Not Quite Right features discussions that are unfiltered and uncensored,
and may include themes that are inappropriate for younger listeners.
Also, I swear a lot.
Something doesn't seem quite right.
Welcome to not quite right.
My name is Ed and this is the fourth of a series of interviews that Amanda and I
recorded at the Words and the Waves Writers Festival this year.
This time we're speaking with Quentin McDermott.
Quentin is an investigative journalist and author of Meadows Law,
which tells the story of Kathleen Folbigg, who was once called the most hated woman
in Australia after being wrongfully convicted of killing all four of her
children.
We spoke with Quentin about Kathleen's story and how 20 years later she was
finally able to clear her name.
So here is our discussion with Quentin McDermott.
We're here at Words in the Waves with Quentin McDermott and you've just come
off the panel called Australia's Most Hated Woman.
Tell us about the panel.
Well, I was on the panel just, it was just me and Sonia Orchard,
fellow author, who's also appearing here at Words on the
Waves in her own right, so to speak.
And we had a fascinating discussion.
I enjoyed it very much.
I, I love the vibe here.
It's so chilled.
But it was actually quite, in some ways, quite an intense discussion as well,
because the story that we were talking about,
which is the story of the case of Kathleen Folbigg, is quite an intense one.
As you know, it's the story of a, a mother who lost four of her children in
succession and was then accused of killing them all and spent 20 years in
prison and was then finally pardoned and released and acquitted 2 years ago in
2023.
So her story is extraordinary, but it's very, very intense as well.
Yeah.
And you must have spent some time with her to get the details of this story.
And I'm interested to know what, what's she like?
I can't imagine what she's been through.
And, you know, to come out the other side, it's very unique experience,
to say the least.
Yes, that's right.
I I met her when she was in prison to start with, and I think it was 2017.
And, you know, contrary to the idea that had been
propagated in the media that she was a monster, you know,
I found her to be actually very warm and very sociable, a lovely sense of humour,
but also very stoical about her own situation.
You must imagine.
Yeah.
And I mean, it's hard, it is hard in a way,
to imagine how she remains sane being in prison, you know, for 20 years.
But I think as obviously happens in in prisons, you,
you kind of build up relationships with other inmates and friends and so on.
And it's interesting.
Well, I produced an episode of Australian Story
on the ABC about her case.
And when we were filming outside the prison she was in,
I spoke to a prison officer who was escorting us around.
And I said to him, you know, what do you guys feel about her?
And he said, well, we all think she's innocent.
And I thought that was interesting.
And I think that would have made things easier for her inside because, of course,
when she first went into prison, she was treated as, you know,
the lowest of the low.
Absolutely, yeah.
And just reviled by the other prisoners.
But I think gradually, and particularly when some in the media,
including Australian stories, started to raise doubts about her
convictions, I think the mood inside would have
changed for her.
And certainly when there were two petitions lodged on her behalf and when
the second petition was lodged, which was signed or endorsed by three
Nobel laureates, I think at that point her fellow inmates
started to realise that, wow, you know, this probably is an enormous miscarriage
of justice.
And then it's just the opposite situation, right?
You go from being the most hated person to now, my God,
like to have gone through what you've gone through and still be here is
impressive.
It's just a complete reversal of opinion.
I suppose it is a reversal of opinion.
And I and I think that certainly that second petition signed by or endorsed by
three Nobel laureates certainly changed public opinion radically.
But of course, even now, even after she's been acquitted, you know,
there are still people out there who, who refuse to believe it.
And so I don't think she would ever feel entirely safe and secure.
But you know, she's living, living a life, of course,
outside the institution of prison now she's surrounded by incredibly close
friends, you know, who look out for her 24 hours a day.
And so, you know, hopefully she'll be fine.
But but of course, you know, she lives with the memory of everything
that happened.
And it wasn't just the false imprisonment.
And obviously that's 20 years of her life that's gone.
But that's on top of a tragedy, multiple tragedies.
