Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: As is customary, as I like to do, what we're gonna go on is a journey. We're gonna go to a different place. We're gonna go to a different place. That place so steeped in joag lore, so rich in Joag tradition. Friends, come, please, won't you, with us to Australia?
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Oh, boy, I always love when we go to Australia.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Yeah, well, you won't.
Because if. If there was any joviality or jollity in my voice there, then it ends here, right? Because I want to tell you the tale. I want to tell you the tale of Kathleen Fallbig.
That's Folbi double G.
Kathleen. She was born Kathleen Donovan. She was born in 1967, June 1967, a town in New South Wales called Balmain.
Now, I'm afraid to say that Kathleen had a tragic, tragic early life. In fact. Fuck it. Spoiler warning, it's all tragic for Kathleen, but it started badly. At just 18 months old in 1969. January 1969, her biological father, a guy by the name of Taffy Britton. John Britton. He went by the name Taffy? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: How do you suppose you get the nickname Taffy?
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Uh, well, you may or may not know. It's. It's a common kind of almost derisory nickname for a welshman over here is Taff. All right, Taff. Taffy. Yeah. Fuck off.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Interesting. Okay.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Yeah. So anyway, her dad, um, a storied domestic abuser.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: Hmm.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: Murdered her mother. He murdered her mother, Kathleen May Donovan. Stabbed her 24 times.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Jesus.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: And was. Was sent down. And following that, in the year that followed, she was kind of rotated between various relatives, family members before she finally was fostered. Various kind of children's homes, institutions. Ended up living with a couple in New South Wales. And throughout her youth, that was pretty much her life until she was 18 in 1985. And she methadore her husband to be, a guy by the name of Craig, Craig Fallbeg. And they married after two years.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:02:24] Speaker A: And things you would think seem to be looking up. She, Craig, and her. Their first child came along in 1989, okay? A boy then named Caleb. Nice respect.
He was ill from the beginning. All right? Caleb suffered from his very, very early days. A condition called laryngomalachia, or laryngomalacia. It's a condition that affects the throat, the larynx causes breathing difficulties. And tragically, Caleb was found dead in his crib at 19 days old.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: Oh, man. Jeez. Yeah.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: Rough. Um, his death was attributed to those four letters that every parent fucking wakes up in a cold sweat at SIDS. Sudden infant death syndrome. Sid.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: Yeah, that terrifying concept.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Oh, so, so, so scary and tragic, though this was in just over a year later, June 1990, Craig and Karen had their second child, child by name, Patrick. Boy. They called him Patrick. Now, Patrick was born severely partially sighted with a condition called cortical blindness.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: Was also epileptic, which is why I. When he died at eight months old in 1991, his cause of death was initially attributed to a seizure. All right, still, still, Karen and Craig persisted in trying to start and to maintain a family. In October 1992, she had her first ever daughter, a girl who she called Sarah.
But a few months after her birth, Sarah herself started to fall ill with respiratory infections, right up until she was found dead in her cot at ten months old.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Jeez Louise.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: Yeah, fucked up. The death was also attributed to SIds.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: This is like, this is wild. I feel like, you know, when it comes, I mean, this is one of the bajillions of reasons I could never have children, is just like, the concept of this kind of thing. But, like, you know, women miscarry all the time, like, constantly. Yes, incredibly common. It's like something like 25% of pregnancies end in miscarriage.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Yeah, and those are, you know, miscarriages that get noticed. A lot of miscarriages.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Right, yeah, without, you know, without, like, no fanfare. Yeah, right, exactly. And like, that is, you know, if, you know, and you have a miscarriage, like, that's devastating both to your body and to your mind and, you know, all of that kind of things, like, terrible thing to have happened to you to have your children carry children all the way full term, give birth to them, and for them to keep on dying. Like, I guess, you know, a century ago, this was normal, but in this day and age, that's, like, such a devastating thing to have. I would like. One would be enough. Three?
