by Kathleen Folbigg and Tracy Chapman
Publisher: Penguin Books Australia, September 2025
Review
by Robyn Pryor
Inside Out was one of the most engaging stories I’ve read in a long time (and I read A LOT of books). I’m not a fan of non-fiction, so when I received this book for review, I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy it. But from page one, I was mesmerised. Even though I knew the outcome, I couldn’t put the book down. This is a story of a woman labelled “Australia’s worst female serial killer”. A woman hated both inside, and outside prison. A condemned baby killer.
When I opened the book, I was prepared for a harrowing read, filled with gruelling prison scenes and violence. Instead I was greeted with Kathy coming home from prison to Tracy’s house. A wonderful beginning. I developed an incredible bond with the pair through their joy. To have a friend like Tracy, and to go through a journey like Kathy, is life at its most dramatic; full of courage, determination and love.
As this story unfolded, Kathy and Tracy pulled me into their worlds, and kept me focussed intently to each page. I stayed up late, and got up early, to make extra time for reading.
Kathy suffered severe trauma long before the death of her first baby. Her childhood story helped me comprehend why she dreamed of being the Best Mum Ever. She wanted to give her children the love she craved.
Through learning of their childhood connection, and staunch friendship, I understood Tracy’s relentless fight for Kathy. They made an unlikely pair of school buddies, Kathy confident and brave, Tracy shy. On meeting, they could never have guessed this would be the most important friendship of their lives.
I can’t imagine how it would feel to lose your babies, your marriage, your freedom; to be caged, and have intense hatred directed at you. How Kathy tolerated the pain and loneliness, despite the rally of Tracy and friends, is beyond me.
I was with Kathy and Tracy all the way. I wanted them to succeed, and a part of me wanted all who stood in their way to experience even a flash of empathy and understanding. The legal system took not only Kathy’s life for twenty years, Tracy gave up her career, time, financial security, and energy, to help her. She fought with sheer determination to free her friend.
Inside Out convinced me there are deficits in the Australian justice system which need reform. Possibly the biggest shock for me was that a petition from ninety preeminent scientists, presenting evidence of Kathy’s innocence, was overturned. I learnt that anyone could find themselves ‘on the wrong side of the law’ and suffer extreme consequences. I shudder to think how many people have served sentences for crimes they didn’t commit.
I wish Kathy and Tracy every success and thoroughly recommend Inside Out. It’s a fabulous read.
Publisher’s blurb
Twenty years in jail: Kathleen Folbigg’s extraordinary story of wrongful conviction, and how science, advocacy and friendship freed her.
In 2003 Kathleen Folbigg was convicted of killing her four babies. Her trial relied on her husband’s accusations and diary entries expressing her guilt over her children’s deaths. She was sentenced to forty years in prison.
In Inside Out Kathleen takes us back to her traumatic childhood, her difficult marriage, her dream of nurturing a family, and the profound souring of that dream into a nightmare.This is also , however, a story of unwavering friendship and resilience. Tracy Chapman and Kathleen were close at school. After Kathleen was jailed, Tracy renewed contact and, convinced her friend could never have committed such crimes, began advocating for her with extraordinary tenacity. She never doubted Kathleen’s innocence, relentlessly petitioning for new evidence to be examined, and for a new approach to be taken as doubts about the safety of the conviction grew among scientists and the legal community.
Ultimately, these two women together faced down a misogynistic justice system and forged a friendship that supported Kathleen as she endured the trauma of the prison system. And finally, after many devastating setbacks, came the leaps forward needed to overturn one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in Australia’s history: in 2023 Kathleen was released, pardoned and exonerated.
For the first time, in Inside Out Kathleen lays bare her time in prison, her life before she was wrongfully accused, and her hopes for the future; while Tracy describes with passion and insight the fight she took up to help to free her friend, and shares her hopes that their story will prevent other women from suffering as Kath did over those long twenty years.