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It's the police. Simon Blackwell from Cheshire.
Can we come in? We need to speak to you.
- Yeah, come in. - Thanks. Sorry about coming in…
- Come on. - Please, no!
Not again! No!
- I'll explain everything. - No! I can't!
I know it's upsetting.
Just poke your head up there.
- Okay. - Oh no.
- Lucy? - Yeah.
I'm gonna come in, okay?
- Hello. Are you okay? - Yeah.
Hi, Lucy. Sorry that we've come round so early and woken you.
I'm **** from Chester MIT, the Major Investigation Team.
I'm arresting you on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.
You do not have to say anything, but anything you say may be given in evidence.
I appreciate it's quite the shock.
What we need for you to do now, Lucy, is we need you to get up and get dressed.
- Okay, follow me down. - Yeah.
Please can I see my cat?
Stay here for a sec.
Look.
You're all right.
You know I didn't do it.
- I know you didn't! - I know!
We know that!
It's all right. Look after the boys.
Just go in, Mum. Don't…
Don't look, Mum. Just go.
Mum, just go in.
Okay, jump in there.
Today, detectives took a female health-care worker into custody…
…on suspicion of murdering eight babies…
…and the attempted murder of six others.
We have gone through the evidence case by case
and given you the opportunity to provide explanations throughout.
It was unthinkable that the young nurse sitting in front of us
could be capable of harming these vulnerable babies.
You wrote a note saying, "I am evil. I did this."
It was and is a once-in-a-generation-type case.
It involves 17 babies across 13 families.
If you haven't been involved
in the collapses and deaths of these babies,
why did you write a note which clearly states you were responsible,
that you killed them on purpose?
No comment.
She was the young nurse nobody would have suspected.
One of the most prolific child serial killers in UK history.
Lucy Letby has been found guilty…
…of killing seven newborn children.
But did this unassuming nurse really kill babies in her care?
Today, a panel of international medical experts…
…independently reviewed medical records.
Their findings go against everything that's been heard in court.
In summary, ladies and gentlemen,
we did not find any murders.
This might be some of the craziest true-crime news I have heard in a while.
She is the most prolific serial killer of children ever.
I don't think she's done it.
The story is absolutely tragic and horrifying.
She's innocent. Let her out, bruv.
Is she guilty, or is this woman actually innocent?
This interview is being recorded.
It's now recording every word that is said in this interview.
Introduce yourself, please.
Lucy Letby.
- Date of birth? - Fourth of the first, 1990.
This interview is your opportunity to put forward your response
to the reasons why you've been arrested.
If you are innocent
and have any reasonable explanation, defense, or alibi,
we will search for evidence that will support you.
We're not here to judge you. Do you understand that, Lucy?
Yes.
Okay.
We interviewed Lucy Letby over numerous hours.
At the start, we asked her a wide range of open questions
about what happens at cot side.
So tell me about what happens with a baby's first feed.
So the doctors will tell you when they're happy
for a baby to commence feeds.
Yeah.
And they would be fed via the nasogastric tube.
- Okay. - Um…
And we… Usually, for a premature baby,
we would prefer to give either breast milk or donor breast milk.
We wouldn't usually give formula to a baby of that size.
Okay.
She came across as a competent nurse
who knew how to care for these babies.
However, when we drilled in as to why a specific baby had collapsed,
she became a lot more vague in her replies.
We're gonna talk about ***.
At 16:01 hours on 20th June 2015,
she was born by cesarean section and transferred to the neonatal ward.
At 04:25 hours on 22nd June 2015,
♪ was pronounced deceased.
Is there anything you can tell us about what happened to her?
I don't really remember ***.
Okay.
So baby Zoe collapsed on three separate occasions
during one single night shift.
We knew that Lucy Letby was at cot side,
so why was it she couldn't recall anything?
You can't remember any collapse
or any involvement in the care at that time?
No.
Three weeks before my due date,
I woke up, and my water had broken.
This was it. It was happening.
At the hospital, I got checked out,
and a scan confirmed everything was fine.
So we were ready to meet little Zoe.
But it was not straightforward.
I was in labor for 60 hours.
I felt something wasn't right.
So I insisted I needed a C-section.
The doctor lifted Zoe above the sheet,
but she seemed to be struggling to breathe.
She had to be taken to intensive care.
It was hard looking at her in the incubator.
I couldn't take her out, but I was able to hold her hand.
She was so fragile,
small, and precious.
I became a mummy.
The doctors were telling us that she was responding very well,
that she was responding as expected,
and, um,
there were no concerns.
I was fast asleep when a nurse turned the light on.
She said, "You need to come right now."
I asked, "What's going on?" She said, "There's no time. We need to go."
I remember being wheeled down the long corridor, thinking,
"What's going on?"
I felt the panic in the room.
The doctor was trying everything to keep her heart pumping.
He wasn't giving up.
I wanted him to keep fighting.
But the other doctor put a hand on his shoulder and said,
"You need to stop. You need to let her go."
The doctor was still holding Zoe,
but… he stopped what he was doing.
That was it. It was finished.
It was over.
My husband and I, uh,
we just broke down, and…
I… I…
We were just saying, "What's going on? What's just happened?"
She was okay, so…
I didn't… I… I was just so angry and so sad and so confused, and then…
Yeah.
When Zoe died, we didn't know what had happened.
She'd started to improve.
She wasn't expected to die then.
Why had she deteriorated?
Why didn't she respond to the resuscitation?
But what was an even bigger worry was that Zoe was the third baby to die
in just over two weeks.
Some of those babies showed a strange rash
and didn't respond to resuscitation when we felt they ought to have done.
That is a worry. Why did we have three babies dying so soon together?
Was there something we were missing going on, on the unit?
Although we'd hoped
that those three deaths might have been just bad luck,
unfortunately, it didn't stop.
Babies kept dying
far more frequently than I'd ever known it before on our unit.
By February 16, there'd been nine deaths that had occurred up till then.
It became a very frightening, worrying time.
Some of the consultants asked for an urgent meeting with the risk managers
and with the director of nursing in the hospital,
but they didn't seem particularly concerned.
We'd never encountered anything like this before, so we didn't know what to do.
