Mother gets 40 years for suffocating four children

A WOMAN who suffocated her four children — each before the birth of the next — was sentenced to 40 years in prison by an Australian court yesterday.

A New South Wales state supreme court jury had earlier found Kathleen Folbigg guilty of the murder of three of her children and the manslaughter of one. Folbigg had suffocated all four babies because she had a low stress threshold and had resented them intruding on her life, the court heard.

She was found guilty of the manslaughter in 1989 of her first child, Caleb, when he was 19 days old. The remaining three children Patrick, Sarah and Laura aged 8-19 months, were murdered between 1991 and 1999. Outside the Sydney court, Folbigg's lawyers said she maintained her innocence and would appeal.