And, and also that that public perception, the idea of being known as someone who
obviously or not, it's a huge thing that she has to live
with and obviously continues to live with.
But what, what do you think was the turning point
that's changed everything to lead to her exoneration?
Paul, we talked about this in in the session in
the with the panel.
And, and you know, I think there were several kind of
incremental turning points, if you like.
So one of them undoubtedly was in 2011, a legal academic called Emma Cunliffe
published a book called Murder, Medicine and Motherhood.
And essentially what she did in that book is she deconstructed the evidence that
was presented at her trial and she came to the conclusion that the trial had had
frankly misrepresented the truth and that in fact she was innocent.
And then after that there was there were lawyers in Newcastle who kind of picked
up the ball and ran with it and students funnily enough at Newcastle University
just up the road who put a lot of back breaking research into reexamining the
case.
And then eventually in 2015, a petition was lodged on her behalf
calling for a judicial inquiry.
And three years after that we broadcast our Australian story in 2018.
And that was a turning point because nine days after our Australian story went to
where the then Attorney General Mark Speakman got up and announced A judicial
inquiry.
And that was probably, that was in one sense the turning point.
But the first inquiry was unsuccessful for her and it wasn't until a couple of
years later that there was a second inquiry,
a second petition and then a second inquiry.
And and that was really when obviously it all turned around in her favour.
I think it's interesting that journalism has always played a part in justice,
right?
But in recent times we see, for example, these hugely popular podcasts with the
true crime stories and they tend to be focused on justice from the perspective
of getting someone in gaol.
So I'm just interested too in like how this the public perception,
first of all got her there, but then how it can build in someone's
face Labour as well to to get that justice because of course there would be
many people in gaol who just don't have that exposure to find their justice.
Look, I mean, I think I think you've touched on a lot
of questions there.
I think there was, you know, a real kind of thread of misogyny running
through this case, which was that, you know, as a, in, in terms of her trial,
for example, that as a mother that she was held to
standards of motherhood, which no woman should be held to.
And in terms of parenting, that her husband Craig was not held to.
But, you know, how did we get to that point?
Well, then, you know, after she was convicted,
she was completely demonised by the media.
I mean, she really was portrayed as a kind of
evil monster.
And I think, you know, this is, this is similar to what happened in the
case of Lindy Chamberlain.
You know, when Lindy Chamberlain was wrongly
accused and wrongly convicted of killing her baby Azaria, she,
she was held up to be, you know, a monster.
And her whole kind of demeanour at trial was kind of picked up on by,
by the media as as being, you know, that, you know, she's an evil, you know,
she's the demeanour of an evil woman.
And the same, exactly the same thing happened with
Kathy.
Well, it's all that false evidence building.
I remember, you know, with Lindy Chamberlain,
the black dress of Azaria, That's I don't think it's even black, red,
dark blue or something like that, that all these little bits of evidence
and doesn't matter that they're not true.
It just becomes part of the broader narrative that people latch onto to help
explain in a way that makes them understand.
Yeah.
And I guess that's what I wanted to ask as well is going back to like to the very
beginning in the trial and the conviction, looking back now and saying it's great
that she's been exonerated, but what were the factors that actually
LED that initial miscarriage of justice?
Was it in your opinion, was it related to the media circus
narrative of, you know, the mob mentality?
Or was it, you know, we was also hear stories of the judicial
or maybe police laziness.
I'm not sure how much of that is real of like wanting just to get the conviction
without worrying too much about whether the factual basis is there or not.
Well, look, my, my book is called Meadows Law.
And it's, it's called Meadows Law for a, for a reason,
which is that when Kathy went to trial in 2003, and in the years before that,
there was this theory known colloquially as Meadows Law,
which was invented essentially by a British paediatrician called Professor
Sir Roy Meadow.
And his theory was that, you know, 11 death of an infant in a family is
tragic, 2 is suspicious and three is homicide and
less proven otherwise.
And the uniquely unlucky situation, if you like,
that Kathy found herself in was that when her fourth child, Laura died.
