Lucy Letby: a condensed update on recent developments

[Kittybythelighthouse]

So, in the past week or so alone we’ve had:

Leading neonatology expert Dr Shoo Lee (Professor Emeritus at University of Toronto, Honorary Physician at Mount Sinai Hospital, President of the Neonatal Foundation, Founder of Canadian Neonatal Network, Previously Head of Neonatology at University of Toronto and a hospital for sick children) says his 1989 paper, which the prosecution relied on as their only proof of alleged intravenous air embolism (skin discolouration) was misused by the prosecution. He actually went to the appeal hearing and had his paper Judge-splained to him by three CoA judges who probably don’t even have a science A level (the judiciary have a poor record regarding science). He was so astonished and aggrieved that he has has published a new peer reviewed paper filling in all new evidence since 1989 and distinguishing between intravenous and arterial air embolism which the 1989 paper didn’t do. The conclusion: there is zero evidence for skin discolouration in intravenous air embolism, which is the only possibility in this case. This means there is absolutely no evidence to support an allegation of air embolism. It didn’t happen.

https://t.co/TRokh1hneu

Dr Shoo Lee pulled together a blue ribbon panel of the world’s best experts in relevant areas. Never before in legal history has a group of such highly regarded international experts come together to challenge the evidence against a convicted serial killer. They went through all of the evidence independently and pro bono (with the proviso that they would publish reports regardless of findings). Yesterday they held a press conference. Conclusion: there were no murders. There was plenty of poor care, medical malpractice, mistakes, and a poorly run struggling hospital.

“If this was a hospital in Canada, it would be shut down”

Link to their summary report: drive.google.com/file/d/1aV4zwwdBYw8Z_E-Tpe9_-iPR7n8cZdFk/view

A leak from an Operation Hummingbird detective which reveals that deaths were chosen as suspicious or not based on whether Letby was on shift (remember, most of the babies had uncontroversial post mortems at the time). There were ten other cases originally classed as suspicious until it was established Letby couldn’t have done them, then they magically became unsuspicious.

“Four more children would later be added, two children would be dropped, collapses deleted and added as the focus was turned in different directions, and the whole chart thoroughly chopped and changed. The guiding principle being, always, that Letby must be in the frame.” Trials of Lucy Letby on X.

https://t.co/FOO55lWlCi

Chester Police responded with a statement to The Mail on Sunday:

“There is a significant public interest in these matters, however, every story that is published, statement made, or comment posted online that refers to the specific details of a live investigation can impede the course of justice and cause further distress to the families concerned. It is these families and the ongoing investigations that remain our primary focus.”

“Cheshire Constabulary's statement to the Mail on Sunday is remarkable, coming from a police force that put out an HOUR-LONG promotional video about their own investigation.

They claim to be demurring from commenting now because "every story that is published, statement made, or comment posted online that refers to the specific details of a live investigation can impede the course of justice and cause further distress to the families concerned."

Such concerns did not stop them, less than two years ago, from flooding the press with incendiary and prejudicial commentary, going so far as to announce that they'd be reviewing the care of 4,000 babies that Letby may have ever come into contact with.

The lead investigator, Paul Hughes, even sat down with the co-hosts of the Daily Mail podcast for an episode called "Catching the Killer Nurse," where he speculated to no end about the supposedly evil and cunning machinations behind Letby's every move, and concluded that "she clearly does love the attention. I think she's loved the attention of a trial." (From The Trials of Lucy Letby on X).

Is Letby the one who loved the attention? The investigation was as active then as it is today. Why the silence now? 🤔

Thirlwall released the witness statement of Michelle Turner on behalf of Liverpool Women’s Hospital. She speaks about Letby's placement in 2012 & 2015, including how unlikely she would have been in an intensive care room without another nurse present.

thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/upl…

Former Director of Public Prosecutions Lord MacDonald to BBC’s World at One: “It is clear that there is now this quite impressive body of work. Something may have gone wrong here. That clearly has to be taken seriously.”

"New documents released by the Thirlwall Inquiry also show how the Countess of Chester refused to take part in research to improve outcomes for premature babies."

Neena Modi: "The Countess of Chester was the only hospital to decline participation."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/04/the-10-baby-deaths-that-cast-doubt-on-lucy-letbys-guilt/

Meanwhile the CPS still (as far as we know) refuse to hand over former Dr Dewi Evans new report about how one of the babies died - written in October 2024 after BBC’s File on Four challenged him about Letby not having been on shift when an ‘incriminating’ x ray was taken. In fact she hadn’t been on shift since the baby was born. She was convicted of killing this baby.

