Innocent neonatal nurse or conniving angel of death? The growing number of experts questioning if Lucy Letby is guilty
Leading academics, doctors and statisticians have now come forward to question the evidence on which Letby was convicted
THE scrawled words appeared to damn “angel of death” Lucy Letby from her own pen.
Doodling on a Post-it note, the nurse wrote: “I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them.”
And — in stark capitals — she added in the memo found in her bedroom: “I AM EVIL I DID THIS.”
Currently languishing in HMP Bronzefield, serving 15 whole-life sentences for seven murders and seven attempted murders of babies, justice appeared to have been done.
Yet armchair internet sleuths suggested Letby, 34, was the victim of an almighty miscarriage of justice.
Dismissed by many as conspiracy theories, leading academics, doctors and statisticians have now come forward to question the evidence on which Letby was convicted.
If she reads this article, my message to Lucy is, ‘It may take us a while but we’re going to get you out’.
Professor Richard Gill
Professor Richard Gill, from Leiden University in the Netherlands, is even convinced Letby is innocent.
The Surrey-born academic — whose expertise is medical statistics — has provided evidence that saw two other nurses convicted of murdering their patients freed from prison.
The Cambridge-educated statistician, 72, told The Sun: “I’d bet you a million to one she’s innocent.
“If she reads this article, my message to Lucy is, ‘It may take us a while but we’re going to get you out’.”
While Dr Svilena Dimitrova, an NHS consultant neonatologist (a doctor who specialises in the care of newborn babies) said: “The theories proposed in court were not plausible and the prosecution was full of medical inaccuracies.
“I wasn’t there, so I can’t say Letby was innocent, but I can see no proof of guilt.”
‘Deep malevolence’
While ex-Cabinet minister and renowned civil liberties campaigner Sir David Davis believes there are “real questions about the evidence”.
Sir David — who is spending the summer analysing the case — will ask to visit Letby in prison if he concludes that in “the balance of probabilities she is innocent”.
He launched his investigation after raising in Parliament why a court order had blocked people in this country reading an article by US magazine The New Yorker questioning Letby’s guilt.
The former Brexit Secretary told The Sun: “Like most people, I thought this woman killed seven kids and she should go to prison for ever.
“After I raised the matter in the House, I had a number of people contacting me expressing their concerns about the trial evidence.
“And they weren’t conspiracy theorists. This was the past president of the Royal Statistical Society, a professor of neonatology, a professor of forensic medicine, a couple of lawyers and so on.
“So really very serious people, not cranks, and probably better qualified than some of those who took part in the trial.”
Letby continues to protest her innocence. During her second trial she told jurors she wasn’t “the sort of person who would kill babies”.
Her two trials have revealed no apparent motive and no psychological background that matched a serial baby killer.
Yet her trial judge said she showed “deep malevolence bordering on sadism” after she was convicted of preying on babies small enough to fit in the palm of her hand.
And seven consultants who had worked alongside Letby — with more than 100 years experience between them — are convinced she was deliberately harming newborns.
Letby’s sentence means she will die behind bars. And many will say good riddance.
Convicted of such heinous crimes, she has joined a pantheon of monsters, including Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, Dr Harold Shipman and Fred and Rose West. But is this softly spoken, church-going nurse who slept with teddy bears on her bed really an angel of death?
Even after almost 60 hours being scrutinised and interrogated in the dock, Letby remains an enigma.
Detective Chief Inspector Nicola Evans, who led the Letby investigation, described her as “beige”.
The officer added: “There isn’t anything outstanding or outrageous that we found about her as a person.”
Yet the prosecution’s case was that nondescript Letby was a killer hiding in plain sight.
As Letby’s first trial began on October 10, 2022, a crucial document relating to working rotas at the Countess of Chester Hospital was placed before the jury.
The chart showed 25 suspicious deaths and collapses matched against the shift rota of the 38 nurses who worked on the unit.
In my opinion there was nothing out of the ordinary statistically in the spike in deaths.
John O’Quigley, University College London
Most nurses had just a handful of crosses on the graph where they had been on duty during the incidents. Only Letby was at the scene for every death and collapse.
