On her first night of freedom after 20 years in prison, Kathleen Folbigg enjoyed the simple things in life, and her “face muscles hurt from smiling so much”.
Folbigg, 55, ate slices of pizza and chunks of garlic bread, and she sipped on a kahlua and coke last night with her childhood friend and longtime advocate Tracy Chapman.
There had been plans for a steak dinner but that didn’t pan out, Chapman said, “which was a bugger” but the two pals shared happy “flashback” moments through the evening.
“She slept for a first time in a real bed, had a cup of tea in a real crockery cup, with real spoons to stir it,” Chapman said, describing how Folbigg had begun to tentatively reacquaint herself with life on the outside.
“That sounds basic to you all, but she’s grateful.”
There was also the small matter of getting to grips with two decades of technological advancements, devices like smart phones and concepts such as streaming platforms.
The phones had “bamboozled” her friend, Chapman said, while on-demand television was a new frontier unimagined when Folbigg got locked up in 2003.
“She’s like, ‘This is amazing.’ She said ‘I’m going to be watching some binge TV.'”
Folbigg meandered the property yesterday, playing with the dogs, petting guinea pigs and feeding chickens.
“Hugging the horses … filled her heart up,” Chapman said.
“She felt really, like a strong feeling in her chest.”
Over breakfast, having slept in a bedroom instead of a confined, sterile cell, Folbigg told Chapman “my face muscles hurt from smiling so much”.
Folbigg’s lawyer Rhanee Rego brought some seriousness to the joy being expressed on the farm this morning, where birdsong provided a backdrop to the press conference.
Civil action against the state was absolutely an option, Rego said, but that hadn’t been discussed yet.
“She’s very much trying to focus on taking one step in front of the other,” she said.
“(They were) not rushing into things because she has just been waiting to feel the grass on her feet, to look at the sky and watch the sunrise for the first time in 20 years.
“We won’t be rushing her and pushing her to do anything she does not want to do until she’s ready.”
Folbigg, 55, yesterday walked free after serving 20 years of a 25-year sentence for killing her four babies.
An inquest heard new scientific evidence that raised reasonable doubt over her conviction and that paved the way for her dramatic release.
Folbigg, who has always maintained her innocence, was found guilty in 2003 of murdering three of her children, and the manslaughter of one child.
Her children – Patrick, Sarah, Laura and Caleb – all died between 1989 and 1999, when they were aged between 19 days and 19 months.
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