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: How about four?
[00:05:29] Speaker B: Oh, come on.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: Craig and Karen had a second daughter in 1997 who they named Laura.
Laura was, from her first days, also prone to respiratory infections. And Laura died at 18 months old in March 99.
But it was after. After Laura's death that things took a turn. Right? Things took a. Took a turn for Karen because after Laura's death in 1999, Craig went to the police.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: I was gonna say, people are starting to get suspicious, aren't they?
[00:06:03] Speaker A: Indeed. Craig went to the police and handed them diaries that Karen had written over the previous years.
And the diaries contained phrases and passages which, from a certain perspective, read like confessions.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: Oh, dear.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: One passage, one line in particular, said, my guilt about them all still haunts me.
Another red.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: That's pretty normal.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: Well, another red. What scares me most will be when I'm alone with the baby.
Another phrase, obviously. I'm my father's daughter.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Mmm, not great.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Another one day she will leave. The others did. But this one's not going in the same fashion. This time I'm prepared. And I know what signals to watch out for in myself.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: Yikes. Yeah.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: So Karen was arrested April 19, 2001. She was arrested, charged with four counts of murder, four counts of infanticide, being accused of suffocating all four of her children.
Craig was also initially arrested and interviewed, but he was released without charge. And in fact, Craig went on to play a key role in helping the police build the case against Karen.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: Well, he was the one who started it anyway.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: Sorry, Karen. Kathleen. What am I talking about?
[00:07:25] Speaker B: Kathleen? Yeah, he. He started the whole thing. Right? Like he was the one who reported it in the first place.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Exactly. Yep.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: Exactly. She was.
She was imprisoned until a trial took place in 2003. Her diaries were shown to the prosecution, of course, recordings of emergency calls that she'd made where she was, you know, sobbing. My baby's not breathing. I've had three sids deaths already, you know.
Now, the central argument of the prosecution, Corrie, was statistics.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: Oh, no. Oh, boy.
[00:08:02] Speaker A: Here we go. Wildly, wildly improbable sure that four of her children could have died suddenly of natural causes.
Don't you agree?
[00:08:13] Speaker B: No. I mean, this is. Again, what I just said was, in this day and age, we don't see that very often because of medical intervention. The idea of an entire family of children being born with similar things and dying. I always say it's like my dad was one of eleven and they all lived to adulthood. And that was unheard of.
It's insane.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: That's statistically unlikely.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: That's statistically unlikely that all of them lived that. That long, being born from, like, you know, the early forties on.
So I'm not convinced yet. I'm gonna need more.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Well, let me tell you something. I'll give you more. How about this?
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Yeah, give me more. I'm gonna need more.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: Prosecution leaned very heavily on a kind of a truism in pediatrics at the time known as Meadows law. Something you've heard of or nothing?
[00:09:09] Speaker B: No, I don't think so.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: Okay. It's. It's. It was a legal concept in the kind of realm of child safeguarding, and had been used many times in many cases. In cases of multiple sudden infant death syndrome. Right within. Within a family within a single family.
And the law goes, one caught, death is a tragedy, two is suspicious, and three is murder unless proven otherwise.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: Oh, Jesus Christ.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: That's Meadows law.
[00:09:41] Speaker B: That's insane.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: Well, what if I tell you a little bit more about that law? It was coined by a Brit called Sir Roy Meadow. Sir Samuel Roy Meadow, a guy who still lives to this day. Born in 1933, now retired british pediatrician.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: That's an old dude.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Very old, believe it or not. He practiced in Banbury, Oxfordshire, just 1015 minutes down the road from where I now sit.
He rose to prominence in the kind of field of medicine for his work on child abuse, child neglect, child murder, published a paper.
It was this guy who first kind of popularized things like Munchausen's proxy, Munchausen syndrome by proxy, that kind of thing. Is that something you've heard of?
