed for the police who the detectives who were listening in.

(14:24):
But what I think is very striking about this is
that this secretly recorded conversation was one where not only
did he say that I've been thinking maybe I killed
the kids. He then went into a great detail about
exactly how he could have killed them and what his
motive would have been. But this entire conversation, almost all

(14:46):
of it was suppressed at her trial, and then when eventually,
years and years later, in twenty nineteen, there was a
judicial inquiry into her case, it was completely suppressed at
that inquiry, and it was only much later on at
the second inquiry, just before she was finally pardoned and released,
that it was actually put on the recorder and it

(15:07):
was kind of allowed to be seen. And I think
that's very striking, and I think it's an extraordinary example
of the underlying misogyny, if you like, in the investigation
and in the prosecution of Kathleen Folbeck.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Well, you mentioned the detective who was leading this investigation.
He would not consider Craig a suspect really at any stage,
it seemed during this process, and in fact, he would
go and meet with Craig, sometimes at his place of work,
like out of the blue, to try and convince him
that mothers do kill their children like that? Is that

(15:43):
how investigations unfold. I mean, I'm not a police officer.
I don't understand how these work, but that feels like
the detective is trying to lead Craig towards a conclusion.

Speaker 4 (15:54):
I think you're absolutely right, Claire, and speaking personally, I
think it's entirely improper for the lead detective in a
homicide or potential homicide investigation to be, you know, which
involves both parents, who obviously are both key witnesses, to
go to one parent and start talking to them. And indeed,

(16:14):
you know, Craig Folbig in the trial revealed that Bernie
Ryan had come to him and said, you know, it's
not just women in housing commissions, you know. In other words,
he was suggesting, you know, kind of poverty stricken women
on drugs or whatever who kill their children. It can
be kind of middle class women as well. So Bernie
Ryan had obviously been talking to him and kind of

(16:36):
getting into his ear. And then the other highly significant
thing is that in April two thousand and one, when
the investigation was still ongoing, they actually arrested Craig Folbig
under suspicion of impeding or obstructing the investigation. Now, the
effect of that must have been, and indeed was to

(16:58):
put pressure on Craig Folbig to essentially say what the
police wanted him to say. And it's very interesting because
in this interview that followed that they brought him in,
they said, you know, were arresting you on suspicion of
impeding the investigation. They then interviewed him. He did a
long interview in which essentially he said all the things
that the police wanted him to say, and he agreed

(17:19):
to be a witness against Kathy at her trial. I
think it's incontrovertible that pressure was put on Craig Folbig,
Kathy's husband, to you know, to give evidence against her,
and that indeed is exactly what happened at her trial.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Well, part of that pressure that Craig felt did lead
him to give police some evidence which would later prove
to be incredibly damning for Kathleen at her trial, and
that was her diaries. But can you explain to us
how those diaries were interpreted during the initial trial, because
they had like a lineup of experts to discuss, which

(17:59):
was never really refuted by the defense with their own
experts at the time. But how did they interpret Athleen's
diary entries to prove to the jury that she had
murdered her children.

Speaker 4 (18:11):
Okay, Well, you're getting into a really interesting area here, Claire,
because what happened at her trial was that the diaries,
there was something like forty different extracts from her diaries
which were kind of read out in open court to
the jury, okay, And what happened was that the senior

(18:32):
Crown prosecutor, Mark Tadeski interpreted these entries in her diaries
as being virtual admissions to having killed her children. And indeed,
with one or two of these entries, he actually kind
of put words into her mouth. He said, you know
about one entry, what could this possibly mean other than
you know, I killed the children or I killed this child.

(18:56):
So that is what he did. However, the main experts
who appeared at the trial were the medical experts, and
what the medical experts were saying was that in their experience,
they had never come across a family where three or
more children had died from natural causes. So they were
essentially parroting Meadows law. Okay in terms of their own experience.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Was that true? Because you've already mentioned there was another
case where four children had died, So they are testifying
that there's just been no other case of this happening
that then is not true.

Speaker 4 (19:28):
Well, in fairness to the medical experts, I think what
they were doing was they were saying, you know, in
our experience, in my experience, I've never come across a
case like that. But in fact, you're absolutely right. And
this was one of the main reasons that the first
judicial inquiry was called was because it was later shown
to be the case that yes, indeed, of course there
had been other families where multiple children had died from

(19:51):
natural causes, so the jury was completely misled on that point.
But the point I want to make about the diaries
is this that although there were multiple medical experts appearing
at the trial, there were no psychological or psychiatric experts
who appeared at the trial to interpret the diaries. It

(20:13):
was only after she had been convicted that psychiatrists submitted
reports about her mental state and whether or not she
was psychotic. And incidentally, none of the psychiatrists suggested that
she had a psychosis which would have impelled her to
kill any of her children. So the problem for Kathe
and her defense was that there was no one standing

(20:35):
up at her trial to say, well, hang on, you know,
the senior Crown prosecutor is saying that these diary entries
are virtual admissions of guilt. Well, actually there's an alternative explanation,
and here it is really they were reliant on the
defense and Peter Tzara, the senior public defender who appeared
on her behalf, giving an alternative explanation, but without the

(20:56):
benefit of being able to cross examine experts who might
have backed that up.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
For people who weren't aware of Kathleen Folbigg's trial when
at first done FA in the early two thousands, what
was the media coverage like then, because we know that
they have the ability to swagh public opinion. What picture
were they painting of Kathleen Folbig.