Then, in June 2016, things came to a head
with two further deaths, and we couldn't explain why they died.
By this stage, there were 13 unexpected deaths.
In the 21 years I've been a consultant, I'd never seen anything like this before.
At that point, we realized something now had to be done.
I was one night at headquarters, quite late,
and I was given three separate reports from the Countess of Chester Hospital.
They documented a spike in numbers of baby deaths
and catastrophic collapses within the neonatal unit.
Between June 2015 and July 2016,
there were 13 deaths.
The most concerning thing from the clinicians, from the doctors,
was that many of those deaths and collapses weren't explainable.
I'm told at this point
that there was a member of staff who had been moved off the unit.
My initial thoughts were maybe that's probably a little bit premature
to try and identify a suspect.
There could have been any number of legitimate explanations
for why so many babies had died.
Were there mistakes made at the hospital?
Was there an uncontrolled infectious disease?
Or could these babies have died naturally?
We needed to understand the medical circumstances
that each of these babies had been through.
So it was crucial that we got independent, credible medical experts
who could give us an objective view
of these babies that had collapsed unexpectedly.
[music fades[
One morning, I was at home, and I discovered this article
about Cheshire Police investigating a neonatal unit
regarding a lot of baby deaths.
And I thought, "Hmm, that's interesting."
"Sounds like my kind of case."
I'd clocked up over 30 years' worth of expertise and experience
looking after sick babies.
I had also clocked up several decades as a medical expert witness
for the criminal court.
I said to the police, "Let's have a look at one case
just to give me an idea of what's going on."
This particular baby was born in good condition,
a good-sized baby, over two kilos,
who had been stable but had suddenly collapsed.
I saw these photographs
of big, marble-sized blood clots under the liver,
plus bleeding in the abdomen as well.
But this looked awful to me.
How on earth could a baby who was doing very nicely
end up with serious liver abnormalities?
And within a few hours, the baby was dead.
I said to the police,
"I want to look at all the case notes over this two-year period."
I eventually got 32 cases
and identified a suspicious event
in about half of them.
Babies whose collapse was unexpected
and unexplained.
This was unprecedented in my experience,
and one had to think the unthinkable.
Someone had intentionally harmed these babies.
That took our investigation into a different sphere.
It was that sickening reality that this could be murder of a baby.
The next question we had to answer was,
"By who?"
We examined everybody who could've been in the area
each time a baby died or collapsed.
Which doctors were there?
Which nurses were there? Which family members were there?
Who had access to the drugs? Who had access to the medical records?
And then keep testing.
Who else could've been there? Who else could've done this?
When we were looking at the information, a clear pattern emerged.
Out of 25 suspicious deaths and collapses,
one name continued to come out consistently.
This nurse had a central role
in all these events.
And that was Lucy Letby.
I remember the first day of lectures.
I'd walked into this massive lecture room.
I didn't know anyone.
So I went off and sat on my own.
But then another girl came over to me.
She sat down and said, "Really nice to meet you. My name's Lucy."
There was something about her smile that put me at ease straightaway.
And after four days at university,
we were basically inseparable.
We were in lectures together.
I'd go over to hers for dinner. She'd come over to mine for dinner.
When we went clubbing, we would go together.
If we'd been out for the night, I'd stay at hers or she would stay at mine.
We'd go to the cinema.
Basically, everything that we did, we did together.
She had a very quirky sense of humor.
It was just always… fun.
Lucy was an only child, so her parents basically doted on her.
They were so proud of the fact that she had gone to university
and she was going to become a nurse.
She wanted to learn. She wanted to know everything,
to make sure she knew what she was doing.
Lucy and I had our first placement together
at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
We were both really quite excited about it.
But straightaway, the nurses in Chester were quite… cliquey.
I remember we went to the staff room to have lunch,
and the nurses who were there were all sat chatting.
I remember Lucy trying to join in with the conversation,
and they just ignored her.
There was this kind of feeling that the nurses didn't want us there,
the medical team didn't want you there.
I started to think that some people were actively
going out of their way to make things hard for Lucy.
There was absolutely nothing I can think that made them treat her that way,
except for the fact that they didn't like… that she was shy and quiet.
I knew that I didn't want to stay at the Countess,
but Lucy applied for a job in the neonatal unit.
I didn't entirely understand why she wanted to stay,
considering the way some of the nurses and some of the consultants behaved.
I guess you could describe graduation as a bittersweet time.
My family and her family arranged to have dinner together.
Lucy's parents were so proud of her graduating.
They put a big thing in their local paper.
But it was really sad as well
because I was worried how she was going to cope.
Lucy was a quiet nurse.
She seemed conscientious. She seemed keen.
She seemed competent, as far as I could tell.
There was nothing about her that made her stand out to me.
But by the end of 2015,
all of us consultants were becoming concerned
about so many unusual deaths on the unit.
When a staffing review was done, one common factor emerged.
There was only one person who was on duty for all of those deaths,
and it was Lucy Letby.
I wasn't sure what to make of that at first.
Is it pure coincidence, or is she causing harm?
So we decided to discuss this with the neonatal nurse manager.
But she was absolutely adamant
that Lucy Letby was a competent, dedicated nurse,
and it was unthinkable
that there should be any suggestion she might be harming patients.
Unfortunately, we continued to have more deaths occurring at night,
and Lucy Letby had been on duty for all of those deaths.
So the senior managers decided eventually
that Lucy Letby should be moved onto day duties.
The deaths at night and the collapses at night stopped,
but shockingly, they started to recur during the day.
At that stage, we, as the consultant body,
realized that we could not delay any further.
Lucy Letby had to be removed from the neonatal unit.
Just under a year after the investigation started,
I received an email from Lucy Letby directly from her NHS email account.
She quoted the operation name, which wasn't out, really, publicly.
She's effectively aware of colleagues being spoken to, and she's not been,
and wants to know when we're gonna speak to her.
I found it interesting
because I thought, "Well, maybe she has got something to tell us."
We needed to ask Lucy Letby questions,
and the best way to do that, the only way to do that,
was to arrest her.
- Hello. Lucy, is it? - Yes.
My name's **** from Cheshire Police. Is it okay to step in two seconds?
- Uh, yes. - Yeah? Thank you.