This Meadows law theory was prevalent in 1999.
And I believe that one of the reasons the police pursued her is because they were
well aware of the Meadows law theory.
And there were there were medical experts out there who who espoused this theory,
who shouldn't have, but who did.
And this theory had helped to send several mothers in the UK to gaol.
And so the police mounted this investigation, which essentially,
I think took as its starting point that because four children,
4 infants have died in her family, that one of the parents and almost
certainly her must have been guilty.
Now, one of the things I discovered in writing
this book was that the police carried out secret recordings of Cathy and Craig,
her husband, in their home.
And the content of one of these recordings is truly astounding.
It's it's Craig coming down early one morning and talking to his wife and
saying all night, I've been thinking, maybe I killed the kids.
Oh, wow.
And not only that, he then goes on to explain in detail in
this secret recording how he could have killed each of them in Turner.
And not only that, but what his motive would have been
because their relationship was very rocky in between the deaths, not surprisingly.
And they separated on a couple of occasions.
And he said in this secret recording, you know,
my motive was basically to get taking back, you know, to get get attention.
But the interesting thing is from the question of, well, even with Mello's law,
who do you blame, the mother or the father?
They never seriously believed that Craig could have done it.
They only believed that she could have done it.
And indeed, the secret recording was almost all of it
was suppressed at her trial and later on, it was suppressed in total at the first
inquiry.
And it was only by the time of the second inquiry that it was finally kind of
brought forward as an exhibit.
Fascinating.
Because at an inquiry, I mean, we understand the rules of evidence in
court, but to not even have it in an inquiry is
just seems outrageous to me.
Well, I think it's shameful it was submitted.
I actually, I'm not trying to overly claim credit for
this, but I drew her lawyer's attention to this
transcript and the transcript, the police transcripts of all these
conversations were never questioned in court, the accuracy of them.
And so her legal team submitted this transcript to the first inquiry and it
was then completely redacted.
And I think that is shameful.
And in when when Justice Blanche or former Justice Reginald Blanche,
who was in charge of the first inquiry, wrote his report,
not only did he conclude that the evidence he had heard reinforced her
guilt of the first inquiry, but he also said that, you know,
the evidence showed appeared to show that the four children had been smothered.
And there was no other possible explanation or no other possible
perpetrator other than Kathleen.
But he'd had in front of him this transcript of Craig saying,
all night I've been thinking, maybe I killed the kids.
So has Craig had an opportunity to respond to that evidence?
Well, so here's the sad part of the story is
that that Craig died last year.
And what I will say is this, that over the years I tried on several
occasions to reach out to Craig to see if he would be prepared to talk about the
case and he never was.
His family in general are still, as I understand it,
convinced that she murdered all four of her children.
And indeed, when she was finally acquitted,
legally acquitted in December 2023, Craig's lawyer came up with a statement
saying, you know, he still believes that she is guilty as
charged.
And ludicrously, in my opinion, said, you know,
the judges did the wrong thing in acquitting her.
They should have ordered a retrial.
And then the, the horrible irony is that about three
months later, Craig passed away and so and many other
of, of the key witnesses are no longer with
us.
And so had the judges ordered a retrial, you know,
20 years after her original trial, I don't it wouldn't have been feasible
for a proper trial to have been carried out.
So they made the right decision.
And so he was convinced that she was guilty, right.
Was that was that the case as well during the relationship?
No.
And in fact, what, what's very interesting,
I think about Craig's part in this whole story.
And I, I, I hate to speak I'll of the day, but what is interesting is that he
started off even after the police started their,
began their investigation after Laura's death, the 4th child,
he started off by staunchly defending her.
And in fact, in some of the telephone conversations,
which were recorded secretly by the police, he mocks the lead investigator,
the lead detective, Bernie Ryan.
And he's absolutely, 100% on her side.
And it's only later on after they split up that his kind of tone changed.
And he was, I've spoken to on, I'm sure as I can be on several occasions
by Bernie Ryan, the lead detective.
