Mother's Guilt

Subscribe to Crime X+ today. In this bonus episode, journalists Jane Hansen and Dan Box sit down to discuss the extraordinary series of events that saw Kathleen Folbigg walk free from prison today after 20 years behind bars. The pair talk about how we got to this point, and what happens from here. 

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Subscribe to Crime X+ today. Tom Bathurst KC vents his frustration with the last-minute revelation of 500+ hours of police-recorded listening device audio from Kathleen Folbigg’s home.

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Subscribe to Crime X+ today. The inquiry has turned its attention to the diaries that helped to convict Kathleen Folbigg for the murder of her four children more than 20 years ago. But experts are reluctant to say definitively if Folbigg’s own reflections are evidence of her guilt – or if a rare genetic mutation could be to blame. In this case, you’ve got to get comfortable in the grey.

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Subscribe to Crime X+ today. Cutting-edge science raises questions over the 20-year-old conviction of Kathleen Folbigg for killing four of her own children. As the inquiry chair accepts another explanation may be plausible, even critics of this new scientific evidence concede there is a possibility the law got it wrong. 

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Subscribe to Crime X+ today. Did the police and prosecution pursuing Kathleen Folbigg for murder rely on a pseudo-scientific theory to explain her children’s deaths - and did that lead them to overlook other possible explanations? A second woman with a story that is eerily similar to Folbigg’s also shares her devastation at being denied access to her daughter after being labeled a child-killer due to the same, now-discredited theory.

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Subscribe to Crime X+ today. In the first week of the new Kathleen Folbigg inquiry explosive fresh evidence from Danish professors has not only forced the adjournment of the much anticipated inquiry but strengthened the belief that a new genetic mutation is responsible for the deaths of two of the four Folbigg children. Jane talks to the experts themselves and Kathleen's friends who have travelled from around the country to be there, but the inquiry takes an unexpected turn. 

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Subscribe to Crime X+ today. One of the main reasons Kathleen Folbigg was found guilty for the deaths of her four children, was her diary entries. Kathleen kept diaries over the decade of her children dying, and the entries were used as circumstantial evidence in the 2003 trial. And, some of them are harrowing. But - were they taken out of context? We hear Kathleen Folbigg answer questions about what she really meant in these entries. We also meet a linguistic expert who has worked for the CIA and FBI who has developed a computer program, to analyse texts for evidence of guilt, authenticity, hidden motives and lies. What does the program tell us about Kathleen’s diaries? We find out.

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Subscribe to Crime X+ today. In this special episode of Mother’s Guilt Jane talks to Legal expert Dr Robert Moles who specialises in miscarriages of justice. He looks at the latest evidence and talks through the legal implications of the Folbigg case, and argues the case cannot stand under the current legal framework. He also says the Folbigg case is bigger than the Lindy Chamberlain case in terms of injustice, and he would know. He was one of the people responsible for clearing Lindy Chamberlain's name.

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Subscribe to Crime X+ today. The whisper of injustice that became a roar. There were holes in the trial from the start as the infamous Meadow’s Law came into play. Laura, the fourth child to die, had an obvious cause of death, myocarditis from a viral infection. Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle which can cause fatal arrhythmias, especially if you have a mutation on the gene that regulates heart rhythm. And it turns out - she did. Scientific experts face off against the law, forcing a new inquiry.

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Subscribe to Crime X+ today. Born into violence and tragedy, with a father who killed her own mother, Kathleen became a ward of the state, but when she was fostered into the Marlborough family, she forged close friendships at school in Newcastle and a remarkable sisterhood was formed, friends for life who have stuck by her and take us back. Jane also discovers an incident that supports the new science, where one of Kathleen’s friends found her daughter Laura not breathing, one day while babysitting.

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