- Is there anybody else with you? - Yeah.
- Who's here at the moment? - My dad.
One of the officers is gonna go up and just grab your dad.
- I need to have a quick chat with you. - I'll go and grab your dad.
Do you wanna come and take a seat?
Just to let you know, this is a body-worn camera,
and you are being recorded at the moment, okay?
Okay.
Are these the lights for the living room?
- Yeah. - Yeah. Which one? Ah, there we go.
Lucy, I need you to listen to me very, very carefully
because I'm gonna read out some information.
- Okay. - It's important you listen to me.
"Between March 2015 and July 2016,
the neonate team of the Countess of Chester Hospital
experienced high mortality rates of babies in their care."
"Following an internal review in the Countess of Chester Hospital,
the case was referred to Cheshire Police,
who have been conducting an investigation."
"As a result of the inquiries and evidence gathered,
the offenses of murder and attempted murder have been identified,
and you have been identified as a suspect of these offenses."
You don't have to say anything,
but it may harm your defense if you do not mention something you later rely on.
Anything you do say may be given in evidence.
The arrest is necessary for the prompt and effective investigation of the offense
and to protect a child or other vulnerable person.
Do you understand what I've just read out to you?
Lucy, what's gonna happen now
is you're gonna go to the police station to be questioned about these allegations.
So these officers are gonna go with you upstairs now.
You are now in our custody. We have to stay with you
to make sure you remain with us and nothing else happens to you or to us.
If there's any footwear that you need to get on or…?
Are you gonna go in the clothes you've got on? Um…
'Cause you're in a tracksuit, so it's probably appropriate.
So we'll get you some footwear.
I just…
You got any shoes?
Everything else is gonna have to remain untouched,
so we can't have you move anything around or taking anything else, really.
Are you gonna search the house?
It will be searched, yeah.
Can I say goodbye to him?
- To your cat? Of course. - Yeah.
This is just for transportation reasons, okay?
It's just to make sure that you're safe in the car
and that we are as well, all right?
As soon as we get to custody, the cuffs can be taken off you, okay?
The phone woke me up around 6:00 a.m.
The person said,
"This is Cheshire Police."
"We are calling you to let you know we have arrested someone
on suspicion of the murder of your daughter."
All of a sudden, I realized
that someone could've purposely targeted my child.
I… I…
We just were completely…
lost for words.
Right, okay.
Just step out of the car for me.
Okay, just put your arms out for me.
Just something there.
What's your current occupation?
Children's nurse.
Do you wanna take a seat there, Lucy?
A health-care worker has been arrested
on suspicion of murdering eight babies and the attempted murder of six others
at the Countess of Chester Hospital after a year-long…
As soon as I saw her face,
I recognized the nurse straightaway.
When I visited Zoe for the first time,
she had a clipboard, but she wasn't actually doing any jobs.
She was just there, watching us.
Today's arrest confirms the dreadful possibility
that newborns might have been murdered.
This news alert popped up on my phone.
I was shaking. I was having, like, palpitations.
My heart was going.
"Why have they arrested Lucy?"
It was just complete disbelief.
I just thought it was all a horrible mistake.
Okay, this interview is being recorded. I am Detective Constable Lee.
- The other officer present is… - 3201 Vikki Holt.
Please introduce yourself again for me, Lucy.
Lucy Letby.
The ultimate objective for interviewing Lucy Letby
was all about getting the truth as to what happened to these babies
and ultimately provide her with ample opportunity
to give an alternative explanation
as to why these babies rapidly fell so ill or did collapse.
So, in general terms, during the resuscitation,
what are the roles--
Usually, the medical staff have the airway.
They would be delivering the resuscitation drugs.
- So two people would be doing the drugs. - Okay.
And then ideally have somebody supporting the parents.
She was very knowledgeable. She was calm. She was engaging.
And when talking about the processes involved in the care of these babies,
she knew the answers to the questions.
So who takes the notes during the resus attempts?
Ideally, you would have a scribe there.
So, usually, one of the junior doctors would take on,
or one of the nurses would take on the scribing role.
But when she was challenged over certain points,
particularly her actions around the time of the collapses,
I think she did become slightly more evasive.
Just prior to the collapse, Lucy,
had you had any cause to go into Nursery One at all?
I don't remember.
Right. Were you working in Nursery One?
I don't think I was, but I don't recall which baby I was looking after.
Okay.
And you… you don't remember
the process of how you ended up in Nursery One, with the resus?
No.
She would spend some time thinking about a reply
and would almost leave it what felt like a significant amount of time
before answering.
Are you aware of why he required resuscitation?
No, I don't recall the events leading up to that.
I just know that he had resuscitation.
These answers raised some big questions for us.
Lucy Letby was in custody for many hours,
but we did not gather enough evidence to charge her.
And there was lots of information still to find out.
So after the interview, Lucy Letby was bailed,
which gave us a chance to gather further expert evidence
and take a really forensic look at the materials we found on the searches.
There was a huge amount of material to look through.
We found a box which had the word "keep" on the front,
and within it were baby handover sheets from the hospital in Chester.
They were highly confidential documents
that contained personal information,
their name,
date of birth, and an overview of their medical condition at that time.
On closer inspection, some of these documents
related to the babies who'd collapsed and subsequently died,
which was obviously deeply concerning.
Lucy Letby wrote lots of things and clearly retained a lot of material.
So there was a lot of diaries
and Post-it notes.
We'd uncovered some deeply concerning pieces of evidence.
It was clear that we had to get Lucy Letby back into custody.
We needed to ask Lucy Letby some very direct and difficult questions.
It's the police. Simon Blackwell from Cheshire.
Can we come in? We need to speak to you.
Lucy?
Yes.
I'm gonna come in, okay?
Hi, Lucy.
Based on new and additional evidence that's been obtained,
I'm arresting you for several offenses.
- Okay, follow me down. - Yeah.
The strategy at this point became quite simple.
There was a lot of evidence, so it was clear
that I needed to stick to the facts that she couldn't dispute.
If she could provide an alternative explanation,
then now was the time.
This is a continuation of a series of interviews, Lucy.
As you can see, the red light has come on.
This interview is also being visually recorded
and monitored upstairs.