Speaker 4 (21:20):
Well, it was a brutal picture essentially. Now, I think
it's fair to say that as the trial went on,
of course, court reporters were doing what court reporters always
do and do professionally, which is to report the proceedings
in court. But as the trial progressed, it was becoming
clearer and clearer that the prosecution was presenting evidence which

(21:43):
on the face of it looked very damning, particularly in
relation to the diaries and the medical experts, and also
in relation to the evidence that was given by Craig Folbeg,
who got up in the witness box and exaggerated frankly
various insignificant incidents which had happened at home, as if
to suggest that his wife was actually a murderous Okay, now,

(22:05):
it's very interesting. Cathy herself was acutely aware of how
all of this might appear in the media and might
appear to the public. And I include in the book
this really revealing story. I think of how one day
she came out of court, she was walking along the road.
She spoke on the phone to one of her very

(22:26):
best friends, Megan, and she said to Megan, I'm trying
not to laugh. And Meghan said, well, why is that.
You know, why what's happened? And she said, well, there's
a cameraman in front of me who's kind of filming
me and backing away, and he's just backed into a
garbage bin. And she said, but I can't laugh because

(22:48):
of how it'll be portrayed. And I think that is
both poignant and extremely revealing. What it showed was that
she was acutely aware that if she was photographed laughing
outside court, that would be interpreted by the media as
her being a callous bitch and a murderers. But of course,
in the event what happened, it was a catch twenty

(23:10):
two because by holding her emotions in and by not
showing her emotions in public, you know, she was portrayed
as a kind of cold, unfeeling bitch, you know. And
then after the trial, after she was convicted, I mean,
the media just descended on her like a kind of
torrent really, And there had been there was one diary

(23:31):
entry which had been ruled inadmissible at her trial, but
which the media was allowed to publish following her conviction,
and that was the entry where she said, just a
few words, obviously, I am my father's daughter. Now the
media lect on this. It kind of permeated almost all
of the coverage following her conviction because of course what

(23:52):
she was doing there where she was referring to her father,
her biological father, who had murdered her biological mother by
stabbing her twenty four times in a street. Okay, Now,
the media obviously interprets did this as her saying when
she said, obviously I am my father's daughter. You know,
I am a killer like him. But she has an

(24:14):
entirely different explanation for why she wrote that, which is,
you know, I was simply comparing myself to him and thinking,
you know, I'm a loser. You know, my life is
a mess. I'm a loser like he was. So the
media was absolutely brutal, and of course they were publishing
these articles right at the point where she was being
kind of transported to prison where she faced terrible, terrible,

(24:39):
you know, vilification from the other inmates. Because when you
go to prison as a mother convicted of killing one
or more of your children, you are absolutely the lowest
of the lure. You're the scum of the earth. You're
the you know, the rock spider and so on, and
you know, if you're in a public part of prison,
you're in real, potential, real danger.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
I want to talk about her prison experience in a minute,
were going I backtracked just a little to talk about
Kathleen's father and her upbringing, because it was a tragedy
from the very beginning for her. It seems to have
followed her for the majority of her life. But did
that start to life impact how she was viewed within
the trial itself, because you could view that in two ways.

(25:22):
She seemed like a person who'd taken adversity in sort
of made something of her life and had kind of
gone above and beyond those terrible starts. But then other
people might have viewed that as well. Obviously that trauma
has manifested in a way where she too has felt
the need to kill another human being. Did that shape
the trial itself, that start to life for.

Speaker 4 (25:45):
Her, I wouldn't say it did shape the trial itself
for a couple of reasons. First of all, she didn't
herself give evidence, and so you know, there wasn't this
kind of scenario in court where she would have been
in the witness box and would have described her own
early life. And then the other key point about her
early life, which is as I say, is the fact
that her biological father murdered her mother was ruled in

(26:05):
admissible and so that wasn't brought up in court at all. Now,
you're absolutely right. I mean, her very early life was
just horrific and tragic, you know, because her father murdered
her mother when she was approximately eighteen months old, and
then she was farmed out to a relative's family who
sometime later rejected her essentially, and she was put into

(26:28):
care the care of the state. As a state ward,
she was farmed out, first of all to two separate
children's homes, which in those days would have been pretty grim.
And then finally she was taken on board, if you like,
by a foster family and transported up to Newcastle, to
the suburb of Katara in Newcastle, where she lived with

