Kathleen Folbigg’s ex-husband Craig suddenly drops dead months after she was released from prison and acquitted of murdering their four children

The ex-husband of Kathleen Folbigg, the woman who was recently pardoned after being wrongfully imprisoned for murdering the couple’s four children, has died of a heart attack.

Craig Folbigg, who was also suffering from cancer, is understood to have been taken to Maitland Hospital in the NSW Hunter Valley on Saturday and died on Monday.

Mrs Folbigg was convicted of three murders and one manslaughter in 2003 after her babies Patrick, Sarah, Laura and Caleb died between 1989 and 1999.

After 20 years behind bars, she was released from prison in June last year due to ‘reasonable doubt’ about the cause of the children’s deaths.

Folbigg was “frustrated and disappointed” by the decision to pardon the previously accused child murderer, his lawyer said.

He had “not changed his mind” about the causes of the babies’ deaths, despite a new investigation finding there was reasonable doubt about his ex-wife’s convictions.

In December, the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal quashed Ms Folbigg’s convictions.

Mr Folbigg gave evidence against his ex-wife at her trial and handed over some of her diaries to police, saying it was those documents that led him to suspect she had murdered their children.

He refused to provide a DNA sample to scientists investigating genetic sequencing, and did not attend any further hearings or participate in the final investigation into his ex-wife’s convictions.

Folbigg was “frustrated and disappointed” by the decision to pardon the previously accused child killer after she spent 20 years in prison. The photo shows the former couple

Mr Folbigg’s lawyer, Danny Eid, described how his client felt after his ex-wife was pardoned and released last June.

“He is the victim of this case,” Eid said.

“He is frustrated and disappointed that he has to endure another chapter.

“This is a man who people say will heal with time. But all the while his wounds continue to bleed.’

Mr Eid said that after losing four children aged from 19 days to 18 months in such tragic circumstances, closure was important to Mr Folbigg and his family.

However, he said that after 20 years of watching multiple attempts to overturn Ms Folbigg’s conviction and several painful investigations, ‘the wound can never heal’.

Mr Folbigg remarried in 2004 and had a son with his second wife Helen in 2005.

In recent years he led a quiet life in Branxton in the Hunter Valley and ran a lawn mower maintenance business in nearby Kurri Kurri, refusing to comment on his ex-wife or the fate of their children.

Lawyer Rhanee Rego made a statement on behalf of Ms Folbigg to News Corp publications on Tuesday afternoon.

“There are only two people on this earth who knew what it felt like to lose Caleb, Patrick, Sarah and Laura,” Ms. Rego said. “My condolences go out to the loved ones Craig leaves behind.”

Mr Folbigg’s lawyer, Danny Eid, said in June last year: “He is a victim of this case.” Mr Folbigg is pictured outside the NSW Supreme Court in 2003

Ms Folbigg was released after Tom Bathurst QC conducted an investigation which found there was reasonable doubt about her conviction.

Mr Bathurst’s report said he was ‘firmly convinced that there was reasonable doubt as to Ms Folbigg’s guilt for each of the offenses for which she was originally tried’.

According to the report, scientific progress has shown that there is a “reasonable possibility that three of the children died of natural causes.”

Mr Bathurst ‘could not accept the proposition that Mrs Folbigg was anything but a caring mother to her children’.

“In the case of Sarah and Laura Folbigg, there is a reasonable possibility that a genetic mutation known as CALM2-G114R caused their deaths,” the findings said.

Kathleen Folbigg arrives at the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal in December, where her convictions were quashed

In relation to the death of the fourth child, Mr Bathurst found ‘the coincidence and tendency at the heart of…’ [original 2003] Croncase falls away’.

Mr Bathurst, a former NSW chief justice, also addressed what Ms Folbigg had written in her diary which had previously been used against her.

“There is evidence that they were the writings of a grieving and possibly depressed mother, who blamed herself for the death of each child, contrary to admissions that she had killed or otherwise harmed them,” he found.

The inquiry in February last year heard evidence from experts about scientific developments that could potentially prove some of her babies died from natural causes linked to a genetic mutation.