Yet statisticians now say it was flawed as evidence because it doesn’t include other deaths and collapses during the same period for which Letby wasn’t charged and covers far too narrow a period of time.
John O’Quigley, a professor of statistical science at University College London, said: “In my opinion there was nothing out of the ordinary statistically in the spike in deaths.
“All the shift chart shows is that when Letby was on duty, Letby was on duty.” Professor Gill, 72, who helped free Dutch paediatric nurse Lucia de Berk after she was wrongfully convicted of murdering patients in the 2000s, called the spreadsheet “ludicrous”.
Others insist the prosecution’s chart does provide clues to Letby’s guilt.
Dr Dewi Evans, the prosecution’s star expert witness, says he identified the suspicious deaths and collapses before knowing Letby was a suspect.
It was only when detectives cross-checked those incidents against the staff rota that it was discovered that Letby was present at every one.
Doubts have also been raised over the evidence on the methods used to kill or harm the babies.
Expert witness Dr Evans said that on the majority of occasions, Letby injected air or insulin into their bloodstreams or feeding tubes. The retired paediatrician — who has produced hundreds of expert reports for the criminal and family courts — has come under intense scrutiny by those doubting the weight of evidence against Letby.
The Guardian reported that seven neonatologists called Dr Evans’s theory that Letby injected air into babies via their nasal feeding tubes as “implausible” and “ridiculous”.
‘It wasn’t me’
Dr Evans had cited a 1989 academic paper which said skin discolourations occur with air bubbles in blood vessels, and he believed this was evident in several of the babies.
But the paper’s co-author, Dr Shoo Lee, said at Letby’s appeal hearing that none of the descriptions of the babies’ skin blemishes given by witnesses matched those that he had noted. The judges ruled Dr Lee’s evidence was inadmissible, pointing out the defence could have called him to testify at the original trial.
The Court of Appeal judgment also said Dr Evans hadn’t just used the skin rash to diagnose that air bubbles had been injected.
Doubts have also been raised over the prosecution’s assertion that Letby attempted to murder two babies by injecting synthetic insulin into their feed bags.
Forensic chemistry expert Professor Alan Wayne Jones says that the type of tests carried out on samples from the newborns were insufficient proof “of foul play in a criminal prosecution for murder”.
Letby is a young, white, English nurse from a reputable, normal background. So it’s not surprising that some people respond to the fact that she has been found guilty of killing babies by saying it hasn’t happened.
Dr Dewi Evans, the prosecution’s star expert witness
Yet Letby’s defence didn’t question the prosecution case that there was a poisoner on the ward. The nurse insisted that “somebody” added insulin to their drips, adding: “It wasn’t me.”
Dr Evans points out his findings were supported by eight specialist doctors during the trial.
Last month he said: “Denial is the natural response to these shocking disclosures.
“In this case, Letby is a young, white, English nurse from a reputable, normal background. So it’s not surprising that some people respond to the fact that she has been found guilty of killing babies by saying it hasn’t happened.”
Those with misgivings about Letby’s guilt are quick to point out that she was never seen injecting a baby or harming them in any way.
But what of the apparently confessional Post-it notes? Letby also kept 257 confidential shift handover sheets from the ward under her bed. Twenty-one of the documents related to 13 children prosecutors said she had harmed.
The nurse also trawled Facebook for the bereaved families.
David Davis points out the Post-it notes also included the words: “WHY ME? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
As for the hoarded documents, he added: “If you didn’t know that she was accused of murder, you’d just think she was being excessively conscientious.”
And he questions why her internet use didn’t throw up any searches for her murder techniques.
The MP told me: “She’s supposed to have killed these children by this exotic method of injecting air. That’s a difficult procedure. You’d think if she was going to employ this method to kill children she would have searched it on Google. But there was nothing.”
As she was taken down to the cells, she turned to the court and cried: “I’m innocent!”
Two juries have now sifted through a mountain of evidence and have found her guilty.
Her attempts to appeal have been declined twice.
It may not be the end for Letby. Operation Hummingbird is still investigating the full four years of her nursing career.
For Dr Evans believes Letby could be responsible for even more deaths.
