In a sneak peek of Seven Spotlight’s full documentary in coming weeks, Kathleen Folbigg appeared on Sunday night in a teaser that showed her happy and relaxed with friends and family.
Ahead of a major 7NEWS Spotlight exclusive interview set to air in coming weeks, Spotlight’s cameras are with Kathleen as she begins her new life after being pardoned of killing her four children.
Ms Folbigg, 55, walked free from Grafton jail last Monday after being pardoned from her minimum 25-year sentence for the murder of her three children – Patrick, Sarah and Laura – and manslaughter of a fourth, Caleb.
Ms Folbigg looked happy and relaxed except for one moment when she revealed to her friend that she would need to change around her room.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like her new space, it was the positioning of the door.
“After years in jail I don’t like to have my back exposed to a door. It’s just an institutionalisation kind of thing,” she tells Ms Chapman, while jiggling her shoulders as she would have when they were joking in high school.
And, after 20 years, it was the horizon that Ms Folbigg was desperate to see.
Walking on an isolated beach with her friend, it was clear she could finally breathe.
Kathleen Folbigg with best friend Tracy Chapman.
In another revealing moment, Mr Folbigg admits it will take some time before she really finds herself felling like her old self adding that she sees Kath and Kathleen as different.
One represented her wrongly accused behind bars while Kath is who her friends remember.
When talking about her new room, Ms Chapman remarks: “but you’ll Kathify it.”
The friends look through an old folio of photographs and newspaper clippings where Ms Folbigg comes across a strip of images of her four babies.
“This is a strip of photographs that I had on my wall for 20 years. It was out of a newspaper. I used to wake up every morning and touch them and say good morning and again every night.”
Ms Folbigg’s friends say she never stopped calling her children her angles.
But the reality of her incarceration meant friends and family had to wage a campaign to free her that eventually garnered world-renowned experts who fought for her release based on new scientific evidence that showed the children likely died of natural causes.
“Once you’re called a child killer, that’s it, that’s what you are,” Ms Folbigg says as both friends and family enjoy a meal together for the first time since 2003.
Kathleen Folbigg during her upcoming sit-down interview with Seven.
At the same dinner, Ms Folbigg recalls that she always saw herself as “a very simple Novocastrian kind of girl” even after losing her children.
Ms Chapman recalls the “beauty” she witnessed in her friend after her children had died.
“The beauty and just the love and the way you talked about them,” she said.
“You didn’t really think they were gone because you referred to them as being ‘with you’ and you’ve always done that.
At the dinner friends and family charge their glasses saying: “We’ve waited 20 years for this … to Kathleen.”
Ms Folbigg says she hoped people can take a positive message from her full story to air in coming weeks.
“The message that you can survive it and move on and for me the future is everything,” she said.
Kathleen Folbigg and Tracy Chapman talk on Ms Chapman’s country property where they fed her horses together.
When one of her family asks whether hanging in there for 20 years was worth it, Ms Folbigg responds: “Does this answer your question?” and chomps down on a T-bone steak to roars of laughter.
Still filming and full-length documentary will be coming soon.
In the teaser to the full $400,000 exclusive interview with Spotlight which will be aired in coming weeks, Ms Folbigg is seen enjoying the company of long-term friends in the countryside and talking about her 20 years behind bars.
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Ms Folbigg was pardoned in an extraordinary move after spending two decades in jail over the death of her four children.
She was jailed in 2003 for a minimum of 25 years for the murder of her three children, and manslaughter of a fourth.
Ms Folbigg was released from Clarence Correctional Centre at Grafton at 11.25am last Monday.
7News Spotlight’s full bombshell interview will air in coming weeks.