The CCRC announced yesterday that they have opened their investigation of the case. They assembled a team specifically for this case late last year, in anticipation of an application. This is an extraordinarily speedy and organised response from the CCRC.

https://ccrc.gov.uk/news/lucy-letby-application-received-by-criminal-cases-review-commission/

This has been a remarkable, historic, run of events. It is now looking very likely that the case will go back to the Court of Appeal, or there may be a more expedient solution. Whatever happens, it’s very unlikely to take the CCRC their usual 10 years to deal with it. They are on the ropes recently, with a CEO stepping down and a raft of bad press. I am not Mystic Meg, but my money is on an exoneration within the year.

If you were wrongly imprisoned, and had your reputation and career destroyed, wouldn’t you expect substantial compensation?

This whole circus is just the worst. Trial by court of public opinion and TikTok. You people sticking up for her should be embarrassed at buying into this farce.

This whole circus is just the worst. Trial by court of public opinion and TikTok. You people sticking up for her should be embarrassed at buying into this farce.

You are siding with a convicted baby murder on a public forum.

Don't expect me to engage.

This is the most disgusting view I have ever read.

Shame on you.

@MemorableTrenchcoat

I am siding with rule of law. If it’s found that Lucy Letby did not, in fact, kill any babies, it’s disgusting that you would wish her to remain in prison for the rest of her life. I’m quite sure people who defended Lindy Chamberlain were called all sorts, yet she was innocent all along.

If evidence suggests that she didn't murder these babies, why would you want to ignore the real reason for these babies deaths, when the reason could prevent more babies dying in the same way? Surely it is more shameful to want to cover up the reason a baby died and pin it on someone else?

@MemorableTrenchcoat

Vile.

The evidence against her was overwhelming, detailed and complex. So much more was said in real life than ever made it into the reporting.

For example, the population charts, nursing notes, timed computer records, and eyewitness statements proving where everybody was in that ward at a given time were so complex. It proved that Letby was not merely on shift, but present with a baby for every single charge.

The medical evidence was also very detailed which was missed in live reporting. Every natural alternative cause was considered and thoroughly dismissed.

Her new defence have not brought out anything new. She will not get an appeal. She needs actual new evidence for that. Everything they claim in their report has already been considered and dismissed by the actual medical experts.

Firstly, these self-appointed experts have reviewed nothing, except the opinions of other self-appointed experts who themselves have no access to the evidence, did not attend or follow the trial, and whose own opinions were based on sensationalist media headlines. Her defence have collected some of these opinions of opinions and given them to a bunch of egotistical, unethical doctors to “review”, ie give their fourth hand opinion on.

They don’t even seem to know basic facts. For example the “new evidence” that Letby didn’t switch off the monitor for Baby K/ Baby 11, is based on them learning that another nurse entered the room after the collapse and heard the alarm. If they’d actually followed the trial they would know that Letby was not accused of turning the monitor off, but pausing the alarm for 30-60 seconds. The nurse heard the alarm because it was no longer paused by then. This was not controversial with either the prosecution nor the original defense.

I note that for babies A, D and O, who they deny suffered from air embolus, they have completely ignored the presence of massive amounts of air found in their blood vessels for A and D (including at the IV entry site) and the air bubble in O’s heart.

They claim O died of liver rupture not by blunt force abdominal trauma, but due to birth injury. This is despite him being alive and very well for several days before Letby got back from her Ibiza holiday. “I’ll be back with a bang” she said.

A reminder that Letby did have her own medical experts, but every single one of them agreed with the prosecution experts, with one expert (Michael Hall) agreeing partially. In this country, medical experts’ duties are to the court; they must tell the truth and not take sides, no matter who appoints them. It’s not America.

Letby herself opted to not bring to the stand her only expert who partially disagreed with the prosecution. This is because he had no alternative explanations and would have been ripped to shreds under cross examination, and been forced to admit where he did agree with the prosecution.

Also, Letby had a retrial in June last year, and had the opportunity to dispute her previous convictions with medical evidence, but she declined to do so, evidently because she didn’t want another jury hearing the actual evidence.

Letby’s new barrister Mark McDonald is attempting an American style PR campaign, but our courts don’t work like that. This publicity stunt will actually harm her chances for all the future charges being worked on by Operation Hummingbird, because Letby’s only hope would have been to claim she couldn’t have a fair trial. There’s no hope of that now.

