The Innocence of Lucy Letby

A Timeline of Doubt

It has been seven years since I first heard the name Lucy Letby. I was told that a killer nurse case was about to erupt in the UK, one the media wasn’t reporting on yet. My informant told me it was bigger than Beverley Allitt from the 1990s.

After much searching, I found the case they were talking about and was first introduced to Lucy Letby. Even then, something felt off. Despite all my research, I couldn’t find a single indicator in her past that is common to serial killers. The psychology didn’t add up, and neither did the evidence.

When I began writing about the case, I wasn’t brave enough to express my opinion. Instead, I wrote balanced articles that laid out all the facts. I’m quite ashamed of some of those early pieces. Today, I am stating clearly: that Lucy Letby is innocent. There is not one piece of conclusive evidence tying her to the murders of those babies.

As a mother, my thoughts are always with the parents of the children who died. Their hell is a continual torture, and they need to believe that the person responsible has been punished.

Conviction

When Lucy Letby was convicted in August 2023 of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six others at the Countess of Chester Hospital, the headlines were stark and chilling. Branded “Britain’s most prolific child serial killer,” she was sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole. The media ran with this narrative relentlessly, ensuring that the public didn’t look too closely at the facts.

But the case is riddled with scientific uncertainties, procedural failures, and contested evidence. These raise disturbing questions about whether the justice system rushed to find someone to blame.

There were reports that a juror was overheard saying the jury had made up their minds from the beginning of the trial. This forces us to ask whether a fair trial is even possible under the weight of heavy media speculation. Cases like the Menendez brothers and the Idaho Four show how prejudgment by the press can poison the process.

The real culprit behind the babies’ deaths appears to be gross underfunding and chronic malpractice within the NHS trust. The hospital was failing. Its lack of care, broken procedures, and inadequate staffing caused lives to be lost. Faced with a costly and damaging wave of compensation claims, the system found its scapegoat.

The 2017 Chester Hospital Report

A report carried out in 2017 by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health found that the hospital was inadequately funded, with significant gaps in both the medical and nursing rotas. Key professionals made poor decisions and there was a glaring lack of senior cover.

These failings were especially noticeable in the high-dependency units where Letby worked. Procedures for investigating infant deaths were weak and the hospital was told it needed to appoint at least two additional consultants.

A BBC investigation later uncovered twenty years of mistakes the hospital had buried. This negligence didn’t stop with Letby’s conviction. In 2021, over just eight months, five mothers had unplanned hysterectomies after losing excessive blood during childbirth. When the Care Quality Commission investigated, they found twenty-one unexpected incidents.

Unexplained Deaths and a Growing Suspicion

Between June 2015 and June 2016, there was a noticeable increase in unexpected deaths and collapses among premature infants at the hospital. In each flagged case, Letby was on duty. This was the central point in the prosecution’s argument.

The main evidence was key card records supposedly showing Letby logging in and out of the rooms at times corresponding with the deaths. But that system has since been proven faulty. Like much else in the hospital, the door logging system was malfunctioning.

Even if Letby had been on shift during each death, this statistical information is no longer considered reliable evidence. The case of Lucia de Berk, a Dutch nurse wrongfully convicted of killing patients, is a perfect example of flawed statistical assumptions leading to injustice.

Letby picked up extra shifts frequently. She was saving for a house and the unit was understaffed. Her presence on multiple shifts should have been expected, not suspicious.

Stillbirths in the maternity ward also spiked during the same period, but those cases were never investigated. They didn’t fit the police narrative.

Rosters later revealed that Letby wasn’t the only nurse present during many of the incidents. Several shifts were doubled up with other staff. Senior doctors were on site too. But none of those staff were ever investigated. Why? Because many of them were the ones pointing fingers.

The Prosecution’s Theory

Over a ten-month trial at Manchester Crown Court, prosecutors claimed Letby deliberately harmed infants by injecting air into their bloodstreams, tampering with feeding tubes, or administering insulin. They couldn’t identify a consistent method, because there wasn’t one. A killer who changes method every time is far rarer than real evidence in this case.

