6

Mummy Dearest

Even early in the proceedings, Detective Inspector Bernie Ryan knew that the case involving the deaths of Kathleen Folbigg’s four infant children over a 10-year period would become a major investigation, but as he says, ‘Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine how it would turn out.’

Born Kathleen Megan Marlborough, the woman whose chilling crimes numbed the nation was just 18 months old on the December evening in 1969 when her father fatally stabbed her mother 24 times in the street outside their home in the Sydney suburb of Annandale. When her father was sent to prison, Kathleen was placed in an orphanage, where she remained until she was fostered out at the age of three to a family who lived in the Newcastle suburb of Kotara.

Kathleen didn’t find out the truth about her parents until later in life. She went on to write the following in her diary: ‘So many things point to the fact that I’m not meant to be. Unwanted at birth. Shuffled about for whatever reason.’

Another passage reads, ‘Obviously I am my father’s daughter.’ It would be the diary entries that eventually led to Kathleen’s arrest in 2001.

According to her foster sister, Lea Bown, ‘When Kathy found out about her birth mother, I don’t think any of us realised what emotion or what feelings Kathy had, because Kathy is very good at keeping things so deep inside her.’

Lea was 17 when Kathleen joined her family. ‘She was this little girl with blonde curly hair, and the biggest smile,’ she says. ‘Just a really happy little girl who craved love.’

Having always wanted a sister, Lea – who had only recently got married – was thrilled to have little Kathleen around. So too, it seemed, were her parents. But that all changed once Lea had her first child, a son. ‘He became the centre of Mum and Dad’s world,’ Lea admits, ‘and Kath was virtually pushed aside … there were big changes in Kathy from then on.’

Lea distanced herself from her mother because she felt her mother’s treatment of young Kathleen was ‘unfair’.

Kathleen left school in 1982, when she was just 15. With limited education, she moved from one minimum-wage job to another before marrying 25-year-old steel worker Craig Folbigg at the age of 20. The couple settled in the Newcastle suburb of Mayfield and Kathleen fell pregnant within a year. Her first child, a son named Caleb, was born in February 1989. The child was dead just 20 days later.

Craig woke up at 3.30 am on 20 February to the sound of his wife screaming, ‘My baby, something is wrong with my baby!’ The official cause of death was listed as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

Kathleen fell pregnant again just seven months later, and gave birth to another son in June 1990. An entry in her diary reads, ‘This was the day Patrick Allan David Folbigg was born. I had mixed feelings this day – whether or not I was gonna cope as a mother or whether I was gonna get stressed out like I did last time.’

Despite these doubts, life seemed good for Kathleen and her family. But just four months later, at 3.30 am on 19 October 1990, Craig again woke to the sound of his wife screaming. Rushing in to the infant’s room to find his wife standing over Patrick’s cot, Craig noticed that the small child was still breathing, albeit faintly. The distressed father administered CPR until an ambulance arrived. According to a police statement, ‘Patrick regained consciousness, but was [later] found to now have epilepsy and be blind.’

The infant lived another four months. On the morning of 13 February 1991 Craig received a call at work from Kathleen, telling him, ‘It’s happened again.’ He rushed home, arriving at the same time as the ambulance. Young Patrick was taken to hospital but was dead on arrival. According to an autopsy, an epileptic fit resulted in death by an ‘acute asphyxiating event’.

Soon after the loss of their second child, Kathleen and Craig moved to the town of Thornton, northwest of Newcastle, and decided to have another baby. A daughter named Sarah was born in October 1992. According to everyone involved, Sarah was healthy and happy for the first 11 months of her life. Then, as Detective Ryan would later explain, ‘Kathleen says she got up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet, and she discovered her daughter in the bed, deceased.’

The official cause of death was once again put down to SIDS, although the chairman of the world SIDS organisation, who conducted the post-mortem, noticed small abrasions on Sarah’s chin, as well as ‘something unusual’ about her throat.

Kathleen and Craig soon decided to move to Singleton in the Hunter Valley, north of Newcastle. Two years later they were expecting their fourth child. Their second daughter, Laura, was born in August 1997. Three days later, declared healthy by medical authorities, she was brought home. According to Lea Bown, ‘Kathy idolised Laura. She really was a fantastic kid. Kathy and Laura bonded, as far as I was concerned – bonded really well.’