Mark McDonald is a notorious grifter who attaches himself to hopeless serial killers for attention, for example with Ben Geen. He states they are innocent, the media publish his lies, then he finally puts in a shit tier CCRC application which is laughed out of court, then he drops them and moves onto a new serial killer. It’s what he does. This is likely why Letby has not waived client privilege for him (meaning he doesn’t have access to the evidence, either), because she wants a proper KC for actual court cases.

She’s just engaging with him because she knows her case is hopeless and she wants the positive PR to make her life easier in jail. She has nothing else to hope for except improving her reputation.

As for Shoo Lee, his evidence was rejected by the court of appeal. This is because 1) the prosecution experts didn’t actually base their diagnoses on skin discolourations, it was a small part of a wider picture, and 2) his claim that only one type of skin discolouration is diagnostic of air embolism was based on just two babies in his study, and 3) two of Letby’s victims did actually fit his particular diagnostic description but Lee was pettily arguing the toss about this based on semantics.

He has now rewritten his entire paper to be favourable to Letby , paid to have it published, and it has not been peer reviewed. He is a disgrace.

@CeceliaImrie

There’s nothing vile about wanting to be 100% certain that an appalling miscarriage of justice has not occurred. Don’t be so pathetic.

@CeceliaImrie Your post is a testament to the adage that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

@ceceliaimrie Why are you being so aggressive? I'm not sure why you're discrediting Dr Shoo Lee or any of the other experts who have reviewed the medical records. They are acknowledged to be at the top of their field - Dr Lee has over 500 peer reviewed papers to his name. Do you really think professionals of this calibre would work (pro bono) like that unless they had serious concerns about the theories put forward by Evans et al? It also seems doubtful to me that he carefully considered and dismissed all other theories before deciding each baby was attacked because in his own words he spotted it within ten minutes of reviewing the notes. It's much more consistent with finding a theory to fit what he'd already decided, to my mind.

I watched the press conference and thought Dr Lee was incredibly clear about the issues you brought up. A panel of fourteen highly respected experts who had access to the medical information - not "fourth hand opinions" as you're calling it - are they all disgraceful egotists then? Really? That seems absolutely absurd to me.

Where exactly are you getting your news from? Pathetic.

I'm hiding this thread now. It's making me feel physically sick reading these last few posts. Shame on you.

I am no such thing. Your personal attacks on people with whom you disagree are disgusting.

Reported. Appalling behaviour.

If she's innocent and it's looking highly likely that she is it would be disgusting for anything else to happen. It's disgusting enough already.

This post is absolutely full of misinformation. I’ll assume that’s accidental in your part but you should really be more careful to fact check when disseminating information.

Your first point refers largely to statistics. The stats in this case are so poor that they had the Royal College of Statisticians up in arms. Even the prosecution have backtracked on the stats.

The door swipe data was completely back to front for the main trial. It was interpreted incorrectly by the police. In addition it’s very common for people to piggyback on someone else who swiped a door open, without swiping themselves. Also there is a back stairway that does not have a card reader, it operates with a code and is frequently used by the nurses in that NICU. Truth is, outside of shift records, they don’t really know who was where and when with any accuracy.

The claim that Letby was there when every baby died or collapsed is totally meaningless. None of these cases were considered murder at the time, but reframed as murder two years later. Whether or not a case was deemed to be ‘suspicious’ was based on whether or not Letby was on duty. Ten cases originally classed as ‘suspicious’ were reclassified as explained once they realised Letby wasn’t on shift. It’s a mess.

https://unherd.com/2025/02/why-the-letby-case-isnt-closed/

The panel did, in fact, review ALL of the medical evidence. They had access to absolutely everything the prosecution had access to. These experts by far outweigh the prosecution experts in terms of profile, standing, experience etc. They are world leaders. The prosecution experts are not. That’s simply a fact. It’s Premier League vs the local five a side. Here’s the link to the press conference for anyone who hasn’t seen it. It is astonishing. It completely dismantles the prosecution’s medical case.

https://www.youtube.com/live/DT8CO15IHMs?si=bJKDb9jnr6uDOIfp

Are you yourself a medical expert? Have you seen their full reports? Only a summary has been released publicly, so you cannot know what they have and haven’t “ignored”. Given that you’re probably not a medical expert, and neither am I, there’s no point in us arguing the medical detail. I will always take the side of the best experts with the best evidence. You do you. The courts will do what they will regardless of either of our opinions. That said, no evidence of air embolism was seen in any of the autopsies and usually it is. Small amounts of air form after death in everyone but air embolisms large enough to cause death are usually seen at autopsy. They weren’t. For one or two cases that might be possible, but how did she manage to slip so many of them past the very experienced neonatal pathologists who performed the autopsies? Hmm.