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Oh, of course, yeah, right.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: I mean, gypsy Rose is like one of the biggest, you know.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: Criminal superstars in America.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: So, um, but here's the thing. Uh, Sir Meadow was booted out of the british general. What is it called? The GMC, I believe.
The General Medical Council. Yeah, the British Medical Council. He was struck off after Meadows law was used in no less than three cases in the UK, which were later overturned after the women involved had all done time.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: Right, right, yeah.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: Firstly, a Sally Clark, wrongfully convicted in 1999 for murdering her two sons, which was overturned in 2003.
Her life never recovered.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: She died of alcohol, her kids died, and then she went to jail for it.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Yep. Hard to come back from another case of Donna Anthony. She was jailed in 1998 after losing two kids. Cleared and freed after six years in prison.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: Fucking hell.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: And the most well known of all is the case of a lady by the name of Angela Cannings. She was sentenced to life in 2002 for murdering her seven week old son, Jason, and an 18 week old son, Matthew.
The case was overturned in December 2003 after a fucking BBC investigation program revealed that her family had a history of SIDS. Like, her grandad lost kids through SIDS and other relatives. There was fucking sids in her family.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Right. It almost took to me, like, I can. Like, that many. Feels more.
Feels less suspicious, almost, you know? Cause it's like if you were killing children, like, this is like, obviously it's deeply suspicious or whatever, but the idea that, like, something keeps on happening because your family has a gene for it.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Like, that is very, very common. I'm not saying like, again, you haven't finished telling me about this one. So maybe she's very clearly guilty. I'm just saying from what we have so far, I mean, it feels like.
Like shaken baby syndrome. You know, how like, now we know that's bullshit. And so many parents were, you know, under suspicion or jailed or things like that for shaken baby syndrome. That's literally not a thing. Not real.
And yet I remember when I was a kid, that was like a constant thing. Like, oh, someone shook their baby and it died. You know, they're in jail for this.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: So I shut the hell out of Peter and Owen and they're fine.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: They're totally great. No problem.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: They loved it. In fact.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: They'Re always like, shake me, shake me, daddy.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Shake me Elmo. We all. We all played with shake me Elmo.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. But just to say, like, you know, kind of demonizing of parents for things that are, like, outside of their control, that, like the medical establishment says is a thing. Like, obviously it comes from a good place. It's not like they're trying to put innocent parents in jail. But, you know, there's often. It's like we're so quick to jump to, like, judge. Like, oh, that would never happen to me. So clearly they must have, like, they must have done it.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: Yes.
Point B.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Go on.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: More details over here in the UK, Meadows law, widely discredited. Just completely fucking discredited.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: But no one told Australia.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly this.
A law professor in Australia, a lady by the name of Emma Cunliffe, she wrote a book all about Vorvig's case. And to quote her, Meadows law was heavily challenged by medical research, always at odds with the principle that the state bears the burden of proving crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Right now, all of this was going on in the UK, but Meadows law was still being used to charge cases in Australia.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Which is why after a seven week trial where Craig was fucking vehemently convinced of her guilt, she was initially sentenced to 40 years in jail with a 30 year without parole that was appealed. That was brought down to 30 years with a non parole period of 25 years. And she maintained her fucking innocence the entire time.
In contrast with Craig, right outside the fucking court, to reporters, Craig says, my most humble thanks go to twelve. My most humble thanks go to twelve people who I've never formally meth, who today share the honor of having set four beautiful souls free to rest in peace.
He went his whole life maintaining a guild. Right, Craig? To his dying day. He died early this year. He only died in March this year.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Okay. Uh, and probably not that old, right?
[00:15:35] Speaker A: Uh, I'll look it up. I'll look it up.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: I mean, she was born in, like, 67, you said, so, you know, they're not. They're not that old.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: No, not at all.
You have an excellent ear for detail. Fucking hell. Are you taking notes?
