After 20 years behind bars, it took Kathleen Folbigg less than a day to look comfortable in a world that has changed tremendously since she was last a free woman.
Glowing as she sits back on a couch with a camera pointed at her face, she seems content. She had spent her first night of freedom with pizza, Kahlua and Coke, while being “bamboozled” by TV streaming services, according to her longtime friend Megan Donegan.
There is little awkwardness as she adjusts a bouquet of flowers to be put into a vase and then gazes into the distance, as part of a short video statement released to the public. But at Tracy Chapman’s house near Grafton, she looked at home. According to those who know the pair, that’s because Chapman – her closest friend – is the closest thing she has to home.
As Donegan puts it: “Tracy has never let her feel like she’s alone in this.”
Chapman, who met Folbigg when they were both in kindergarten in the New South Wales town of Singleton, rekindled her friendship with Folbigg after she was convicted of the murder of three of her children and the manslaughter of one.
She would ring Folbigg on most days during her friend’s two decades in prison, and would visit as often as she could. She did so even more when Folbigg was moved to a jail in Grafton near Chapman’s home.
But outside this constant emotional support, and crucial to getting her friend out of jail, was her unyielding push against the weight of a judicial system and public opinion that believed Folbigg to be “Australia’s worst female serial killer”.
“Tracy has been a huge support for her but also encouraged the legal team to see different aspects of the case, in particular the mental health aspects of the case,” says Folbigg’s lawyer, Rhanee Rego, who has worked on Folbigg’s case pro bono for the past six years.
Chapman, who owns a farm where she works as an animal-assisted therapist, worked tirelessly to have Folbigg’s diary entries, which the prosecution contended were admissions of guilt, be seen as the writings of a mother grieving the loss of her children.
“She worked with us to see things for what they really were,” Rego says. “It’s a real testament to friendship. If Kath was alone without them, I don’t know if she would have gotten through it.”
And while Chapman says she never thought about giving up, she was not expecting Folbigg to arrive at her farm on Monday morning.
“She spent a few hours on the couch with the dogs and we made a cup of tea, because it was just us,” Chapman told ABC radio Sydney on Tuesday.
“We didn’t expect this, so it was just us. The quietness, I guess, of it all … we just couldn’t stop just looking out at the view.”
While Chapman has been the voice and face of the push for Folbigg’s release, a small army of friends who she grew up with have been operating in the background to help her weather the storm.
Donegan, who has known Folbigg since she was seven, jumped in the car to head to Chapman’s home as soon as she heard about the pardon.
She says friends were always like family to Folbigg, who began life with a traumatic turn after her father stabbed her mother to death before her second birthday.
Folbigg is godmother to Donegan’s son, Alex, who was born just weeks before her Folbigg’s daughter, Sarah.
Sarah died when she was 10 months old in 1993 and is one of Folbigg’s two children found to have carried the rare genetic variation that cast doubt over her convictions.
“We went to our obstetrician appointments together and when we were eight months pregnant we would tie up each other’s shoes because we couldn’t do it ourselves,” she says.
From 1999, when was Folbigg was first asked by police if she killed her children, Donegan says her friends stood with her for one simple reason: “We knew she didn’t do it.”
“Tracy was the most stubborn about making sure people saw that and it really took a toll on her,” she says.
Donegan and Chapman began upping the ante in the lead-up to the 2019 inquiry into her convictions. They started a Facebook group, called Justice for Kathleen Folbigg, and another friend had the slogan printed on T-shirts. This slowly grew to a fundraiser to support Chapman’s costs to attend the inquiry, and sending money into Folbigg’s inmate account, to an email campaign.
When that initial inquiry found no “reasonable doubt” in Folbigg’s convictions, Chapman and the legal team only found out after a journalist rang to get their reaction to the news.
“Kath had to find out on her own. I remember driving to the prison at 5am the next morning and having her head on my shoulder delivering the news none of us thought was possible,” Rego says. “It has been incredibly painful.”
Since Folbigg’s release, Donegan and Rego have been by Folbigg’s side at Chapman’s farm. But Zooming in to share in the celebrations have also been Folbigg’s support network who were crucial to her release.
Peter Yates, who was part of the group of 158 scientists that signed the petition that triggered the second inquiry into the convictions and raised funds to ensure leading experts could give evidence to the inquiry, connected with Folbigg via video call the day after her release.
“We all felt very, very honoured to be able to share that joy,” he says.
In her video statement, Folbigg expresses “external gratitude” to friends and family – “especially Tracy and all of her family, and I would not have survived this whole ordeal without them”.
As Rego says, the backing for Folbigg has been a reminder of how it takes “a village to overturn serious systemic miscarriages of justice”.
“I think that Kathleen’s case is a testament to just how much support a person needs to get out of prison in Australia.”
