By Samantha Lock and Luke Costin in Sydney

KATHLEEN Folbigg has been granted an unconditional pardon and released from jail after spending 20 years behind bars for the deaths of her four children.

NSW Attorney-General Michael Daley said on Monday he had received an advance copy of a summary of an inquiry by  former NSW chief justice Thomas Bathurst into Folbigg’s convictions, which found there was reasonable doubt about her guilt.

Although the report won’t be published in its entirety for weeks, Mr Daley said he agreed with Mr Bathurst’s findings that he is “firmly of the view that there is reasonable doubt as to Ms Folbigg’s guilt”.

Mr Bathurst found he was “unable to accept… the proposition that Ms Folbigg was anything but a caring mother for her children”.

Mr Daley said he met with Governor Margaret Beazley on Monday morning and she accepted his recommendation she should “exercise the royal prerogative of mercy and grant Ms Folbigg an unconditional pardon”.

“Justice can ultimately be done even it takes a long time”, he said.

Greens MP and supporter Sue Higginson told reporters Folbigg had been freed from the Clarence Correctional Centre in Grafton.
“She’s walking, she’s outside, she’s in the sunshine… justice has been done,” she said.

“This is our Lindy Chamberlain case,” Ms Higginson said indicating that Folbigg will be pursuing compensation for the “twenty years of her life that has been lost”.

“Not one single day passed where Kathleen Folbigg didn’t maintain her innocence,” Ms Higginson said.

“There was never any actual forensic or pathological evidence to say that the children were smothered, or that she committed those crimes that she was convicted of.”

Folbigg is expected to live with lifelong friend and fierce advocate Tracy Chapman at her property on the NSW north coast.

“Tracy has a bed made for her and that’s where she’ll be sleeping tonight,” Ms Higginson said.

After a seven week trial in 2003 a jury found Folbigg guilty of killing her four babies – Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura – between 1989 and 1999.

The pardon does not mean Folbigg’s convictions will automatically be quashed.

Ms Higginson said she believed the convictions would be quashed in the Court of Criminal Appeal and pointed towards an admission from the director of public prosecution about reasonable doubt.

“That means that most likely there will be no objector in terms of her application to have her convictions quashed in the criminal court of appeal,” Ms Higginson said.

“The sooner that his (Thomas Bathurst’s) findings are on paper, the sooner that application is before the Court of Criminal appeal, the sooner the next step of justice for Kathleen Folbigg can commence.”

An inquiry into Folbigg’s convictions in April heard credible evidence her four children may have died of natural causes.

Rare genetic variants identified in Folbigg and her daughters triggered the second inquiry into her conviction not long after a 2019 examination.

Ms Higginson indicated Ms Folbigg would be seeking compensation or an “ex gratia payment of some sort”.

“Whatever that sum looks like may be the biggest sum that we can imagine,” she said.

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