One after the other, three babies in the Folbigg family died before any had reached their first birthday. That was between 1989 and 1993. Then in 1997, their sister Laura also died. She was 18 months old.
No-one knew how the four children had died. Except their father, Craig, who told the police their mother had killed them. So a distraught Kathleen Folbigg was arrested. She repeatedly denied killing her babies. There was no physical evidence linking her to their deaths. Several witnesses affirmed her love for her children. None of the children showed signs of smothering in their autopsies. And no-one could establish a clear cause for their deaths. Yet the jury just knew their mother had killed them. So she became Australia’s most notorious child killer – sentenced to forty years in prison.
In June 2023 she was freed. Over the 22 years she had spent in prison, scientists had found that the deaths of the four Folbigg children were most likely caused by three lethal genes they had inherited from their parents.
Australians with long memories will remember a similar case: the conviction of Lindy Chamberlain for the murder of her two-month-old daughter Azaria in 1980, when camping in the middle of Australia near Uluru. Lindy and her husband Michael said a dingo had taken their baby. But the jury knew better. Lindy had slit Azaria’s throat, put her in the family car, driven four kilometres across rough ground, buried her body (which, like her jacket, was not found), driven back, and then raised the alarm – all without being noticed – and in a period of ten minutes.
Several witnesses at the campsite supported Lindy and Michael’s story – reporting a dog-like growl before Lindy went to check on Azaria in the tent. The police found large paw-prints by Azaria’s cot. But never mind that. A forensic scientist had found human blood in the Chamberlain’s car and the jury were convinced. The mother had done it.
After six years behind bars, Lindy was released. A police officer had accidentally stumbled on Azaria’s jacket buried close to the mouth of a dingo’s lair. And the scientific evidence about blood in the car was proved ‘unreliable.’
How come lawyers, juries – and scientists – all find it so easy to imagine that, when something goes wrong for a child, the mother is to blame, even when there is contrary evidence? Because that is how feelings are structured in societies like Australia and Britain and the United States. It is this same ‘structure of feeling’ which has given rise to the fashionable theory that, unless a baby forms a secure attachment to his or her mother, their life will go badly – never mind about the evidence.