Your home address was searched,
and a large quantity of these handover sheets
were found at your home address.
Can you explain that?
They're just sheets that have inadvertently come home in my pocket.
I've not emptied my pockets before coming home.
There were almost 250 handover sheets
which had been stored in a chronological order,
so in date order.
She was clearly a thorough and methodical person.
She was aware of the confidential information that they contained,
and she definitely knew that she shouldn't have had them.
So the idea that she could have mistakenly taken home
250 confidential medical records was astonishing.
Explain to me why you put them all together in a folder.
I didn't know how to dispose of them myself,
so I didn't dispose of them.
You didn't know how to dispose of them?
No.
Have you previously taken any of these handover sheets home
and disposed of them?
No, I don't think so.
'Cause I haven't got a shredder, and that's how I would…
that's how I'd have to get rid of them.
During the police searches,
we found a shredder in one of the bedrooms at her home address,
so her account just didn't add up.
She could have herself shredded them confidentially
and got rid of the documents, but they were retained.
Do those sheets that are in your folder that you kept at your home address, Lucy,
relate to babies which you were designated nurse for?
Yes.
If we retain something, we retain it for a reason,
because it's important to us.
During the searches, we found a number of diaries.
When we started to look through them, we stumbled upon some worrying detail.
There was entries where she'd write initials down
which matched the initials of suspicious cases
that we were investigating.
My colleague asked you about the collapses of the babies,
and you said that you recorded those.
- Why? - I think I've made reference.
I don't know in what way I've recorded them.
Right.
There were a couple of dates
where we know that one of the babies had collapsed
that she marked with an asterisk.
I think there were some days in my diary that I've…
I've asterisked or marked days that were…
that we had a baby that was particularly unwell.
And what was the purpose of that?
Don't know. Just for my own…
Your own what?
I don't know. My own reflection, I suppose.
Why would you want to reflect on those, Lucy?
I don't talk to anybody about it.
I just internalize things and do it in my own time.
From our point of view,
she was documenting the baby that got attacked on that day.
During the second lot of searches,
we located a black bin bag in her garage.
There was a piece of paper
with some concerning notes written upon it.
I'm gonna read you an extract from it, and it says,
"Murderer. Murder."
"No one will ever know what happened and why."
Explain these comments to me, Lucy.
No comment.
Tell me about the comment "murderer."
No comment.
Are you suggesting there that you are a murderer?
No comment.
Tell me about,
"No one will ever know what happened and why."
- No comment. - What does that mean, Lucy?
No comment.
You could see her starting to comprehend,
starting to understand where this evidence was pointing towards.
Lucy, since you left the unit,
887 babies of 32 weeks' gestation or greater
were born at the Countess of Chester Hospital
and admitted to the NNU.
None of these babies since you left died or deteriorated unexpectedly.
Have you got any comment you wish to make about this?
No comment.
With all the evidence we have available at this time,
it clearly shows that you were the only person present
for all of the 25 collapses and the deaths of the 17 babies
and would suggest you are responsible.
No one else, Lucy. Only you.
Lucy, f there is an explanation for why you are responsible,
now is your final opportunity to explain why this is to us.
No comment.
Okay.
Okay, the time by my watch is 16:10 hours,
and this interview is now concluded.
Lucy Letby had been spoken to in detail about all of these babies.
It was the right time now to take stock and review what evidence there was,
and at this point, she was bailed again.
I really struggled to imagine what Lucy was going through when she was arrested
and she was being interrogated for days.
All I wanted to do was tell her that I was there if she needed anything,
and not being able to do that was heartbreaking.
But I never doubted that she was completely innocent.
We are now at the position in the investigation
where there was lots of information from interview, lots of witness accounts.
There was more expert evidence.
And when it was systematically pieced together,
it was clear that everything pointed to Lucy Letby's involvement.
Is she upstairs?
Yeah, I think so.
Hello. It's all right. It's Cheshire Police. Okay?
Lucy, can I just turn the light on here?
- Yeah. - Wanna go and take a seat?
Just…
Lucy, listen to me for a minute. I'm **** from Cheshire Police.
I'm arresting you on suspicion of the murder of ****,
the murder of ****,
the murder of ****.
Did you hear all that, Lucy?
What we're gonna need to do is just get you dressed, okay?
The officers are gonna take you back to the police station up in Chester, okay?
Lucy, do you wanna get some clothes on?
It's just for transporting purposes, okay?
Does that feel too tight?
You've got a little bit of movement in there, okay?
Just got to make sure you can't get out.
Just take a seat there for us.
Can I just get in here?
A nurse has gone on trial
accused of killing seven babies in a neonatal unit.
Lucy Letby looked after the most vulnerable babies.
Arriving in a prison van for trial.
Accused of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder ten others.
All the time, you're just thinking, "Have we got it right?"
"Has the evidence been tested enough for it to stand the scrutiny of trial?"
Opening the prosecution case, Nicholas Johnson KC told the jury
the collapse and deaths of the 17 children were not naturally occurring tragedies.
They were the work of the woman in the dock.
All I could think about was Lucy
and the things she was going to have to listen to people saying about her.
Preparing for the trial was very challenging.
There wasn't one day I wasn't thinking about Zoe.
I wanted to do her justice,
but I didn't want to go to trial and be biased.
I knew Lucy Letby was going to take the stand,
so I needed to face her.
She wore a light gray top and dark gray trousers
and spoke only to confirm her name.
We had about 50, 60 journalists from around the world
covering this court case.
I was sat on the front row nearest to Lucy Letby,
and that was my vantage point throughout the trial.
At the start of the trial,
the prosecution's opening statement was, in itself, 90-plus pages.
They said there was a number of ways
that Lucy Letby inflicted harm on those babies.
They ranged from physical trauma to the throat or stomach…
They said that she removed airway tubes,
which desaturate the baby's oxygen supply
to cause a deterioration in that way.
She also would use overfeeding,
which inflates the stomach and pushes the diaphragm towards the lungs
and restricts the breathing.
She changed her methods and was creative to what she needed to do
to cause the deaths and collapses.
And now the prosecution needed to prove that.
For the last seven months, prosecutor Nick Johnson KC
has been setting out the case against Lucy Letby.
