Meadow's Law

For readers of THE TEACHER'S PET and MISSING WILLIAM TYRELL.

It's the maxim that every true-crime lover knows: One infant's death in a family is a tragedy. Two is suspicious. And three must be murder. But in 2003 the widely accepted mantra of Meadow's Law helped put an innocent woman, Kathleen Folbigg, behind bars for the next 20 years.

Written by the journalist who helped overturn her wrongful convictions, this is the story of one of Australia's most infamous criminal cases.

In 2003, Newcastle mother Kathleen Folbigg was found guilty of smothering her four young children to death, one by one. Medical experts told her trial that they had never come across a family like hers, where three or more infants had died from natural causes.

Extracts from diaries she had written were judged to be virtual admissions to killing the children, and Kathy was sentenced to 40 years in jail.

This book tells the extraordinary story of Kathleen Folbigg's tragic early life, how her children's deaths and her diaries condemned her, and how a dedicated but disparate team of friends, supporters, lawyers and scientists fought for years to achieve her eventual pardon, release and acquittal two decades later.

It is also a remarkable story of science versus the law.