THE HEART-WRENCHING, guttural howl Kathleen Folbigg gave as she collapsed after hearing the jury’s verdict against her in 2003 continues to haunt me.

I was devastated, too, for Craig Folbigg and most of all, of course, for his children. Kathleen, the woman they loved, had been found guilty of the manslaughter of their first child, Caleb, when he was 19 days old, and for the murder of their children Patrick, eight months, Sarah, 10 months, and Laura, 19 months. Each time, Kathleen was alone when she discovered their bodies.

So much about this human tragedy has troubled me since I wrote the first incarnation of this book at the conclusion of the trial. The evidence against Folbigg was not conclusive, there was no single smoking gun, and the diary entries that condemned her were ambiguous. The most compelling evidence during the trial was that of Craig, the man who had been beguiled by and deeply in love with his wife through all those terrible years.

The trial played on my mind as I watched my own children, the same age as Laura and Sarah, grow up; those scraped knees, first camps, graduation ceremonies that the Folbigg family never had.

I am sure that when Kathleen Folbigg’s supporters and legal team finally won her the chance for an inquiry in 2018, Craig’s heart would have broken. The prospect of reliving the horror his family went through in the ten years between 1989 and ’99 cannot be imagined. For his part he has remained silent since the trial, refusing all entreaties to talk about what happened beyond his court recollections of suburban horror.

Kathleen, however, did not take the stand during her trial in 2003, and now, having let her diaries speak for her in court, she wanted the chance to explain things herself and put the record straight.

And she did, as you will read in the new chapter at the end of this book. Fifteen years in jail to contemplate the deaths of her four children and the best explanation she could come up with at the inquiry, eventually held in mid-2019, was that some sort of supernatural power had taken them. Heartbreakingly, that says everything.

I do not doubt for a second that Kathleen Folbigg, by some mental leap, believes she did not kill her children. The experts have pointed to someone with extreme post-traumatic stress disorder. The question of how a woman with such severe mental issues has never received any support – in or out of jail – was not addressed by another in a long line of highly respected judges.

Kathleen Folbigg is a killer – Australia’s worst female serial killer.