(26:50):
his foster family. But the problem there, I think was
that it was a very dysfunctional family. The foster parents
were much much older than parents of a tiny girl
would normally be, and indeed her foster brother and foster
sister were a lot older, and they were kind of
leaving home essentially. And then on top of that, her
foster mother was sometimes really quite unpleasant and even cruel

(27:14):
to her, you know, made her do lots of chores.
She was a bit like a kind of Cinderella figure,
I think, and if she failed to do them, or
if she was blamed for something, her foster mother would
beat her physically in some respects extraordinarily unpleasant difficult upbringing
for her, and so of course, as a teenager she
kind of rebelled against all of that. And then finally,
when she was eighteen years old, she met her future husband, Craig,

(27:38):
and they kind of went from there. I don't think
it's correct to say that her early life featured in
any major way in the actual trial, although it did
feature in the reports written by the psychiatrist following her conviction.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Can I check in with meadows law and where we
were at with that when this trial was happening, because
I understand that it had been used in other trials
previously which were then overturned, and that it was brought
up in another and then kind of refuted. And can
you explain to us where we're at with meadows law

(28:13):
and the understanding of what that meant in situations like
Kathleen Folbick had found herself in while this trial was
happening in the early two thousands.

Speaker 4 (28:21):
Yes, absolutely so. Meadows law kind of originated from approximately
kind of ten or fifteen years before her trial, okay,
And through the nineteen nineties it was I think accepted
probably by most forensic pathologists and probably and prosecutors and
police as being a kind of a general rule that
was valid to go by, if you like. And in

(28:45):
the United Kingdom there was a group of women, all
unconnected with each other, but a group of mothers who
were charged with and convicted of killing their children. Probably
the most famous case was the case of Sally Clark,
a solicitor who was convicted of killing her two sons. Okay, now,

(29:06):
by two thousand and three, which is when Cathie went
on trial, Sally Clark had actually been acquitted. So Sally
Clark had two appeals. The first appeal failed and then
the second appeal, which was in very early two thousand
and three, succeeded, and in the process the Meadows law theory,
which in her case was that the chances of her

(29:30):
two sons coming from a well off, reasonably wealthy family
dying from natural causes. Roy Meadow said he gave evidence
at her trial. He said, the chances of that happening, well,
one in seventy three million.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Okay, this is something that a lot of people who
work with stats and data have had lots of issues
with over the time. Is where these numbers all came from?

Speaker 4 (29:52):
Right? Absolutely? Yes, yes, So in his case, from memory,
he said, you know, the chances of a single child
dying from SIDS is you know, one in eighty five thousand,
and he from that to say, therefore, the chances of
two children from a wealthy family dying from SIDS is

(30:12):
eighty five thousand times eighty five thousand, which is seventy
three million. I think my mass is correct there, but
the point is actually that the opposite is the case.
Sadly and tragically, if a family has a death from SIDS,
that actually increases the chances of a second death from SIDS. Okay,
and his statistics were completely wrong. Now, the point here

(30:34):
in Kathy's case is that Sally Clark was acquitted in
early two thousand and three, and literally just a couple
of months later, Kathy was put on trial charged with
murdering all four of her children. So the prosecution and
the defense knew about Sally Clark's case, and indeed, through
the rest of two thousand and three, following Kathy's conviction,

(30:56):
there were multiple other cases of women in the UK
who had previously been convicted and one or two of
them who were serving jail time who then won their
appeals on the same basis of Meadow's law. Now you
know what the prosecution did at Kathy's trial, quite cleverly,
I think, was not to mention Meadow's law by name, Okay,

(31:19):
but there was a kind of a get around for
me you know, the most notorious kind of get around
was that the senior Crome prosecutor Mark Tadeski, in his
closing address to the jury, he said, I'm paraphrasing here,
but essentially he said, is it possible that the four
children died from natural causes? Yes, it is. But equally,

(31:40):
he said, it's possible that farmer Joe would wake up
one morning, look out of the window and see four
piglets born to a sow who had sprouted wings and
flown away. Okay. Now this was utterly and completely misleading.

(32:01):
I mean, it was just crazy. Apart from the fact
that he was seemed to be, you know, metaphorically equating
Kathy and her children with a sou and her piglets,
which is arguably pretty offensive. Apart from that, he was
essentially he was saying, you know, they did all of
them die from natural cause of well, pigs might have wings, Okay,

(32:22):
And that just turned out to be utterly misleading and
just wrong, because, as I say, there had been multiple
other cases of families with several infants who had died
suddenly and unexpectedly and from natural causes.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
You're listening to true crime conversations with me Claire Murphy,
I'm speaking with Quentin McDermott, Award winning investigative journalist and
author of the book Meadows Law. Next, we look at
the similarities between Kathleen's story and Lindy Chamberlain's and how
when a child dies, the justice system and media are
often a little too quick to blame. Mum, I want

(33:03):
to ask you a little bit about We kind of
touched on this when we're talking about the media's impact
on creating the character of Kathleen Folbig in the press.
But you mentioned that she was quite aware of how
she was being perceived and so she had to act
in certain ways which would sometimes backfire on her. But
this for Australians watching should have seemed very familiar because

(33:25):
we'd seen all of this happen before with Lindy Chamberlain,
whose daughter Azaria was taken by a dingo in nineteen
eighty at LaRue. Why does it seem like we didn't
learn the lesson from Lindy Chamberlain when we then applied
it to Kathleen Folbig.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
Ok.