They leaned heavily on circumstantial evidence, such as handwritten notes found in Letby’s home. One note read, “I am evil. I did this.” That sounds like a confession — until you learn the truth. Letby’s therapist later confirmed that these notes were written during therapy to help process the trauma of being falsely accused.

Forensic psychologists and the defence argued the notes reflected a mental health breakdown, not guilt. Other phrases on the same page were conveniently ignored, comments like, “I haven’t done anything wrong” and “I feel very alone.”

Other so-called evidence included Letby searching for victims’ families on Facebook. Yes, this is strange. But it was part of over 2,000 searches she made, ranging from colleagues to acquaintances. Like many people her age, she was glued to her phone.

Then there were handover notes found under her bed. The prosecution called them macabre trophies. In reality, they contained patients’ names, birth dates, test records, and consultant details. I wondered whether Letby was trying to investigate the deaths herself. A nurse friend told me she knew colleagues who kept such notes in case they were ever sued or questioned in an inquiry. Letby had already been investigated once. The very documents she hoped might protect her probably helped convict her.

Flawed Forensics

One of the most damning allegations was that Letby administered insulin to two babies. That’s the same method Beverley Allitt used. But insulin testing is far less reliable than we are led to believe. Samples degrade quickly and, in this case, the analysis was delayed. This raises the risk of false positives.

The prosecution also claimed some babies died from air embolisms, allegedly the result of Letby injecting air into their veins. Their paid experts swore this was detectable. But the defence’s unpaid experts said otherwise. Detecting air embolisms post-mortem, especially in neonates, is nearly impossible. It remains largely a speculative diagnosis.

Silenced Whistleblowers or Scapegoat Defence?

In July 2016, after repeated concerns from consultants, Letby was taken off clinical duties and assigned to clerical work. However, the hospital did not contact the police. After internal investigations found no wrongdoing, the consultants were even asked to apologise to Letby.

The media portrayed this as the hospital silencing whistleblowers, a line Dr Ravi Jayaram was quick to push in interviews. But what if the hospital genuinely found no evidence of wrongdoing?

Jayaram told police he thought Letby was a killer. The defence’s response was clear: If he truly believed that, why didn’t he report her to the authorities or closely monitor her? He did neither.

We say the most striking feature is how he did nothing, despite what he claimed to the police over a year later.” — Mr Myers, defence counsel.

The Public Inquiry

After her conviction, it was quickly announced that there would be a public inquiry into the deaths. The inquiry led by Lady Justice Thirlwall was tasked with reviewing the entire case, the hospital’s actions, the treatment of whistleblowers, and the quality of the forensic evidence. But it was never designed to question Letby’s guilt. She had already been convicted.

As the inquiry continues, more of the prosecution’s evidence has been quietly undermined. But none of this has changed anything for Letby. The media, who condemned her, are now hedging their bets and hinting at doubt. But let’s not forget: it was their lazy, surface-level reporting that convicted an innocent woman.

If a mother who writes true crime could see the holes in this case, so should professional journalists and investigators.

Lucy Letby

One of the most telling facts is that not one friend or former colleague has come forward and said they think Letby is guilty. On the contrary, her friends have consistently defended her.

Before the case, she was described as hardworking, awkward, geeky, and completely devoted to her job. She loved her work. She had a life filled with plans and people.

She trained as a nurse for three years, qualifying in 2011, and had cared for hundreds of babies. The idea that she suddenly began murdering infants in 2015 makes no psychological sense.

A Corrupt System

You may still believe Letby is guilty. But what no one can deny is this, the system that convicted her is rotten. It’s full of assumptions, weak science, missing data, and institutional failings.

In the emotionally charged world of infant loss, the hunger for accountability is understandable. But when grief, medicine, and law collide, we need more than certainty. We need humility. We need rigour. We need the truth, and we did not get it in this case.

The message sent to nurses across the country is clear. If you work in a failing trust, be careful. You could be next. A scapegoat is a lot cheaper than a compensation payout.

It will be a long road to free Lucy Letby. But I will not stop writing about this case. I will not stop talking about it. Not until an innocent woman is free.