CINDY Gambino has told a women’s magazine she refuses to believe that her former husband, Robert Farquharson, deliberately killed their three sons, and she lives for her new baby.
Ms Gambino said Farquharson was a kind, loving father whose conviction for murder was a travesty of justice. “It’s been trial by media all along, and I think it bears the same hallmarks as the infamous Lindy Chamberlain case.”
Cindy Gambino’s father, Bob Gambino, and Woman’s Day magazine yesterday declined to comment on whether she had been paid for her story. It takes up three pages and features photographs of Ms Gambino with her fiance, Stephen Moules, and their one-year-old son Hezekiah, whose name means “God gives strength”.
The report claimed Ms Gambino wept as she said: “I feel locked in time between heaven and earth, knowing I’ve two angels here, in Hezekiah and Stephen, when all I want to do is join my three angels in heaven.
“It’s painful looking at my new baby, who needs my love and protection, and knowing he’s the reason I get up each day. Without him, I’d have willed myself to death a long time ago.”
Ms Gambino lost her three sons – Jai, 10, Tyler, 7 and Bailey, 2 – on Father’s Day 2005. Farquharson, her separated husband, was driving the boys back to their home town of Winchelsea after an access visit.
The three boys drowned when the car went off the road and into a dam. Farquharson escaped but the three boys drowned. Farquharson told police he had had a coughing fit, blacked out and woke to find himself chest deep in water.
The prosecution at his trial argued that he had told a friend that he planned the killings, and the fact that the ignition and the headlights were turned off, supported his guilt. A Supreme Court jury convicted Farquharson of three counts of murder. He will appeal against the convictions.
Ms Gambino told the magazine that she and Mr Moules had faced financial ruin: burying the boys had cost $21,000, and Mr Moules’ business collapsed as he stopped work to care for her. He and Ms Gambino are now both in counselling.
She said: “You never get over losing a child, but losing three is incomprehensible. The real tragedy is that Hezekiah will never know the fun-loving mum my other children knew . . . because I can never be that person again.”
Farquharson’s plea hearing is scheduled on Friday.

First published in The Age.