But 19 months later, Laura caught a cold. At 12.05 pm on 1 March 1999 Kathleen called an ambulance after Laura allegedly stopped breathing. The medical team arrived to find Kathleen performing CPR on her young daughter, but when they examined Laura they realised that she wasn’t breathing and had no pulse.

An autopsy found that the child was too old to have died from SIDS. The cause of death was recorded as ‘undetermined’. A police investigation was ordered. Detective Sergeant Bernie Ryan was assigned to lead the case. When he learnt that Laura was the fourth Folbigg child to die in similar circumstances, alarm bells rang. Still, as he says, ‘The investigation has been an uphill battle because it’s very, very hard to believe that a mother can kill her children.’

By this time Kathleen had left Craig; she moved out with only a few of her possessions. In a letter to Lea dated 15 April 1999, Kathleen wrote, ‘No one knew about the rough time that Craig and I were having holding it together … Us as a married couple has run its course. There’s too much pressure, sadness, depression, etc, for a relationship to bear.’

When Craig found Kathleen’s diaries in a bedside drawer, the case finally took a major turn. He called authorities and informed them that he wanted to talk. ‘Craig had told us that Kathleen continually became stressed with the children,’ says Detective Ryan. ‘The morning of Laura’s death, Kathleen had screamed at Laura and held her fists up to her head – so loudly and violently that it caused Laura to be scared to go near her … And then finally he said, “I’ve found my wife keeps a diary, and there’s suspicious entries in that.”’

Indeed, many of the entries were of concern. ‘With Sarah, all I wanted was her to shut up. And one day, she did,’ Kathleen had written, as well as noting her own mood swings with the comment, ‘I don’t know, how do I conquer this? Help is what I want.’ Another entry states, ‘I feel like the worst mother on this earth.’

As Detective Ryan explains, ‘Her diaries have been written for her only. They are the deepest look into her soul that you could get.’ The pages were filled with Kathleen’s doubts about her skills as a mother and concerns about her inability to breastfeed, despite repeated attempts with all four children. She also detailed her fears that her husband would leave her, based on his teasing about her weight and what she called his ‘roving eye’. One entry says, ‘Must lose extra weight or he will be even less in love with me than he is now. I know that physical appearance means everything to him.’

When pregnant with Laura, Kathleen wrote, ‘On a good note, Craig said last night he accepts that I’m not going to be skinny again. That’s wonderful, but I know deep in my heart he wants his skinny wife back.’

More worrying were the stories of how stress ‘made her do terrible things’, and that she felt ‘flashes of rage, resentment and hatred’ towards her children.

Once authorities saw the diaries they decided they did indeed have a murder case on their hands. Still, it wouldn’t be an easy case to prove. Detective Ryan took two years getting an argument together that he believed would provide a conviction. On 19 April 2001 Kathleen Megan Folbigg was arrested and charged with murdering her four children.

At the two-month trial at Sydney’s Darlinghurst Supreme Court, the prosecution portrayed Kathleen as a woman ‘preoccupied with her own life and looks, more interested in going to the gym and nightclubs than in looking after her own children.’

Lea Bown has backed up this statement, commenting that ‘[Kathleen] wanted these children, but obviously that turned out to be Kathy’s downfall, because Kathy likes to sleep in, Kathy likes to go out and party. That was her thing that she did nearly every Friday night, and the children simply got in her way.’

In short, the prosecution asserted that Kathleen murdered her four infant children by smothering them because she couldn’t deal with her parental responsibilities.

Lea told the court about Kathleen’s behaviour at Laura’s funeral, saying her foster sister ‘changed suddenly at Laura’s funeral, from crying to being a totally different person. She was happy, laughing, enjoying a party.’

The court also heard how Kathleen ‘pinned Laura to her high chair and attempted to force-feed her before dumping her on the floor with the words, “Go to your fucking father.”’

It took the jury just under eight hours to find Kathleen Megan Folbigg guilty of murdering her four children. She was taken to Mulawa Women’s Detention Centre and placed in protective isolation.

In August 2002 she returned to court and was sentenced to 40 years in prison with a non-parole period of 30 years.

On 17 February 2005, in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal, Justice Brian Sully reduced Kathleen Folbigg’s maximum sentence by 10 years and her non-parole period by five years. Her minimum sentence became 25 years and she will be due for parole in 2028.

Justice Sully said in the judgement that the original sentence was too high when compared with similar cases.

Justice Sully: I am of the opinion that the overall results of a head sentence of 40 years and a non-parole period of 30 years are so crushing as to manifest cover error.