Meadow's Law

For readers of THE TEACHER'S PET and MISSING WILLIAM TYRELL. It's the so-called "scientific" rule that every true-crime lover knows: One death is a tragedy. Two is suspicious. Three is murder. But this mantra-called Meadow's Law-put an innocent woman behind bars for 20 years. In 2003, Newcastle mother Kathleen Folbigg was found guilty of smothering her four young children to death, one by one. The "science" posited that it was more likely that a mother would commit quadruple homicide than four infants die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). The law agreed, and Kathy was sentenced to 40 years in jail. This book tells the complete, extraordinary story of Kathleen Folbigg's unlawful conviction and her eventual pardon decades later. It is also a story of science versus the law. Kathleen was convicted before the era of widespread genetic testing, and legal teams ignored evidence that suggested at least two of the children may have died from a heart defect; it was just too complex for anyone to understand properly. Fifteen years later, a group of more than 150 eminent scientists from around the world believed she was innocent. Over the course of two petitions, cross-continental research, and a letter signed by Nobel Prize winners, they sought her immediate release and pardon. And after two decades in prison, Kathleen was acquitted and set free. This is the biography of one of Australia's most famous murder cases, examining the evidence that both unjustly put Kathleen Folbigg behind bars and then cleared her name 20 years later. Written by the journalist who helped prove her innocence, it contains new information never previously reported to prove that science fought the law, and science won.