Speaker 4 (33:42):
I think that's an incredibly good question as well, Claire.
Of course, Lindy Chamberlain's trial took place in the Northern territory,
and of course Kathleen Folbig's trial took place in New
South Wales, so there were kind of different different jurisdictions
if you like. But I think you're absolutely right what
I think it shows. Actually it does, I think show
a kind of inherent bias within the criminal justice system.

(34:05):
You know. In Lindy Chambalin's case, You're absolutely right. You know,
as it happens, the first coronial inquest in her case
absolved her of any responsibility at all. I mean, everyone
at the camp site when Azaria was taken by a
dingo was saying Zaria was taken by a dingo. It
was the police who then came back and sought other
evidence and so on, and finally she was tried and

(34:26):
convicted and sent to jail for the bat three and
a half years. But you know why the criminal justice
system didn't learn the lesson? Well, I'm going to say
something that may be quite shocking. I don't believe the
criminal justice system, certainly in New South Wales, has learned
the lessons of this even now. My opinion is that

(34:48):
in Kathleen Folbigg's case, the criminal justice system did everything
in its power following her convictions to keep her in
prison when there were multiple occasions that raised significant doubts
about her convictions. So I'll just give you one example.
She had two appeals following her trial, the second of

(35:09):
which was in two thousand and seven, so she'd been
in prison for approximately four years. The second appeal came
up because during the trial, the line that she had
written in her diaries obviously I am my father's daughter
was ruled inadmissible, so that meant that it couldn't be
raised at all or mentioned in the trial. But when
Craig Folbig came to give evidence, he referred to this.

(35:31):
He referred to having found the diary and in it
was this entry referring to her father. Now, what then happened,
without anyone at the trial knowing, was that a member
of the jury went outside the court room and researched
Kathleen Folbig's father and found out what Thomas Britten, her father,
had done, and he took this knowledge back to the jury.

(35:55):
Now that must have had an enormous effect on the jury. Now,
in two thousand and seven, her legal team appealed against
her conviction. They wanted a retrial, essentially on the basis
that the trial was tainted by the jury's knowledge of
this line in her diary. The Crown argued at her
appeal that in fact, if he had taken this, which

(36:18):
he did, if he, if this jury member had taken
this back into the jury room, the jury would have
felt some sympathy for her. Now, in my opinion, this
was a crazy idea, because of course the opposite would
have been the case. They would have thought, ah, you know,
the reason she wrote that is because she killed the children.
So that appeal failed, and I think, I think it's
really interesting that the judges in that appeal turned it

(36:39):
down because there have been other examples since then where
jury members in other cases where jury members have gone
outside the court have researched something to do with the
case which they are not allowed to do, and come
back into the into the courtroom, and then those trials
have been you know, have been stopped. And there was
a very famous case recently. So that's one example of it.

(37:02):
But for me, the most striking example is actually the
first in the first judicial inquiry into her case in
twenty nineteen, when the inquiry was presented with clear, fresh
genetic evidence that pointed to reasonable doubt surrounding the deaths
of Kathy's two daughters, Sarah and Laura, and the fact

(37:25):
that they both had a cardiac genetic mutation which was
likely pathogenic, and the judge who was in charge of
this inquiry, Justice Reginald Blanche, decided that but essentially that
evidence didn't hold. He preferred the evidence of other medical
witnesses who were saying, you know, we're not sure that

(37:45):
in a clinical environment that would you know, that would happen,
that it would actually be dangerous, And he actually came
back with a judgment that said that the evidence he
had heard reinforced Kathy's guilt. This was in twenty nineteen,
So I think this is a very long way of
coming back to answer your question as to why criminal

(38:08):
justice folk around Australia haven't learned the lessons of Linda Chamberlain. Well,
I think it's just I think it's just ingrained. I'm
afraid in some parts of the judicial hierarchy that you know,
you don't admit to your mistakes, you don't admit that
you got it wrong, and I think that's certainly the case.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
It sounds like you agree with Tracy, who is Kathleen's
very good friend and advocate and who's essentially turned into
a lawyer and scientist in the process of freeing her friend.
But she did an interview where she said the criminal
justice system in Australia is adversarial and it's more about
who is right and who is wrong, and who wins
and who loses, rather than finding the truth. Would you

(38:48):
agree with that?

