How a geneticist led the effort to free a mother convicted of killing her kids
Carola Vinuesa woke up early yesterday in London, around 3 a.m., when colleagues from Australia called the clinical geneticist with big news: Kathleen Folbigg, who on only circumstantial evidence was famously convicted of killing her four young children and jailed 2 decades ago, had just been pardoned by New South Wales and set free. Her freedom is in large part due to the efforts of Vinuesa and other scientists who had amassed genetic evidence they said likely explained the children’s deaths. The pardon “was so exciting, so beautiful. I was so happy, for Kathleen first of all, but for science [too],” says Vinuesa, who now runs a lab at the Francis Crick Institute. “It’s a day to celebrate that science has been heard and has made a difference. And not just to this case, I think.” She told ...