Why her case matters for the Letby review
The Folbigg exoneration is the clearest recent international precedent for the private-writings-read-as-confession problem. The prosecution read Mrs Folbigg’s diary entries as admissions of homicide; the 2023 judicial inquiry and subsequent exoneration established that the same entries, read against documented genetic causes of death, were more consistent with a grieving mother’s self-blame reflection than with admissions. The structural parallel to the handwritten notes read by the Crown at the Letby trial is direct.
The facts of her case
- Four children died between 1989 and 1999 — Caleb, Patrick, Sarah, Laura.
- Convicted in 2003 of three counts of murder and one of manslaughter; sentenced to 40 years’ imprisonment (later reduced to 30).
- Central non-medical evidence: diary entries in which Mrs Folbigg reflected on her grief, inadequacy, and mental-health struggles, which the prosecution read as self-incriminating.
- First-review judicial inquiry (2019, Blanch inquiry) upheld the convictions on the evidence then available.
- Genetic research (2020-2022) identified a CALM2 variant in Sarah and Laura consistent with a recognised cardiac-arrhythmia syndrome capable of causing sudden infant death.
- Second judicial inquiry (Bathurst inquiry, 2023) found reasonable doubt on the convictions.
- Exonerated and pardoned by NSW Governor on 5 June 2023; released same day.
- Convictions formally quashed by NSW Court of Criminal Appeal on 14 December 2023.
How her case applies to Letby
The Folbigg case establishes an international precedent for how private reflective writings should be weighed in a criminal trial where medical causes of death are disputed. Three specific parallels bear on the Letby handwritten notes:
- Private-writings-as-confession framing. In both cases the Crown offered private reflective writings as admissions. In Folbigg, the Bathurst inquiry re-read the diaries against the genetic evidence and found them consistent with grief and self-blame rather than admission.
- Self-blame psychology under sustained accusation. The Letby notes include, on the same page as the phrases the Crown read as admission, the phrases “I haven’t done anything wrong” and “I am evil” (the latter a common self-blame-under-accusation formulation). Clinical psychologists have documented this pattern in wrongful-conviction contexts.
- Medical reanalysis changing the weight of circumstantial evidence.The Folbigg inquiry did not find new evidence that the deaths were innocent; it found medical evidence that made a natural-cause hypothesis more plausible than the homicide hypothesis, which in turn re-cast the diary entries.
Why this biography is on the site
Kathleen Folbigg is not connected to the Letby case except by parallel structure. We include her biography because the private-writings-as-confession pattern her exoneration addressed is the pattern the Letby handwritten-note evidence presents. Readers unfamiliar with the Folbigg exoneration cannot fully weigh the clinical-psychology critique of the Letby notes.
Read alongside
- Handover notes — core evidence issue
- The so-called ‘confessions’
- Self-blame psychology
- The apology-letter sequence
- Sally Clark — biography
Source
Bathurst Inquiry (2023) findings; NSW Court of Criminal Appeal judgment of 14 December 2023; Kathleen Folbigg pardon instrument (NSW Governor, 5 June 2023); peer-reviewed Europace / Nature 2020-2022 publications on CALM2 variant in the Folbigg daughters; specialist wrongful-conviction commentary (Sydney Morning Herald, ABC investigative coverage, The Monthly).
Last verified: 22 April 2026.