”Every single one of Letby’s experts agreed with the prosecution” is an outright false statement. Whoever told you this was lying. Simple as that. Nobody knows why no medical experts were called by the defence, so I don’t know how you can claim to know. You don’t know.

The retrial last June was for one case where the jury hadn’t been able to reach agreement. The case of baby k. There was no medical evidence presented in this case, so she had no opportunity to address the medical evidence again. This retrial was a ‘he said she said’ of Dr Jayaram vs Letby and Nurse Williams, who did not agree with Dr J’s version of events. Even the judge said it came down to whether or not you believe Dr J. For the record he changed his statement about the events of this night three times from first police interview to the retrial. You may find him compelling, I don’t, but you’d still have to wonder why he changed his story so many times and why he didn’t go to the authorities regardless of what management said, if he had really seen a nurse “red handed” in the act of attempting to murder a baby. But he didn’t. He went back to his office and allowed this murderous nurse to attempt to kill this baby a further two times that very night and then he waited a further period of many months, sending emails back and forth to management, while she killed and harmed more babies, before finally calling the police a year later. I don’t find that believable at all. I don’t think many people would, particularly if their baby was one of the ones killed or harmed while he was twiddling his thumbs in his office, making tv appearances as a celebrity doctor, only doing two ward rounds per week, and sending emails to management. Even the court of appeal called his credibility into question.

Regarding Dr Shoo Lee, the Court of Appeal did indeed judge-splain this eminent internationally respected doctor’s paper to him. How tremendously embarrassing for the UK and how foolish for them, because what happened then is that Dr Lee asked the defence if he could have access to all of the medical evidence to compile reports. That’s when he pulled together a blue ribbon panel of the world’s best relevant specialists to conduct extensive and detailed peer reviews of all of the deaths and collapses, which is why there was a press conference this week. They utterly demolished the prosecution’s medical case. You may not see that yet, but that’s exactly what happened. You won’t find a credible clinician saying otherwise.

He updated his 1989 paper to include the intervening 35 years of new evidence on neonatal air embolism. Where the 1989 paper had focused on arterial air embolism the new paper (which absolutely was peer reviewed and not “paid for”, again check your sources!) also included intravenous air embolism - the type of embolism they claim occurred in these cases because the only possibility was the IV line - and distinguished between the two. This is how we now know that intravenous air embolism doesn’t present with skin discolouration of any kind. Skin patterns were the only piece of evidence that the prosecution had which could be diagnostic of air embolism. They no longer have a single shred of evidence that is diagnostic of air embolism.

You’re very entrenched in a particular view, which is your right, but you are simply wrong about practically everything you state here.

It's dispiriting to see so many emotionally reactive responses here. Do some people really think that being interested in compelling new (or new to the general public) evidence and context in a huge trial around infant death means that you're "campaigning for a baby killer"?

Where is the intelligence? I'm sorry but what? Can you not think critically at all? Can you not put aside your initial emotions at the original verdict and realise things might not be what they initially seemed? Why does that threaten you? Being able to look objectively at a situation (or as objectively as possible) is an essential life skill.

@recipientofraspberries it's good to see that it's a minority of posters at least

Numerous experts giving their professional opinion based on facts is hardly the court of public opinion is it. Infact it's the opposite

She was dosed up on sedatives during the trial because she was so distressed. I wonder if she was even fit to give defence counsel proper instructions - it sounds as if it was her decision not to get the defence expert to give evidence etc.

It seems all very concerning. The standard of proof for criminal trials is high and the evidence here is not that clear at all.

Indeed. It’s emotionally manipulative nonsense. Obviously the whole point is that she very well may not be a “baby killer” and that many more babies will die if we don’t address the root issues here. The UK already has an epidemic of maternity and neonatal scandals.

The ugly truth is that some people really just enjoy having a witch to burn. Someone who it is socially acceptable to dehumanise, hate, and enjoy the suffering of. Some people, once they’ve tasted blood, do not want to be denied flesh. It’s quite frightening from a psychological pov.

Although I don't pretend to know a lot about the details, I have only read/seen what has been reported but I have never felt comfortable that she was convicted beyond reasonable doubt and that doesn't sit well with me. I want and need to believe justice has been served.

I watched the conference in full and have complete faith in their expertise.

The one thing I am confused about, and I hope you can answer is why the press are hardly reporting on it, I mean, if this is a miscarriage of justice, which is certainly a possibility. How is this not huge? If I'm correct, it's not just this panel of experts that have questioned her conviction, many have questioned it? The press conference was announced as breaking news but not much since or am I mistaken?

Apologies if I have missed something, quite happy to be corrected