Now he has his chance to question her directly
about allegations that she murdered and harmed babies in her care.
For the first time since Zoe's death,
I was seeing Lucy Letby.
I sat three meters away from her.
She looked at me a dozen times, staring.
Every time she'd look at me, I'd have to look down.
The atmosphere in the courtroom
was extremely tense.
As she gave evidence, she seemed to have a good recall
of almost all of the 17 children
that she was said to have deliberately harmed, except one.
When she was asked if she remembered Zoe,
she paused, and then she said no.
The whole room went sort of…
She was very businesslike in court,
as she was, we were told, in her police interviews.
We're gonna talk about ***.
There's six pages there of her medical charts
that you've got your name next to.
Is it fair to say you were involved somewhat with her care?
Yes.
Tell us about what happened to ***.
I don't really remember ***.
Do you recall getting involved with the resuscitation at all?
Not that I remember.
I told the court that baby Zoe was stable.
There was no reason why she should suddenly deteriorate, let alone collapse.
In the clinical notes, they noticed this peculiar skin discoloration
that nurses and doctors said they'd never seen before.
And there was also air found in a blood vessel in the body,
what's known as air embolism.
It's just like an airlock in your central heating,
which will stop the circulation.
I reviewed the literature
in relation to air embolus in newborn babies,
one of which was from two Canadian doctors,
Lee and Tanswell, published in 1989.
They'd observed a very peculiar form of skin discoloration
as a result of air in the circulation.
This was more or less identical
to what the doctors described
for several of the babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Dr. Evans gave his considered opinion,
and the defense pushed back and said, "Hang on a minute."
"There were differing reasons
why these babies took a turn for the worse."
In some cases, they were ill at birth and just got worse,
or in other cases, the treatment was not up to scratch,
and that contributed to that baby collapsing.
They were saying, "You don't have enough evidence
to say that it's injection of air."
I explained to the jury that babies on a neonatal unit
are connected to a very sophisticated intravenous pump,
which stops air bubbles going through the line.
If air cannot get into the circulation accidentally,
then air can only get into the circulation
as a result of somebody doing it intentionally.
I told the jury that, in my opinion, little Zoe's deterioration
was a result of having air injected directly into her bloodstream.
Dr. Evans said her collapse is consistent
with the effect of an air embolus
caused by an injection of air into her circulation
when the designated nurse was not in the room,
but you were.
Right.
Have you got any explanation to that, Lucy?
No.
From the evidence provided, Lucy,
it shows that you were present when *** collapsed.
Do you agree with that?
You were working in Nursery One when a nurse was in there.
She had gone out for a reason.
If that's what she says. I don't recall specifically where I was.
Is there a reason why you remembered
the administering of the medication and not the collapses, Lucy?
No, I've only remembered the medication from looking through the notes
and seeing that I obviously did sign for medications.
Is it because you remember the administration of the medication?
Because that's when you took the opportunity to attack…
No.
…and administer air?
- No. - No?
No.
Listening to all the evidence around Zoe's death was very
painful.
The prosecution explained how Lucy Letby entered the room and
inserted air
into
the tube.
I was looking over at Lucy Letby to see what was her reaction to that.
But there was nothing in the dock at any point
where she was visibly upset about the harrowing detail
of what she was supposed to have done.
There was nothing. Zero.
What did they want her to do? Sit there and sob every day,
howling, crying?
Pleading her innocence all the time?
'Cause I don't think that's… realistic or feasible.
After baby Zoe's collapse, Lucy Letby did message colleagues…
making them aware that she'd sadly passed away
and went into detail about the parents' reaction to it as well.
Parents are distraught, Dad's screaming,
and it was shocking, and she felt numb.
There was a contradiction there
as to somebody who said, "I can't recall anything about this."
We provided Lucy Letby with her text messages
to aid her recollection of events.
She stuck to the same account
that she couldn't recall any further details.
I don't think it's unusual to text a colleague
to let them know that someone's passed away.
And I don't think it's unusual to text a colleague
to say you've had a bad day.
It's a lot of pressure.
You might be on shift for sort of 14 hours.
If a child starts to deteriorate,
it's the bedside nurse that's going to pick up on that.
It's scary.
The way you process it is through talking to your colleagues.
So I don't understand what motive they were trying to make.
During the trial, Lucy Letby was asked about her Facebook searches.
Lucy Letby spent some time looking up Zoe's parents
and searching on Facebook both Mum and Dad, which was odd.
On 25th June, you did a Facebook search for ***.
And on 25th June again, you then searched for *****.
Do you agree you made those searches on Facebook, Lucy?
I don't think I recall doing it, but, yes, I must have if it's there, yeah.
Were you looking for photographs of the babies, Lucy?
No.
The defense said there's nothing sinister in these searches at all.
Effectively, they said, "She's just a bit nosy."
- You don't know what you were looking for? - No.
There was a lot of circumstantial evidence in this case
that, in the cold light of day,
didn't always look good for Letby.
But there's nothing illegal about texting a colleague
or searching for somebody on Facebook.
To prove the case beyond doubt,
the prosecution needed something more concrete.
A lot of the evidence in this case was dense and complicated, medically.
But two cases, according to the prosecution,
there was incontrovertible evidence. There's no dispute.
We've got a record of this happening, and she can't deny it.
There were two babies in the trial that Lucy Letby was accused of harming
by administering insulin to them when they didn't need it.
It's extremely dangerous to give anyone insulin when they don't need it.
It can cause coma and even death.
Whoever gave him his insulin would have done so
knowing it would've placed him in harm's way
and could have caused his death
or led to him having irreversible life-changing injuries.
Do you agree with that statement, Lucy?
Yes.
In court, Letby's defense team
had to agree that this was done deliberately.
There was a poisoner on the ward,
but it must've been somebody else.
Even Lucy Letby agreed that the artificial insulin
had been administered into babies and had caused collapses.
So somebody's done that.
When they asked Lucy,
"Do you accept that there'd been synthetic insulin in the baby's system?"
that's the evidence that's being presented to her. She can't not accept it.
But by saying, "Yes, I accept it,"
it was almost like they were trying to trap her into saying, "And I did it."
Lucy Letby wasn't just on shift at crucial times.
