There was no direct evidence that Ms. Folbigg had smothered the children, as prosecutors alleged. She told the authorities that her diary entries had reflected the stress of motherhood, and that “a bit of help” referred to her hope that God had taken her baby home.
But at her 2003 trial, the prosecutors argued that it was more likely that pigs would fly than that four young children would die of natural causes so young, in the same family, over a span of 10 years. A jury agreed, and Ms. Folbigg, then 35, was found guilty of murder in the deaths of Patrick, Sarah and Laura, and of manslaughter in Caleb’s.
But in recent years, geneticists have found that Ms. Folbigg and her two daughters had a rare genetic mutation in what is known as the CALM2 gene. In 2020, an international team of scientists published a research paper concluding that the mutation was likely to result in life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias.
Since scientists began raising questions about the case, two official inquiries have been conducted. The first, in 2018, found that there was no reasonable doubt about Ms. Folbigg’s guilt.
The second inquiry, led by Justice Bathurst, began last year, after more than 90 prominent scientists, including two Nobel laureates, submitted a petition to the governor calling for Ms. Folbigg’s immediate release. Besides examining the genetic research, the second inquiry heard evidence from psychiatric experts who said Ms. Folbigg’s diary entries did not contain a clear admission of guilt.