Speaker 4 (38:48):
Well, I think certainly in Cathy's case it has been
absolutely I think you know as I say. I think
that in this first the first inquiry, her entire case
and the evidence surrounding her case should have been inquired into,
but instead of that, it was completely adversarial, and the
judge in charge of the inquiry, Reginald Blanche, invited Kathy

(39:11):
to come in and give evidence about her diaries. Now,
to any kind of reasonable objective person, I think you
would assume that when she came in from prison to
give evidence, that she would at least be treated, you know, politely,
and she would be invited to explain what she meant

(39:34):
by those diary entries, which appeared on the face of
it to be quite contentious and some of them may
be even quite troubling. But instead of that. For two
and a half days, she was brutally cross examined by
two Senior council and one of the senior Council, Margaret Kneen,

(39:55):
was there to represent the interests of her former husband,
Craig Folbig, but she went far beyond that. She didn't
just ask questions that related to his reputation, cross examined
her really, I think, quite brutally and disrespectfully, and you know,
use sarcasm in some of her questions and some of

(40:16):
her comments, and you know, multiple, multiple times Kathy was
challenged by the Senior Council to admit that she had
killed her children, and every single time, as she has
throughout this entire saga, she professed her innocence. She said, no,
that's not right. You know this, this diary entry doesn't

(40:37):
mean that I killed Sarah. So, you know, I think
there is a kind of I think the adversarial system,
certainly in the first inquiry, was deeply unhelpful, and it
was deeply unhelpful not just to Kathy, but it was
also deeply unhelpful to those scientific experts who came on
board voluntarily to give evidence and who were not treated

(41:01):
respectfully at all either, you know, they were treated as
if maybe they weren't really expert in in their field,
or they weren't expert in a clinical field for example,
and that happened to you know, a scientist called Professor
Corolla Vuisa, who in my eyes is really the kind
of scientific hero in this story. She was treated most

(41:21):
disrespectfully at the first inquiry, rather than simply being asked
to explain what she had discovered in relation to the
genetic mutation and what its implications were. Because the discovery
of the genetic mutation clearly raised doubt about how the
two daughters died, and that on its own, quite frankly,

(41:42):
in my opinion, should have been enough to refer the
case to the Court of Criminal Appeal, but that didn't happen.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
Can we go back a little because in two thousand
and three was that when Kathleen was sentenced. She's sent
us to forty years behind bars, which is a very
big sentence. But then, as you mentioned, she's going into
prison as probably one of the most hate types of inmates.
The inmates who killed children or who hurt children are

(42:09):
considered the worst of the worst. So what is her
experience like in prison? Then from the beginning, which I
know evolved and changed over time, but at the very
beginning it must have been incredibly difficult for her.

Speaker 4 (42:21):
Yes, I think it must have been unbearable. Quite frankly.
I think it must have been unbearable. Quite frankly. I think,
you know, she did have one person at her trial
who stood by her the whole time, and that was
his Salvation Army Major Joyce Harma, and you know, she
kind of helped to shield her from the media at

(42:42):
the trial when they were going to and from court
and so on. And then when Kathy was sentenced, as
you say, to forty years, which was thank god, you know,
reduced later at the first appeal to thirty years, but
it was still a twenty five year non parole period.
But Joyce would visit her in prison, and I think
that was a great comfort to her. But essentially she

(43:02):
was in isolation because the danger of you know, being
bashed or literally being killed by other inmates, I think
was very high, and of course it must have been
an incredibly isolating experience for her. I mean, here she was,
you know, she was an innocent woman who had been

(43:23):
convicted of the most heinous crimes. Possible and convicted as
you say, and sentenced, as you say, to forty years
in prison. And she was taken to this women's prison
where she was just regarded as the lowest of the low.
And I think she was afraid that she would be
kind of poisoned, you know, her food would be poisoned.
She was afraid that she might be bashed, and she

(43:45):
was bashed on occasion, at least a couple of times
during her time in prison, she was bashed by other inmates.
One has to say, in tribute to the prison staff,
I think they try to ensure that from a medical
point of view, she was kind of closely monitored and
so on. And it's interesting that by the time I

(44:05):
produce an Australian story in twenty eighteen which questioned her
guilt and actually pointed to real doubt over her convictions,
we went to film outside a prison and I spoke
to one of the prison staff who was escorting us around,
and I said, what do you think and what do
the staff here think? And he said, well, you know,

(44:28):
we all believe she's innocent. So I think that's very interesting.
And I think eventually after the media started to change
its tune and started to raise absolutely valid questions about
her guilt. I think at that point finally the inmates
in the various institutions where she was incarcerated began to

(44:50):
see a different side to her story. And I think
by the time of there were two petitions on her behalf,
and by the time of the second petition, which was
an extraordinary petition signed by two Nobel laureates and ninety
scientists and science advocates calling for her pardon and release,
I think once that happened, she was kind of in