Her signature was on vital medication, including a nutrition bag,
which our experts were saying was contaminated with insulin.
You've confirmed your signature on the TPN prescription.
- Did you administer… - No.
- …insulin into the bags of TPN, Lucy? - No.
These nutrition bags were kept in the same locked fridge as the insulin,
a fridge that Lucy Letby had access to with the keys.
Lucy Letby had a clear opportunity to commit these crimes.
Now, it could have been accidental, or it was deliberate,
and the Crown's case was always that it was deliberate sabotage.
Letby's defense team struggled to counter that.
When you look at all the evidence that was presented,
objectively, it couldn't have been anyone else.
The question to you is, did you administer insulin?
No.
Because the experts think someone has.
You were caring for him.
I didn't.
- Do you know who did? - No.
Now the jury had evidence
of a baby who had been deliberately poisoned with some substance.
To use the vernacular,
it was a smoking gun.
Assessing the character of Lucy Letby,
it's fair to say there is a missing piece of the jigsaw,
and that's the question of, "Why has all this happened?"
The one thing that stood out
was the Post-it notes found in the police searches.
These notes are quite mesmerizing.
They're like a Jackson Pollock painting
but with words.
There's no room. They're completely filled up with odd phrases, odd words.
It's a confusing picture.
"I killed them,"
"I am evil," "I did this," is a shocking thing to read.
What is it that's driven her to write that,
and what is it that she's done
that's made her believe that she is an evil person?
You wrote a note saying, "I am evil. I did this."
"I don't deserve to live."
"I killed them on purpose."
"I am a horrible, evil person."
Explain why this is to us.
No comment.
In everybody's mind, you think, "Done deal."
"Game over."
"She's committed these crimes, and she's confessed to them on paper."
One thing I'll never understand
is why the defense didn't call any expert witnesses.
You had the one from the prosecution who was able to say whatever they wanted,
and I felt like Lucy didn't have anyone
to stand with her and say, "These are the other explanations."
The jury in the trial of the nurse Lucy Letby
has retired to consider its verdict.
Waiting for the verdict was very
stressful.
I felt helpless.
I remember just constantly being like,
"When this is over,"
you know, "when the truth is out,
when they realize they've made a mistake,
this is what we're going to do. These are the plans we're going to make."
This goes one of two ways.
Either she's innocent
and she's this terrible victim of miscarriage of justice
who's had her whole life turned upside down,
or, alternatively,
she's a child serial killer.
The stakes couldn't get any higher.
We want to bring you this very urgent breaking news.
Lucy Letby has been found guilty…
…of murdering seven babies, of attempting to murder six others…
Calculating, cunning, cruel, cowardly serial killer Lucy Letby.
Tonight, she eclipses Myra Hindley and Beverley Allitt
to become the worst child murderer in British modern history.
After a ten-month trial, Lucy Letby has now been found guilty.
This is probably the most evil woman I've ever heard of.
The most prolific child serial killer of modern times.
I just couldn't imagine, like, why they'd done this.
Once I got over the disbelief of all of it,
I was just really scared for her.
I felt relieved, happy,
and then instantly… broken
because now this is true,
and… I can't escape this reality.
There was no elation or satisfaction from myself or the team.
For those families, it was just a… overwhelmingly
difficult, traumatic… outcome.
Lucy Letby, because the seriousness of your offenses is exceptionally high,
you will spend the rest of your life in prison.
I felt I needed to say sorry to my daughter.
In my head, I failed… as a mum.
I was asleep when this was happening,
and I…
stayed up all throughout… the painful…
labor, birth,
and when she needed me, I wasn't there.
This is not something I…
forgive myself.
Having followed the Lucy Letby case from the moment of arrest
and seen this play out,
as a barrister,
I was deeply concerned.
We have to remember,
no one saw her do anything wrong.
There's no CCTV.
There was no motive.
None.
Joining us now is Mark McDonald, criminal barrister. Good morning to you.
Morning.
What are your thoughts on a very complicated, very emotional case?
It is a complicated and it is an emotional case,
but it actually follows a long line of convictions
that have happened in this country and internationally.
Many of those convictions
have been found to be miscarriages of justice.
Each one of the hypotheses that were put forward by the experts
was a theory.
The jury have been sitting through all of this evidence.
- They have made that decision-- - And they may have got it wrong.
It was the first time
that somebody had spoken publicly and said, "Hold on here."
"I think something's gone seriously wrong in this case."
Following the interview, I was approached by Lucy's parents.
They were distraught.
They had nowhere to go, and they asked me to help,
and I said yes.
So I started looking at the case.
Now, the defense didn't call any expert evidence at all.
I don't know why.
Whether or not they just thought
the charges were so ridiculous they wouldn't be needed, I don't know.
But I wish they had.
When I was instructed, I was presented with one narrative.
There was no questioning in relation to her conviction.
Letby was guilty.
There were newspapers that had the words "evil" across them.
But they knew the flaws of the way the prosecution had presented their case.
There were several times throughout the trial
that they referred to scribbles,
where Lucy had written her thoughts down.
"I am evil." "I did this."
That was the note that went on all the front pages the next day.
What didn't go on the front page were the notes which kind of contradicted that.
Words like "slander,"
"discrimination,"
"victimization,"
"bastards."
Okay, Lucy, I am really concerned about what you've written down
and what you've implied you might've done.
Anything you want to tell us?
I just wrote it 'cause everything had got on top of me.
It was when I had not long found out I'd been removed from the unit.
I felt like they were… blaming my practice,
that I might have hurt them without knowing, through my practice,
and that made me feel guilty.
Do you want to elaborate on some of the things you put down on there?
I was blaming myself.
But not because I'd done something.
Because of the way people were making me feel.
I felt like I'd only ever done my best for those babies,
and then people were trying to say that my practice wasn't good
or that I'd done something, and I just… I couldn't cope with it.
And I did just not wanna be here anymore.
You say, "There are no words. "I can't breathe. I can't focus."
I just felt like it was all just
spiraling out of control. I just didn't know how to feel about it
or what was gonna happen or what to do.
Just felt that the trust and the team were trying to imply
that it was something that I'd done.
Was there any individuals that… implied that?
Yeah, some of the consultants.