And he admitted in court, Craig admitted in court,
because he gave evidence against his wife, that Bernie Ryan, the detective,
had helped to convince him that it wasn't only, to put it in his words,
housing Commission women who murdered their children,
but that someone like Kathy might have done so.
And so I think he was actually quite impressionable.
The other thing is that at a certain point in 2001, two years before the trial,
they arrested Craig and they told him that they were arresting him on the
grounds that, you know, he might be charged with obstructing the
investigation.
And I think that had a big effect on him.
And then they then recorded an interview with him immediately afterwards where he
was suddenly making all these accusations against his wife.
And so I believe that he was an extremely unreliable witness.
But the incremental effect of the evidence being given by some of the
medical witnesses and Craig, and then the entries that she had written
in her Diaries, which the prosecution presented as if
they were virtual admissions of guilt, all of that built up to persuade the jury
that yes, indeed, she had had done what she was accused of.
I'm really interested too, because of course this is a fascinating
story, but what drives you to write about it?
Like you've obviously committed a huge amount of time,
not just for the book but for the Australian story as well.
So what motivates you to, I guess, pursue this justice?
Well, one way I can ask you this is by saying
this, that that I used to work at Four Corners
and as a reporter at Four Corners way back in 2011,
I reported the story on Gordon Wood and Caroline Byrne.
And I don't know if you recall that story, but that was the story of this man,
Gordon Wood, who was a chauffeur to Renee Rifkin and,
you know, very tall and handsome, you know,
chisel features and all this kind of stuff.
And the accusation was that he had killed his then girlfriend, Caroline Byrne Byrd,
throwing her off the Cliff at the Gap in in Sydney.
And the prosecutor, the senior crown prosecutor who
prosecuted that case was a man called Mark Tedeschi.
And when we did our Four Corners report about it,
we pointed to several extraordinary kind of failures in the police investigation
and questionable evidence that have been presented at his trial.
And, and following his appeal, the judges came back and first of all,
they acquitted Gordon Wood.
And secondly, they, they were highly critical of the senior
Crown prosecutor in the way he had conducted that trial.
And I then spoke to an acquaintance of mine who is a champion bridge player who
is much more obsessed than I am with all the cases that have been run by Mark
Tedeschi.
And he said to me, you know, there are all these other cases usually
look at, and one of them is Kathleen Falby,
because it was Mark Tedeschi who had prosecuted her.
And certainly when I started to look at the case,
the common factor between the Folby case and the Gordon Wood case was that both
cases were based on entirely circumstantial evidence,
and there was no actual forensic evidence linking the alleged perpetrators with the
bodies of those who had died.
And so I was fascinated by that.
And then I read an enormous report that was attached to the first petition in
2015 on Catholic Zain's behalf, which was written by this very eminent
Victorian forensic pathologist, Professor Stephen Cordner.
And in that report he said not only was there no forensic evidence that she had
smothered any of the children, but there was also positive forensic
evidence pointing to natural causes of death.
And, and in particular in Laura's case, because Laura, when she died,
was suffering from a condition called myocarditis,
which is inflammation of the heart muscle.
And so, you know, armed with that, I thought, well, hang on,
is this another miscarriage of justice case?
But in 20/16/2017, when I started looking at it,
no one else really was interested.
There were some journalists who had touched on the case.
Tara Brown from 60 Minutes, to her credit, had reported a story about it back in
2012.
But, you know, the overall public view at that point was,
you know, she did it, she's a monster and she can rot him.
And that's enough, that's all.
But it's fascinating, the power of storytelling, you know,
like we're here at a writers festival talking about words.
But, you know, we, we think I guess of words as connection
and so on.
But words can be incredibly powerful in injustice and in swaying public opinion,
obviously.
So I mean, you've been doing that your whole career.
So you've got this power to influence people.
Do you feel powerful?
I'm not as powerful as I'd like to be, but I'd like to flip that actually and
say, because I think you raise a really, really significant point,
the power of words, in her case, the power of words was used and
misinterpreted at her trial in in an incredibly impactful way in her journals.
