Kathleen Folbigg says she's spent 16 years in jail due to misunderstandings over her diaries and insists her four babies were taken by "a higher power" rather than her own hands.
"The problem that I felt that landed me in the position I'm in, is assumptions being made and things being taken out of context, and nobody understanding what it was I was trying to say when I was writing these diaries," the 51-year-old said on Wednesday during the final day of an inquiry into her convictions.
Folbigg was meticulously quizzed about six of her diaries by barristers representing her ex-husband Craig, the director of public prosecutions and the inquiry itself across two-and-a-half days at the NSW Coroners Court.
At times she cried. On other occasions, she fiercely rejected accusations of physical violence.
Folbigg dismissed the suggestion "homicidal rages" made her smother each infant.
"I have no answers as to why I have outlived my children," she said on Wednesday, noting she'd loved her four babies and is still grieving their deaths.
Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura died between 1989 and 1999. They were aged between 19 days and 19 months.
Their mother was jailed in 2003 for at least 25 years for killing them.
Up to five of Folbigg's diaries from the decade in question are unaccounted for. She recalled throwing one away.
Entries made after three children had died and when Laura was born came under the most scrutiny.
Folbigg wrote in October 1997: "Wouldn't have handled another like Sarah. She (Laura) saved her life by being different."
But she told the inquiry "in the end" a supernatural power also took Laura in 1999.
She later explained that by a higher power she meant "God, mother nature, destiny, fate, karma" rather than "some ghost or entity".
In January 1998, Folbigg wrote that Sarah "left, with a bit of help".
She told the court "God, a higher power, or another decision, or even my children and Sarah deciding that she didn't want to stay was the 'bit of help' - not me."
Folbigg rejected suggestions from counsel assisting the inquiry, Gail Furness SC, that she had reconstructed elements of her evidence about the diaries.
"I don't believe that I have reconstructed anything," Folbigg said.
Craig Folbigg's brother John said the "most devastating" part of the trial had been that the "answer lay with Kathleen and what she had done" and the family now had to endure this unnecessary inquiry.
"This chapter unfolding now, we feel, was unnecessary and most definitely unwelcome," he said outside court on Wednesday .
"However, we have endured it as ultimately it would ... help to ensure that the justice that Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura received in 2003 is upheld."
Former NSW District Court chief judge Reginald Blanch QC, who presided over the inquiry, can refer the matter to the Court of Criminal Appeal if he finds there is reasonable doubt as to Folbigg's guilt.
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