Can you give a reason why they might wanna victimize you or…
point the finger towards you?
It crossed my mind at times whether they were trying to put the blame on me
for something that somebody else had done.
When Lucy Letby was taken off the unit,
she was given counseling and support by occupational therapy
at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
She was told to write down her feelings and her thoughts
as a form of therapy.
It wasn't a confession note… at all.
If we're to believe that she did write the notes
shortly after she was removed from the unit,
her version of events were plausible.
In terms of overwhelming fear and panic,
what were you afraid of?
That they were going to think I had done something wrong.
Okay, and what would happen if they thought that?
That this would happen.
- Right. - That the police would get involved.
- And is that what happened-- - And I'd lose my job.
And was it a job that you enjoyed?
Yeah.
Yeah, I loved my job.
Okay.
From the defense perspective, she was a devoted nurse
who had been moved away from the job she loved,
who was mentally anguished, distraught.
In many ways, the Post-it note neatly sums up the complexities of the case.
At first blush,
it does look like just a plain confession.
But when you delve deeper,
things were not so straightforward.
Up until the trial and the verdict,
I would write to Lucy, and she would write back.
I would always try to be really positive.
And now I don't know what to say.
"Maisie, there are no words to describe my situation,
but knowing that I have your friendship, regardless,
is so important and special to me."
"I have my own room and toilet."
"I'm able to shower each day and go outside for a walk."
"Getting outside is so important, even though it's a bit chilly."
"I miss Tigger and Smudge so much. It's heartbreaking
that they cannot understand why I'm no longer there."
"They must think I'm a terrible mummy."
"Mum and Dad are taking good care of them, though, and are no doubt spoiling them."
"I'm trying to do all that I can to remain strong and positive."
"I'm determined to get through this. I will not give up."
I'm sorry.
Something quite spectacular took place in the summer of '24.
A journalist in America for The New Yorker magazine
dissected everything that may have gone wrong at that trial
and turned the spotlight from Lucy Letby
to the Countess of Chester Hospital.
And what the article did was sow the seeds of doubt,
asking the ultimate question,
"Was this unit fit for purpose?"
And, "Was Lucy Letby being used as a scapegoat?"
This was a unit in crisis.
Nurses were crying at the end of the shift because of the stress,
because of them being overworked,
because of them having so many babies on the unit
and not having the staff or the resources to run it.
I remember being left maybe once a week
on my own with a high-dependency baby
and being told, "So they'll probably be fine,
but if they go blue, just give us a shout."
A student nurse should never be left alone with a high-dependency baby, ever.
One of the most compelling parts of the prosecution case,
certainly in their opening speech,
was the rota that had the Xs down the whole column.
The purpose of such a rota is simple. It's compelling evidence for the jury,
and they can say that she was always there when something went wrong.
But the fact is we know this is a very small unit,
and she did extra shifts.
We also know that Lucy Letby had done extra courses
and was more qualified than many of the nurses that worked on the unit,
which meant that she got the sickest babies.
So the real question is, it seems to me,
it would be odd if she wasn't there when something went wrong.
During the trial, the prosecution kept on saying to the jury,
"The babies stopped dying when Lucy Letby was taken off the unit."
But the moment that Lucy Letby was taken off that unit,
it was downgraded,
which meant it did not receive as many babies that were seriously ill,
which meant the mortality rates were always going to drop.
I felt that it was important to expose the flaws in what had taken place.
But to be able to do that, I needed to change the narrative.
I'm joined now by Mark McDonald.
Mark McDonald joins us now.
I think I've got quite a lot of evidence
to say that there are some real concerns here.
Suddenly, it started to mushroom.
Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering seven infants
and attempting to murder seven more, which, in my view,
is a clear miscarriage of justice
by a judicial system that could not manage
admittedly difficult statistical and medical scientific evidence.
Central to the prosecution case was a man called Dr. Dewi Evans.
He was their lead prosecution expert.
He was the person who had seen these medical notes
right from the beginning and come up with the initial hypothesis
of how each baby, he says, died or became ill.
It all centered around him
and his reliability as an expert witness.
During the trial, the most remarkable thing had happened.
A Court of Appeal judge sent an email to the trial judge
criticizing, in very robust terms, Dr. Dewi Evans,
saying that he would tailor his evidence
depending upon who was instructing him.
In short, he is biased.
Why would a senior judge who's not involved in the trial
let the trial judge know the serious concerns he had
in relation to the reliability of Dr. Dewi Evans?
But my problem was that the Court of Appeal had come to the view
that Dr. Dewi Evans was a reliable expert.
So what I needed to do was to find out
whether or not what he was saying was correct.
I needed not the person who read the book and became the expert.
I needed the person who wrote the book.
I was in the middle of harvest on the farm and quite busy
when an email appeared on my phone.
It was from a lawyer in the UK.
A paper that I had written in 1989 on air embolism had been used
to convict a nurse in an ICU in the UK.
Dr. Shoo Lee was absolutely crucial.
It was his paper, his research.
If it wasn't correctly interpreted,
does that mean that Dr. Dewi Evans got it wrong?
I was worried
because if my paper had been misinterpreted,
then we've got a big problem on our hands.
I looked at the evidence, and I realized that they did not describe
the kind of skin discoloration that were diagnostic of air embolism.
What they had described
was skin discoloration due to hypoxia, or lack of oxygen.
This means that the conviction was potentially wrong.
I was very troubled.
Potentially, a young woman could be in jail for the rest of her life
and to die in prison for the wrong reason.
I told Mark McDonald that I would assist in the case,
and I would convene a panel of 14 of the top experts from around the world
whose expertise, credibility, and knowledge were beyond reproach.
Our aim was to write a detailed report
about the causes of death or injury in each of the cases.
Mr. McDonald is representing his client, and he's got a job to do.
We've always said that we would invite any challenge
because I think challenge is good.
And so we looked forward to hearing what they'd got to say.
Coming to London, I felt a tremendous pressure.
We were going to convey the results of the panel
whose opinions would have a huge bearing on the outcomes of this case,
not only for Lucy Letby
but also for the families, for the public, and for the judicial system.
We are surrounded.
Hello, everybody.
You're absolutely convinced that an innocent woman has been sentenced?
Yes, I am.