Yes, in her journals.
So, so you know, she had written a number of remarks in
her journals which, you know, at first sight was certainly troubling,
but which were.
Appropriated by the prosecution as virtual admissions of guilt.
So that was the the negative power of those words.
And it was only 20 years later at the second inquiry into her case,
that a whole raft of psychologists and psychiatrists came forward who had read
her Diaries right the way through.
All of whom, every single one said there is nothing
incriminating in these Diaries, in anything she's written.
And so I think that's incredibly telling.
And it was, of course, most unfortunate for her.
But in terms of my storytelling, well, I hope that, you know,
people who read the book will believe by the end of the book that they've kind of
heard the whole story from both sides.
And, you know, I hope that the power of it will be to
evoke, I suppose, a sense of kind of injustice that it took
so much effort by so many people to kind of get this over the line.
One of the things I talked about in the Powell earlier was the extraordinary kind
of accumulation of, of efforts by an enormous team of,
of different people without whom in almost every case at 8:00, every juncture,
you know, she she wouldn't be hit.
She wouldn't be out of prison now.
OK.
So for example, her lawyers worked thousands of hours pro
bono on her behalf.
Some of the scientists worked pro bono for hundreds of hours on her behalf.
There were, you know, philanthropists kind of donating money to,
to move the case along and so on and so forth,
and a whole selection of highly committed people, scientists from overseas.
You know, in the end, there were scientists from Denmark, from,
you know, the United States, from Australia and elsewhere who,
who kind of banded together to actually help get this over the line and, and to,
you know, to reveal the science that in the end
helped to release.
I'm just talking to Hugh McKay about the power of cooperation and sounds like
that's a perfect example of it.
It is.
And look, I've, I've been saying for some time,
I see a kind of vein of misogyny that stretches from Lindy Chamberlain through
Kathleen Folbigg to Lucy Letby in the UK.
And it's very interesting.
There are some striking similarities, in my opinion,
between the Lucy Letby case, which I'm sure you know, yes,
I'm familiar with it and Kathy's case.
So, for example, it took an international team of experts
in Lucy Letley's case to raise serious and significant doubts about the medical
evidence that was presented at Lucy's trial.
And I'm not sitting here saying, you know, she's innocent,
but what I am saying is and, and also the statistical evidence,
the statistical evidence in Kathy's case was completely wrong headed and erroneous.
There was one expert in the United States who who wrote a report saying that the
chances of all four children died from natural causes was one in trillion,
which is absurd.
But there were similar statistical errors and misleading evidence given
statistically in Lucillekis case.
And so you know, there are some it's interesting.
And in both those cases and of course in in Linda Chamberlains case,
it's the mother or the caregiver in Lucy's case who were kind of scapegoated,
you know, rightly or wrongly, for the deaths of these infants.
And I guess it's for many people, it's that truth being stranger than
fiction sort of thing.
So, so Kathleen's case, we can't fathom how four children could
die.
It seems so like so too big of a coincidence.
And SO1 explanation is that they were killed.
But of course, one other logical explanation is that
there's a genetic, you know, abnormality that that would apply to that
family.
And then of course, in Lucy Letbee's case, and she was the nurse who,
the paediatric nurse that, you know, OK, one explanation is that she killed all
these children in her care.
And the other is that they were critically I'll anyway.
And that's the type of children that she was working with every single day.
So yeah, I mean, I of course don't profess to know enough
about any of these cases at all, but well, I think that's absolutely right.
And I think in Lucy Letbee's case, 111 of the potential explanations is that
she was scapegoated by more senior doctors and consultants who were not
themselves providing the standard of care necessary to keep all of these children
alive.
And I'm not, I'm not saying that some of them wouldn't
have died anyway, but it certainly the environment and the,
and the standard of care at the hospital has come into question.