(45:12):
the clear, if you like, inside the prison walls as
far as the inmates were concerned, and probably as far
as the staff were concerned as well. So by that
point it was I mean, she was still incarcerated, you know,
but it was at least at that point it was
very very clear, I think, to everyone that there were
real questions surrounding her guilt and that something had to

(45:32):
be done on her behalf.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
After the break, what happened on the day that Kathleen
was finally released from jail stay with us. I'd love
to get your theory on why Kathleen Folbig was released
so quickly, Like it was less than an hour. She
got up that morning, not realizing today would be the
day I'm out of jail. Her lawyer didn't know what
was happening. Her friend Tracy, who's been by her side

(45:56):
the whole time, I had no idea what was going
to happen that day. She literally wakes up, goes about
her business. Someone comes in and says, pack you'r stuff,
you're leaving, and then she's kind of shuffled out the door.
And that whole process took less than an hour. What's
your theory as to why that was done so quickly?
Was it to keep her out of the spotlight? Was
it a political thing? Like why did that happen so fast?

Speaker 4 (46:17):
Well, can I take a step back if I may,
and then I'll absolutely tell you what I think about that.
So to take a step back, I think politics definitely
came into the whole question of what was going to
happen once medical experts, scientists and others had raised questions
about her guilt. And I think it's very interesting that

(46:41):
Mark Speakman, who was previously Attorney General of New South Wales,
when he announced a second inquiry, he did so in
the knowledge. This must have been in the knowledge that
if she was cleared by the inquiry, or if the
inquiries proposed that her case go to the Court of
Criminal Appeal, that that announcement and any announcement of her

(47:03):
pardon and release would be made by the next state
government's attorney general. And indeed that's what happened. So the
next state government, he was a you know, coalition liberal
attorney General. Michael Day, who was the Labor Attorney General
who came in after him, was the one who was
tasked with actually saying, okay, I've ordered you know, or

(47:25):
the governor, the Governor of New South Wales and my
recommendation has ordered that she'd be pardoned and released. And
you know, there were several points in fact, during the
first inquiry and the second inquiry where Senior Council were
making it clear that any delays that occurred in those
inquiries unfolding, that they could be to her disadvantage, to

(47:46):
Kathy's disadvantage, because you know, if she was found at
the end of all of it to be worthy of
you release, then the longer it was delayed, the worse
it would be. So what happened in twenty twenty three
was that right at the end of the hearings of
the second inquiry, Tom Baffurst, who was the former Chief

(48:09):
Judge who was in charge of the inquiry, he declared
that in his view, there was enough evidence to suggest
reasonable doubt in her case. The problem then was that
he had to write a report on the entire inquiry,
giving his reasons and everything else, and that, as it
turned out, and he knew this at the time, Everyone

(48:29):
knew this at the time, was going to take months
and months and months. So the question was, you know
what happens to Cathy. You know, is the Attorney General
Michael Daily going to wait for Tom Bafferst to hand
down his report, in which case he's going to be
behind bars, probably for at least another six months, or
can he release her now? So what Tom Bathurst did,

(48:51):
which I think was fantastic, was he wrote a memorandum
summarizing his reasons why and his conclusions, saying, you know,
the children died from natural causes and you know this
is going to be my recommendation in my full report,
sent that to Michael Daily, and Michael Daily then had
no choice but to arrange for her to be released immediately.

(49:15):
But what is also interesting is is that kind of
leading up to this, Tracy Chapman and others had been
kind of lobbying furiously for her to be released. So
I think there was an enormous pressure on Michael Daily,
the Attorney General, to actually act quickly, and so so
he obviously, you know, he did that, and as you say,

(49:36):
she was released kind of within an hour, and without
even knowing that was going to happen earlier that day.
I don't think there was any kind of sinister reason
behind the speed, to be frank, I think at the
end of the day, Michael Daily quite quite rightly decided that,
you know, having received this recommendation from Tom Bathurst, and

(49:58):
having made the recommendation to the Governor of New South Wales,
that she should indeed be pardoned and released, and given
how long she'd been in prison, that that had to
happen very speedily, and so that's what occurred.

Speaker 1 (50:09):
John, I think is quite shocking when you aren't in
your world, so you had spoken to Kathleen, you knew her,
people like you were involved in her story by this stage.
But when she was released, I think for many of
us who hadn't seen her in a long time, we
were stunned. At how young she still is, and I
think we forget that everything that happened to her, both

(50:31):
the tragedy or all of the tragedy, from her mother's murder,
through her losing her four children, through all these trials
and prison life, all of this happened to a very
very young woman.

