A broken woman who was haunted to an early grave

A post mortem examination on the body of Sally Clark will be carried out by a Home Office pathologist tomorrow, as furious supporters blame her early death on the treatment she received in and after prison.

The former solicitor was wrongly jailed for smothering her two baby sons, but cleared and released in 2003 after serving three years. Friends of the family say she was never able to live a normal life again, living in dread of the attention - sympathetic or abusive - from people in the street. On Friday morning, four years after her release, the 42-year-old was found dead at her home in Hatfield Peverel, Essex.

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Essex police have refused to comment on the cause of death, although officers have reportedly said suicide has not been ruled out. The family solicitor, Sue Stapely, said it would be "unwise to speculate" and yesterday told The Independent on Sunday she could say no more until after the pathologist has given his findings.

Surj Clair of the charity MoJo, which supports victims of injustice, said he did not know the reason for Mrs Clark's death, which may have been by natural causes. "All I can say is that in our experience suicide is common among those who have been unjustly imprisoned and released... We do know, however, that whatever led to her death will have been speeded up by the trauma of going to prison for something that she didn't do."

When police officers visited Sally Clark in 1998 she started making tea for them, believing they were there to help her understand the apparent cot deaths of eight-week-old Harry and 11-week-old Christopher. Instead they arrested her for murder. She was convicted at Chester Crown Court the following year, after expert witness Professor Sir Roy Meadow said there was a "one in 73 million" chance of two children suffering cot deaths in an affluent family.

Mrs Clark and her husband Stephen were then solicitors living in Wilmslow, Cheshire. Mr Clark campaigned on his wife's behalf even after she lost her first appeal. New evidence at the Court of Appeal helped to free her the second time around, as did experts who put the true incidence of cot death closer to one in 200.

Professor Meadow was struck off by the GMC, although that was overturned by the High Court. "There are no winners here," said Mrs Clark on her release. "We have all lost out."

Mrs Clark just wanted privacy. Her sons were dead. Her old job gone. "She had seen everyone and everything she truly cared about trashed before her eyes," said the writer Geoffrey Wansell, who grew close to the family while campaigning on her behalf. He writes in the IoS today: "The bubbly, effervescent blonde... had been transformed into a haunted wraith."

Mrs Clark and her husband had not shared a bed in three years. She also barely knew her third son, now eight. To avoid attention, she stayed in, or tried to disguise herself.

Angela Cannings, who was also convicted of smothering her two sons but freed on appeal after 18 months, said yesterday she was furious at the way she and Mrs Clark were treated. "It's almost, 'Oh well, you're free. Go home ... and you will be fine.' It's so wrong."