Is Kathleen Folbigg an innocent victim of SIDS?

The Crown successfully argued that Folbigg suffocated her four babies over a ten-year period because she had a low threshold to stress and had resented their intrusion into her life despite any conclusive evidence to support that theory. Crown Prosecutor Tedeschi told the jury that Folbigg smothered her babies "in a flash of anger, hatred and resentment".

Folbigg’s defence team retaliated to those accusations by claiming that 19-day-old Caleb, 8-month-old Patrick, 10-month-old Sarah and 19-month-old Laura all died from SIDS. They argued Caleb died from a floppy larynx, Patrick an epileptic fit, Sarah an inflamed uvula and Laura died of the heart disease myocarditis. A panel of international experts disagreed and unanimously testified they had never heard of four children in the same family dying of SIDS. It was claimed the odds occurring within the same family was a staggering one in one trillion.

Despite the statistical evidence that helped convict Kathleen Folbigg the disturbing similarity that emerged between the Clark, Patel and Cannings cases is also present in the Folbigg case. That evidence coincides with the prospective re-opening of 258 similar cases of infanticide in Britain.

The three eminent judges of the NSW Supreme Court have an onerous task during their deliberations over the Folbigg appeal. Is Kathleen Folbigg Australia’s worst serial killer of children? Or is she an innocent mother torn between expert opinions, the uncertainty of SIDS and a criminal justice system that may have wrongfully imprisoned her for crimes she never committed?