Speaker 4 (50:43):
Yes, that's absolutely right, And so following on from that,
of course, the tragedy is that, you know, she lost
the best, arguably the best years of her adult life
behind bars, you know, after being incarcerated. But you're right,
you know, she had this incredibly tragic, very early childhood,
and then she had this very difficult, in my opinion,

(51:05):
very difficult upbringing in quite a dysfunctional family. She married,
she fell in love and married very young, had the
four children, each of whom died suddenly and unexpectedly and tragically,
and then she went through this ordeal, you know, from
nineteen ninety nine when Laura died, until two thousand and three,

(51:25):
so four years where the police were kind of digging
and digging and digging, you know, and the prosecution was deciding, yeah, well,
I think, well, you know, we'll try and do it
this way. And it could all have been so different
because there was another case in Victoria several years later
of a woman called Carol Matthew who was charged with

(51:47):
murdering four of her five children. And this case came
to a preliminary hearing in Victoria and the judge at
that hearing basically threw the case out. I mean, he
ruled most of the prosecution's evidence as being inadmissible, and
the prosecution the end of that decided. And this was

(52:09):
a case where the prosecution had asked most of several
of the same medical experts who appeared at Cathy's trial
to appear at Carol Mathey's trial if it was going
to take place, so they were using the same experts,
and this Victorian judge, to his credit, said no, you know,
there's just not enough here. He ruled most of the

(52:30):
evidence in admissible and she was released. Now, if that
judge had been the judge at Cathy's trial, maybe she
wouldn't have lost the next twenty years of her life.
Or if tragically her children had died in Victoria, maybe
she wouldn't have lost the next twenty years of her life.
So I do think that that Kathy was uniquely unlucky

(52:53):
in you know, the location of this investigation and prosecution,
and also, maybe more more importantly in the fact that
Sally Clark had already been acquitted and then in the
first year following Kathy's convictions, there were at least three
other women in the UK who had been convicted off

(53:15):
the back of Meadows Law who were then acquitted on appeal.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
What does Kathy's life look like now. I know that
she's mentioned that she's copped a bit of flak for
selling her story, which is really interesting because I was
reading in your book how Michael Craig's brother had at
one stage tried to cash in on this by opening
up bids to the media to buy photos of the
children during the trial, and then offering up Craig's story

(53:42):
for a fee too. So it's interesting that this has
now come back on Kathy and not Craig and Michael
at the time. But she is, you know, talking a
lot about what happened to her and hoping that this
doesn't happen to anyone else again. But I guess for
her like this is the only way she can make
money at this stage, she's fresh out of jail. Her basically,

(54:04):
as you mentioned, entire adult life is behind bars.

Speaker 4 (54:07):
I mean, I think it needs to be noted that
at her trial, although Michael, as you say, appeared to
be suggesting that the media should bid for these photos
of the children, that was kind of withdrawn later on
and the photos were kind of handed out. But the
facts of the matter of these that when Kathy was convicted,

(54:27):
she lost everything from a kind of financial point of view.
She lost her home, basically everything went to her then husband, Craig,
And indeed Craig was awarded a kind of victim's payment
or payments for the deaths of the children. He was
judged to be the victim in all this, which is
quite ironic in the light of what occurred after that,

(54:50):
because clearly Kathy herself was the main the chief victim.
So when she emerged from prison in June twenty twenty three,
Kathy didn't have a single cent to her name. I mean,
she was completely kind of poverty stricken. So Tracy Chapman,
who is a wonderful, wonderful person, incredibly generous, incredibly loyal,

(55:12):
and you know who, like Kathy herself, has shown unending
stubbornness and persistence.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
This is someone she met in primary school, right, So
that is a lifelong friendship.

Speaker 4 (55:22):
That's right, it's a lifelong friendship. And there are other
very close friends of hers at Megan for example, who
she met in primary school as well. But the point
here is that, well, actually there are two points. If
she hadn't had these incredible friends around her, arguably she
might not have survived her incarceration. But she did. And
you know, Tracy Chapman would ring her every day, go

(55:44):
and visit her, and so on and so forth. She
would ring Tracy. But when she emerged from prison in
June twenty twenty three, she did so without assent to
her name. So Tracy Chapman put her up at her
farm for a while. And yes, you know she has
an agent. Kathy has an agent who was acquired for her,
not by herself, but by the team known as Team Folbeg,

(56:08):
who were looking out for her and wanted to ensure
that she would emerge from prison able to actually live
a life and pay for all the necessities of life
that she would need. So yes, she was paid a
sum of money for an exclusive interview that she gave
to Channel seven. And I don't see how anyone can

(56:29):
object to that. Quite frankly, the real disaster here, in
my opinion, and this goes back to the way in
which the criminal justice system in New South Wales has behaved.
The real disaster is that even after her convictions were
quashed in December twenty twenty three and verdicts of acquittal
were entered against all of the charges against her, no

(56:53):
one in the criminal justice system, in the judicial hierarchy
has offered an apology to her for what occurred. And
even now, even now, more than what a like fifteen
eighteen months later, she is still awaiting an offer of
compensation from the State of New South Wales.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
You might know better than those of us looking in
on this from the outside, as a woman who has
suffered unimaginably in her time, you know, from her childhood
to losing four children, which you know could have been
the end of anybody. That is in itself the most
heartbreaking and terrible thing that any mother could face at

(57:35):
any stage of life. To then go through what she's
gone through, she seems like a very pragmatic woman like
she you know, in the face of adversity, she seems
to pick herself up and just kind of march on forward.
But I can't imagine that that doesn't leave you with
you know, PTSD or some kind of mental health issue

(57:56):
after all that she has faced, Like how is she
coping out in the real world trying to put this
behind her.