But she was an easy target because she was present at,
obviously she was present at all of the the deaths of the infants for which she
was convicted, but she wasn't present at the deaths of
other infants who also died.
And that's one of the one of the ways in which the statistics were skewed against
her.
So one of the things I'm finding interesting is just thinking about the
timing here, right?
And you're drawing a line of, I guess, systemic sexism.
And do you think things have changed?
Like, could we have a case play out the same
way today as we did have 20 years ago?
Or have we moved a little bit forward to a point where if this happened today,
her husband would also, for example, receive some of the scrutiny that didn't
happen 20 years ago?
Well, you would like to think so.
You would hope so.
I mean, what has absolutely changed the question
is, is for example, is genetics.
So in 2003, genetics was in its infancy and you know,
the tests that were carried out that identified the cardiac genetic mutation
in Kathy and her two daughters, Sarah and Laura would not have been
possible.
They would not have, they could not have occurred in 2003.
So to that extent, I think the, you know, the value of scientific evidence has
certainly advanced exponentially if you like,
but then that's not the end of the story because.
Then you have to ensure that the right scientific and medical experts come to
give evidence, give expert evidence at trials.
And it's very interesting in, in Kathy's case they did come and give
evidence at, at the second inquiry, but the,
the senior counsel who were carrying out the inquiry were advised every day by the
Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Science advised
them.
They didn't always take the academies advice and, and quite rightly so,
but they, the Academy advised them on, on the best experts in the field and they
also advised them on the types of questions that the inquiry could ask of
those witnesses.
So there was in the end actually a very broad range of scientific medical experts
at the second inquiry, some of whom didn't believe that the
genetic mutation was necessarily the cause of the deaths of the two girls.
But I think it's that whole process of I think things have advanced in that sense,
but in another sense, they haven't.
Because, you know, what Kathy's case shows is that it's only
because, you know, that there was this enormous team of of
different experts and journalists and others who were kind of advocating on her
behalf that actually helped to get her case over the line.
Most men or women who were kind of languishing in in gaol who may have
suffered a miscarriage of justice, they don't have a team like that to call
them.
But I think that that you know, the business about it,
this being a kind of enormous effort is is absolutely critical by lots of
different people, you know, lobbyists and all and others.
You gotta take a little bit of credit surely.
Well, I'll just say this, I take credit for producing the
Australian story, which I think helped to trigger the first
inquiry.
What I don't take take credit for but was incredibly fortuitous is that the day
after our story went to air, a young man called Dave Wallace who is a
Loiner, but he's also trained in genetics, which is pretty impressive.
He watched the programme and I, I didn't know him then.
And he had been following the Volby case for a long time and believed that there
might actually be genetic causes of death for some or all of the children.
And he contacted this Spanish immunogeneticist,
Professor Corolla Vinwesa, who he knew and he'd, he'd,
he'd studied under and he persuaded her to get involved.
And, and in the event it was Corolla Vinwesa,
probably more than any of the other scientists who drove this case forward on
Kathy's behalf.
And so, you know, it's, it's actually yet another example of kind
of sliding doors moment.
I mean, I take credit for getting the Australian
story out.
I'm happy to do that.
And I'm very happy that it helped to trigger the first inquiry.
But actually, you know, in terms of the science that there were,
there was this kind of sliding door moment.
If Dave Wallace hadn't watched it, if he hadn't got in touch with Corolla
Vinueisa, the whole genetic inquiry most probably
wouldn't have happened and that that might have led to a very different
outcome.
Well, again, power of cooperation.
That's right.
And luck as well and sound of it.
Well, thank you.
It's a fascinating story and our listeners can read all about it in
Meadows Law.
So thank you for joining us, Quinton.
It's been a real pleasure.
Thank you both.
Thank you so much.
This has been a special presentation of the Not Quite Right Podcast in
collaboration with Words on the Ways Riders Festival.
Check the show notes For more information about Words on the Waves and the books
mentioned in this episode.
If you're new to the podcast, please join us again for our regular
episodes where we talk about media, culture, and the art of writing.
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