[00:15:50] Speaker B: No notes. Just in your plane with my little hand strengthener.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: But look, her family also, right?
Kathleen's family also maintained her guilt.
Her sister in law, Leigh Bone, said in 2014, she's definitely guilty. Those four children should be here now. And I fucking. I get it.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. A, her sister in law is in, like, her husband's sister or is in her, like, brother's wife.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: Bear with, because I can answer that question.
[00:16:30] Speaker B: I only asked, you said, like, her family. And so I'm like. I mean, if it's like, the angry husband's sister, then, like, makes sense, doesn't it? You know, as opposed to, like, her own, like, family.
But I've said before, one thing that I always find crazy when I watch something like Dateline or whatever, is when someone did clearly do something and the family is just like, I refuse to believe that my kid would never do that. It's like, well, they were standing over the person with a bloody knife yelling, I'm killing you right now. And they're like, my child would never do that. So there's a part of me that when the family, you know, does understand the person's guilt, that's like, well, good. Good for you. Unless they're not guilty.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: But unless they aren't guilty, of course.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: Right?
[00:17:22] Speaker A: So, look, obviously the media completely fucking went nuts. Tore her to shreds. She was called Australia's worst female serial killer, and she began serving out dissent, and her family completely turned her back on her.
But all the while, on the outside, there was grassroots kind of movement, or her long time friends stuck with her, school friends stuck with her. And there were campaigns. There were campaigns for a case to be reopened, which it was. Right? In 2017, New South Wales governor, a guy by the name of David Hurley, he received a petition to review her convictions.
And in 2018, right, evidence was found that two of Fulbrig's daughters carried a genetic variant that could well have led to their deaths of natural causes.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
In addition to other testimony that Laura, her daughter, could have died from something called myocarditis, which is a heart inflammation that can also cause sudden infant death.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: The first one, like, actively had a breathing tube problem.
[00:18:29] Speaker A: Yes. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. And two of her daughters, Sarah and Laura, they had a mutation in one of their genes. In the calm two gene called calm two g double one four r. Super rare genetic mutation occurring, get this. In one in 35 million people.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: And even this. Even this fucking evidence was thrown out by the judge in 2019, who decided that the evidence, quote, as a whole, just reinforced her guilt.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: What?
This is what is fucking crazy to me. Like, and it's the same thing with, like, the Lucy letbe stuff where it's like, now that we've, like, read about the actual situation, like, it is nearly impossible for her to have done this. And yet, like, they keep on, like, coming up with new stuff that's like, no, actually, we saw her do a thing and, you know, it's definitely. And it's like, there's just no. Nobody is coming to bat because the entire media has already decided. The judge had already decided. The media was at this point, before they got into the chamber, the judge had already decided that that person was guilty. You know, like, everybody has already made up their mind by the time they meet Lucy letbeat, by the time they meet this person, like, there's no where can you go to get a trial that people are going to look at the evidence when they all already know who you are and think you're a monster. Like, there's just nothing you can do with that. That's crazy.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: In Kathleen's case, another two years later, the petition again went to the law governor Margaret Beasley, who was. Who was then, maybe even now, a New South Wales governor, 90 scientists and academics from around the world, academics and scientists, not just, you know, fucking Reddit detectives and writers, actual fucking actual learned men of ladies of science, landed a petition with Governor Margaret Beasley calling for Falbig to be pardoned. Right? And this petition was based on a fucking study, an international study, that found that the arrhythmia syndrome was a reasonable explanation for the death of Kathleen's girls, while the two boys carried gene variants which.
Which could actually cause fucking epilepsy. Early onset epilepsy in mice.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Geez Louise.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: And that led to a second inquiry in 2022, which actually got her pardoned and released in June 23.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Fuck sake.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: That is like, nobody has those resources at their disposal, you know, the entire scientific community coming together to petition the powers that be to fucking pay attention to this kind of stuff.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: Huge kind of moment in Aussie legal history. She did almost 20 years inside after losing four children, lost four kids, her family, and 20 years of her life.