Speaker 4 (58:02):
You raise a really really important point, and my answer
to that would be this that I think it's clear
that from her very earliest life she acquired the ability,
if you like, to kind of keep her emotions wrapped
up inside and to kind of move on and be pragmatic.
I mean, she had to deal, as I say, with

(58:24):
you know, being being, if you like, abandoned in reality
by her biological father and mother because her father had
killed her mother, and then he was sent to prison,
and then he was kind of deported overseas back to
Wales where he came from, so she never saw him again,
and then you know, living in children's homes and then

(58:45):
in the foster family. So I think she acquired an
ability to kind of hold her emotions in. That's the
first thing, but also to kind of I think it
toughened her probably in terms of, you know, whenever something
bad would happen, she acquired the ability to kind of
deal with it and move on, and as you say,
to become very pragmatic. But you are also right that,

(59:05):
of course the deaths of her four children profoundly traumatized her,
as they would any mother. And indeed, in twenty nineteen,
Michael Diamond, a psychiatrist who examined her, concluded that she
was suffering from complex post traumatic stress disorder. This was
in twenty nineteen, very recently. What you also have to

(59:26):
take into account is that when she was behind bars,
you know, it's not the ideal environment in which to
deal with your grief over the loss of four children,
and particularly if the environment is perceived as being antagonistic
towards you. And so I think, yes, you know, I
can't imagine that she won't be processing her grief and

(59:49):
her trauma for the rest of her life. But what
she does have, which is amazing, is she has an
incredibly close circle of friends who kind of surround her metaphorically,
who are in touch with her, you know, every day.
And I think, you know, she's appeared at one or
TiO to public events since her release, where she's been

(01:00:10):
almost unbelievably I think, kind of Carmen cool, Carmen collected,
and she's you know, extremely articulate when she talks about
her story, and she's very much focused as well on,
you know, the law and the justice system kind of
setting things right for other women who might find themselves
in this position. And one of the key things that

(01:00:33):
she and others, Tracy Chapman and others have kind of
argued for is the introduction of an entirely independent, well
resourced body such as they have in the UK, in
New Zealand and elsewhere, known as a Criminal Cases Review Commission,
because you know, in Sally Clark's case, for example, and

(01:00:55):
in multiple other cases of these mothers who were wrongly
convicted in the UK, their cases were some of their
cases were reviewed in the UK to a Criminal Cases
Review Commission, which, being in highly independent of government, was
able to come back and say, well, yes, potentially a
terrible mischaracter justice has eventuated here, and then to refer

(01:01:17):
it to the courts of appeal in the UK. Now Here,
in New South Wales, what has happened is that these
petitions which were lodged on her behalf were only considered
by the Attorneys General of New South Wales who are
politically appointed, and so the problem there, in my opinion
and in the opinion of others is that this is

(01:01:40):
not a fair or just way to deal with cases
of this kind where self evidently you know there are
questions being raised about a person's guilt.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
So Kathleen fhear a big story maybe not over just yet,
there might be a little bit more still to come.

Speaker 4 (01:01:56):
We think, we hope, well absolutely, I mean what I
hope for for her, and obviously what everyone hopes for her,
I think is for her to be awarded substantial compensation
and equally importantly for her to be offered an absolutely heartfelt,
sincere apology for what has turned out to be probably

(01:02:19):
the greatest miscarriage of justice since Linda Chamberlain.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
Craig Folbig sadly passed away after suffering a heart attack
in March twenty twenty four. He died still believing his
ex wife was responsible for the deaths of Caleb, Patrick, Sarah,
and Laura. Despite the heartbreak, though, Kathleen says she doesn't
regret having a single one of her children. She says

(01:02:45):
if she'd known about her genetic condition, maybe she might
have rethought how she became pregnant. But back in the
late eighties and nineties, this kind of testing wasn't as
easily accessible as it is now, As many women who
want to have children know too, Sometimes the pool to
become a mother overrides all else and since but she's
made it very very clear she will never write in

(01:03:07):
a diary ever again. Thanks to Quentin for helping us
tell this story. True Crime Conversations is a podcast hosted
by me Claire Murphy. The producer is Charlie Blackman, with
audio designed by Jacob Brown. Thank you so much for listening.
You'll be hearing from Jemma Bath next week with another
True Crime Conversation