In 2003, Kathleen Folbigg was sentenced to prison on three counts of murder and one of manslaughter. A woman condemned as Australia's worst female serial killer has been pardoned after serving 20 years behind bars for killing her four children in what appears to be one of the country's gravest miscarriages of justice.
Kathleen Folbigg spent twenty years in prison being demonised for killing her four children, until a Spanish scientist helped to free her, and expose one of Australia's biggest injustices.
In 2003, Folbigg was sentenced to 25 years in a maximum-security prison, where she remained until her release earlier this month. Due to the nature of her alleged crimes, the media nicknamed Folbigg "Australia's worst female serial killer."
Kathleen Folbigg spent 20 years in prison after a jury found she killed sons Caleb and Patrick and daughters Sarah and Laura over a decade. But a recent inquiry heard scientists believe they may have died naturally. The 55-year-old's case has been described as one of Australia's greatest miscarriages of justice.
Kathleen Folbigg was convicted of the murder of daughters Sarah and Laura and son Patrick, and the manslaughter of another son, Caleb. Twenty years on, she has been pardoned and walked free from prison. A woman jailed for 20 years over the deaths of her four children has been pardoned after a judicial review.
Carol Baxter, Black Widow: The True Story of Australia's First Female Serial Killer | The Dictionary of Sydney.
Shortly after 8 a.m. on 19 February 1951, Jean Lee, an attractive, red-haired, 31-year-old woman was hanged at Melbourne's Pentridge Prison. She had been sedated and was held upright on a chair before being plunged to her death. Jean Lee was the last woman hanged in Australia and the only one to hang this century.
Catherine Birnie's six children visited her in prison, as did David's first wife. The funeral of Birnie murder victim Denise Brown takes place in Perth. David Birnie died by suicide in prison in 2005.
Elizabeth Woolcock
The only woman to be executed in South Australia, Elizabeth was hanged on 30 December 1873 after being convicted of murdering her husband. After surviving a traumatic childhood, Elizabeth married miner, Thomas Woolcock, at the age of 20.
Katherine Mary Knight (born 24 October 1955) is an Australian murderer and the first woman in the country's history to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
Aileen Carol Wuornos (/ˈwɔːrnoʊs/; born Pittman; February 29, 1956 – October 9, 2002) was an American serial killer. In 1989–1990, while engaging in street prostitution along highways in Florida, she shot dead and robbed seven of her male clients.
Elizabeth Bathory has been called the most prolific female killer of all time. Between 1590 and 1610, she allegedly tortured and murdered up to 650 girls and young women. At first, Bathory only murdered peasants, luring them in by hiring them as serving girls in her castle and then beating and torturing them to death.
Ivan Milat
One of Australia's - and the world's - most notorious killers, Ivan Milat was sentenced to life terms for the murders of seven backpackers in NSW's Belanglo State Forest between 1989 and 1992. The travellers, which included five women and two men, came from Australia, England and Germany.
Kathleen Folbigg convicted in 2003 for the murder of her 3 children, manslaughter of her 4th. An Australian woman who spent 20 years in prison was pardoned and released Monday based on new scientific evidence that her four children died by natural causes as she had insisted.
Kathleen Folbigg: Woman once dubbed 'Australia's worst female serial killer' pardoned and freed after 20 years in prison | The Independent.
Amelia Elizabeth Dyer (née Hobley; 1836 – 10 June 1896), popularly dubbed the Ogress of Reading, was an English serial killer who murdered infants in her care over a thirty-year period during the Victorian era.
Christa Gail Pike (born March 10, 1976) is an American convicted murderer, and the youngest woman to be sentenced to death in the United States during the post-Furman period. She was 20 when convicted of the torture murder of her classmate Colleen Slemmer, which she committed at age 18. Durham, North Carolina, U.S.
Barrett and two of his co-conspirators were sentenced to execution; the other two were subsequently reprieved, but Barrett was hanged on 27 February 1788, becoming the first person executed in the new colony.
In his early 20s he married his first wife and had a daughter, Tanya, who was aged 10 at the time of his arrest. Tanya, who has changed her surname since Birnie's capture, has never married and had no children, stating, "I don't wanna spawn another David Birnie".
On November 10, 1986, Moir ran into a vacuum cleaner shop and police were alerted. The information Moir gave police lead to the arrest and eventual imprisonment of the Birnies. David Birnie died in prison in 2005, aged 54; Catherine Birnie remains behind bars at Bandyup Women's Prison.
David and Catherine Birnie's former home in Willagee, in Perth's southern suburbs. The Birnies raped, stabbed, strangled and clubbed to death four victims in their Willagee house, in Perth's southern suburbs, in 1986. They were caught when a fifth intended victim escaped, after they abducted her at knifepoint.
Ronald Joseph Ryan (21 February 1925 – 3 February 1967) was the last person to be legally executed in Australia. Ryan was found guilty of shooting and killing warder George Hodson during an escape from Pentridge Prison, Victoria, in 1965.
Chris Dawson arrives at court on August 30 in Sydney, Australia. A former high school teacher found guilty of killing his wife in one of Australia's longest cold cases has been sentenced to 24 years in prison.