The 2022 inquiry found reasonable doubt.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
It's terrifying, too, to think of when you write in a diary, a journal whatever, which I've always done my entire life.
It's with the understanding no one will ever see this and no one will misinterpret some bullshit that you wrote sometime. And the idea of using people's uncensored thoughts as evidence against them, especially when they don't specifically say, you know, I went and I choked my baby out today, or something like that. You know, like anything that is elliptical.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: Kind of stream of consciousness, kind of.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: Which is what our journalism isn't for. Right? That's the point, you know, for processing your guilt, for processing, like, all of these kinds of feelings. And if it doesn't, like, specifically explain the method that you used to murder someone, then it's like that. That cannot be photos. Yeah, right. Like, that can't be the evidence unless there is. That's on top of a whole chain of physical evidence. You can't use someone's ramblings as the primary evidence against them. That's wild to me. And I think, like, you were right. You texted me before this. You were like, oh, you're gonna have a lot of feelings about this. And I do.
On top of that, I think there is such a crazy culture of vilifying parents that I think part of it is the idea that we like to think nothing can happen to our kids, right? Part of it is fear.
If four children can die suddenly, like, can mine can, you know? Like, it's. It's better for us to think it's impossible for horrifying things to happen to children than, like, you know, than like, someone doing this, right? Like, someone being a monster is better than the chaos of the universe.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: But, like, when I, when I say, joag, rule number one, you are not safe. When I say that, I don't just mean your immediate physical well being and safety. I mean the fucking structures around you, right? What you, what you, what you take for granted what is right and normal, all of that can be fucking upended.
[00:24:01] Speaker B: Upended, exactly. And this, like, you know, I think about this with, like, the shake and baby syndrome being proved to be bullshit. Stuff like this, even like, the hot car stuff, you know, like, it's so easy for people to, like, vilify and be like, I would never do that. People who do this are monsters.
When people do, do things like this all the time, and it's just you, you know, you're lucky that it wasn't 1000 degrees when you did that. Or, you know, you remember someone asked, where's so and so? You know, two minutes later or whatever, like this. We're so quick to just be like, if something happens to a kid, then that parent needs to be, you know, completely.
Yeah, right. You know, ruin their life. It's like they're already ruined. Their kid died.
Like, that's probably enough. You know, that's plenty.
It's. Yeah, I have. I have a lot of thoughts about that.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Listen, I know that right up until maybe even last week or the week before, I was still kind of caveating all of our discussions about Lucy Leppe with. I still think she did it.
I swear to fucking God, this case, studying and writing about this cold open, really, really makes me think. Really fucking makes me think.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: I think that's like.
I think that's a, you know, that's perfect Joag journey shit right there, isn't it? But, you know, I think that that is something that we all have to get into the practice of because it certainly has made me more aware of seeing this all over and, you know, like, obviously this is a thing that I do all the time on here is sort of like, take something we think we understood and, like, be like, aha. Scotch it.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: Interestingly, one of the links at the bottom of one of the articles I read about this was why the phrase a dingo ate my baby isn't funny.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: Nice.
I mean, it's real. It's directly related to this.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: Right. It really is under.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: They're all the, you know, the same.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: Coin, you know, and. And reading about the three women in the UK.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: Mm hmm.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: Who were imprisoned on the back of some bullshit, like a. One baby's bad luck. Two is fucking sketchy. Three, you're a killer, right?
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: Fuck. What? Who the fuck bullshit is that?
[00:26:29] Speaker B: That? Like, you would have been laughed off the planet with something like that a century ago. Like, are you fucking kidding me? Come on, that's.
Kids die. Unfortunately, life is very fragile.
[00:26:43] Speaker A: Kids be dying.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Kids be dying, like, you know, maybe let's pump the brakes a little bit before you punish grieving parents for it.
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