Kathleen Folbigg’s friends say her release could come ‘any minute’

“This will go down as the worst case of wrongful conviction in the history of New South Wales.”

Those are the words of Helen Cummings, a long-time campaigner and supporter of Kathleen Folbigg, who has spent decades in prison after being convicted over the deaths of her four children.

Cummings, a prominent Newcastle woman, is waiting on a phone call about Folbigg’s release, which she says could come any minute.

A pardon granted by the NSW Governor and release from Grafton jail after 20 years behind bars is now very possible for Folbigg.

The 73-year-old has been visiting Folbigg in prison since 2010 – at times on a weekly basis – after reading a book about her case and believing she was innocent.

She says the case resonated with her after working in family law courts when mothers at that time were under a lot of suspicion.

The pair have written hundreds of letters to each other over the years and Folbigg is now considered part of the family.

Strong women run in Cummings’ family. Her mother was Joy Cummings, Newcastle and Australia’s first female Lord Mayor, and her daughter is Hollywood actress Sarah Wynter.

Now, after years of campaigning, Cummings says she’s overjoyed justice could finally be served. The counsel assisting an inquiry into Folbigg’s convictions submitted there was reasonable doubt about her guilt over the deaths of her four children.

“On the whole of the body of evidence before this inquiry, there is a reasonable doubt as to Folbigg’s guilt,” Sophie Callan SC said, summarising her closing submissions.

Cummings said she wished she could have seen Folbigg’s face during that statement, a moment that changed everything.

“Sophie (Callan SC) said in her summing up, there isn’t any evidence to say Kathleen Folbigg wasn’t anything other than a loving and caring mother. She’s waited 20 years to hear those words, and they came.”

Folbigg was convicted over the deaths of her four children Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura between 1989 and 1999.

Folbigg has always maintained her innocence saying they died of natural causes and now new scientific evidence has cast doubt on the mother’s guilt.

Folbigg and her two daughters were found to carry a rare genetic variant, the discovery triggering a second inquiry into her convictions.

The CALM2-G114R genetic variant impacting the calcium-binding calmodulin protein identified in Folbigg and her daughters was a “reasonably possible cause” of Sarah and Laura’s deaths, according to cardiology and genetics experts.

Myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, was also a reasonable possible cause of Laura’s death.

The case for exoneration is growing while the Director of Public Prosecutions also accepts there is doubt.