- Thank you for your time. - We've got to get started.
Right, we're going to start a little early since there are one or two of you here.
What we're here to do is to present a report
which is the idea,
the genesis of Dr. Shoo Lee, who's sitting next to me.
With no more ado, may I introduce, uh, Dr. Shoo Lee,
uh, the star of today's show.
Thank you.
"Here is the star of the show."
This is not a show.
There is no star.
This is nothing to smile about.
The audacity from a politician to introduce someone like this,
it is disgusting.
Just to summarize all the findings we had
in terms of the medical problems that we are seeing,
we found that the medical histories were incomplete.
There was misdiagnosis of diseases in these babies,
inadequate numbers of appropriately trained personnel in the unit,
and difficulty in finding a doctor when the need arose.
Professor Lee was very clear
that harm had not been deliberately inflicted
on any of the babies,
and it was substandard care that had led to the babies collapsing.
In some of them, their death.
It's frustrating because in some of the criticisms,
there's a kernel of truth.
We were understaffed.
That's generally true in most departments, on most wards in the NHS.
But we'd had those same staffing pressures before 2015, 2016,
and we'd not had those increased deaths then.
So blaming a colleague, which is a dreadful thing to do,
for possibly murdering and attempting to murder babies
is the worst way in the world to try and cover up
problems and inadequacies on the neonatal unit.
One of the first things I did was look to the survival rates of babies in Chester
prior to all the deaths and all of the collapses.
And the survival rate was as good as the official figures
for England and Wales for those years.
This was not a failing unit.
They had to resuscitate the baby using…
We went through case by case of each baby.
Now, the allegation is that baby four was a stable baby
after the baby was born and admitted to the NICU.
This was not a stable baby, as alleged by the prosecution witness.
I wasn't warned they were gonna bring up my daughter's case.
This baby was born after prolonged premature rupture of membranes.
If the membrane is ruptured,
infection can ascend.
The mother should be given antibiotics right away
so that the baby can be protected from any infection.
In this case, that was not done.
Once my water had broken,
they should've given me antibiotics quicker.
They failed me. They failed Zoe.
But every doctor, nurse, and expert all clearly said
Zoe was improving.
She was getting better. She was getting stronger.
There was delay in starting antibiotics
and delay in starting treatment for the respiratory distress.
We did not find any evidence of air embolism.
Well, I don't agree with Dr. Lee.
He's not produced any new evidence.
All he's done is produce new opinion.
The decision of the jury
was approved by three eminent, experienced Court of Appeal judges.
That should be the end of it, in my opinion.
Our conclusion of this panel, therefore,
there was no medical evidence to support malfeasance causing death or injury
in any of the 17 cases in the trial.
There were serious problems
related to medical care of patients at this hospital.
There were problems related to teamwork
and interdisciplinary collaboration at the Countess of Chester Neonatal Unit.
In summary, ladies and gentlemen, we did not find any murders.
If there was no murder, then there was no murderer.
And so why was Lucy Letby in jail?
Baby killer or victim?
You can see the level of interest in this case
that has gripped the UK and beyond.
If it's not Lucy Letby,
then there is clearly something else within that hospital
that was fundamentally going wrong.
I'd love your calls. Do you have doubts over the conviction of Lucy Letby?
The press conference was a game changer.
People were no longer sitting on the fence.
Please tell me I'm not the only person at the moment thinking about Lucy Letby
and the fact that it seems that she has wrongfully been convicted.
Suddenly, she wasn't this evil person anymore,
this angel of death.
Suddenly, people were asking the question,
"Is Lucy Letby innocent?"
Nah, bruv. We don't think she killed those babies.
My head is absolutely blown by this.
In a lot of the serial-killer documentaries,
they had a weird history. They were killing animals.
They weren't like Lucy Letby.
I don't think she's done it.
Some people are claiming
that we consultants had a vendetta against Lucy Letby.
Where's your evidence for that?
I've been accused online of killing babies,
which is shocking.
I live with two guilts.
Guilt that we let the babies down,
and tiny, tiny, tiny guilt,
"Did we get the wrong person?"
There's a guilt, you know, just in case… miscarriage of justice.
I don't think there was a miscarriage of justice.
But you worry that
no one actually saw her do it.
Over the last few years, I've gone through questioning
had she presented one side to me and a different side to other people?
And there's always doubt because as much as you… know someone,
you never… know the whole of someone.
They can still have… things that you don't know about them.
But
unless I saw actual evidence,
I can't believe it.
I know that people think that… I support a baby murderer.
But she's my friend and currently in jail.
Forever.
Dr. Shoo Lee and the experts finalized the report,
and I put it into the Criminal Cases Review Commission,
the CCRC,
who, with any hope, will send it back to the Court of Appeal
to push for a retrial.
A young woman could be in jail for crimes that she did not commit.
It is a huge responsibility
because it is also Lucy's, potentially, last chance.
It's easy for our villains to be villains
and to look like villains and to act like villains.
That's not Lucy Letby.
But that doesn't mean she's not capable of doing what she was convicted of doing.
What was interesting about this case was the volume of circumstantial evidence.
Singularly, they don't prove
that she's a cold-blooded murderer.
But when you bring it all together,
you'll be forgiven for thinking,
"If this woman's innocent,
then she's pretty unlucky."
We've spent several days
questioning and discussing with you in depth
your involvement in the murders and attempted murders of 17 babies,
which you have constantly denied, Lucy.
Have you got any comment you wish to make?
No comment.
The last message we wanted to give to families
was that somebody had murdered their child.
The only person who knows truly why she did each of these awful events
is Lucy Letby herself.
In an environment now where there is considerable public discussion,
I stand by the investigation
and the search for answers.
But most importantly,
we feel for the families who are having to watch this
and go through a lot of distressing suggestions around their babies.
There's no getting over any of this.
There's the sorrow,
but there's the hope and the love we have for her.
Ultimately, we're still here,
and I want to count my blessings
and appreciate what I have.
I was strong enough to try again.
My husband and I have a beautiful son.
He is our reason
for everything.
I have always talked to him about Zoe.
He knows she died when she was a baby.
He knows she's in heaven.
It's been storm after storm, and
it's not over,
but I want to make it through.