Lucy Letby Investigation Review – This sensationalist action is not what this terrible case needs | television

TThe Inquiry into Lucy Letby is at least the fifth documentary produced in the wake of the neonatal nurse’s conviction in 2023 and 2024 of seven counts of murder and seven attempted murders of babies under her care at the Countess of Chester Hospital. Perhaps the best of them all was ITV’s Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt? Last summer. She does a good job of carefully explaining the evidence against her – and why a growing number of experts believe it was unsafe, at the very least, to convict her on the basis of what was gathered, and at the most that none of the infants were killed by her, but rather were victims of a chronically understaffed and mismanaged unit that may have sought to make any individual a scapegoat for its failures.

The Investigation of Lucy Letby is unparalleled in its attention to detail, preferring a broader, more emotional telling of the story of one of the most prolific female serial killers in history or one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in recent times. Its publicity focused much on the fact that it contained hitherto unseen footage of Whitby’s arrest at her parents’ home. Her mother and father say they were not aware it would be shown until Lucy’s lawyer told them. “We won’t watch it. It’ll probably kill us if we do.” When the footage is played, you can hear her mother howling in distress as the police take Lucy away. It’s an almost inhuman sound. It is difficult to determine what value this inclusion adds except to warn the viewer to prepare for excitement along the way as the case is pieced together using police accounts and people – on both sides – directly involved in the case, Letby’s best friend Macy and Letby’s current lawyer (not the one who represented her in court), Mark MacDonald, as well as media reports from the time and tapes of her interviews with investigators.

The first hour of the 90-minute program presents the case of the police and the prosecution. It includes the significant rise in infant deaths and catastrophic collapses between 2015 and 2016, the link between their occurrence and Whitby’s presence in the unit and the fact that they stopped occurring when she was removed from the unit. There is also the matter of 250 patient handover papers – confidential documents – brought home from work and filed by date in a box marked “Keep”, as well as Post-it notes found during a police search of her home. On the latter, Whitby wrote, “I am evil,” “I did this,” and other statements that seemed conclusively damning. The expert witness brought in by the police who testified at the trial, retired pediatrician Dewey Evans, asserted that some symptoms in children could only indicate deliberate attempts to harm children, often by causing air embolisms in children.

The last half hour is spent with MacDonald and Dr. Shu Li disassembling most of the evidence (not all of it – we don’t get an explanation for the delivery papers, which Whitby says she brought home by mistake and then couldn’t dispose of properly, despite finding a shredder in the house) of evidence. MacDonald notes that the trial judge, in a highly unusual move, received an email from the Court of Appeal judge during the trial stating “in strong terms” the latter’s concerns that Evans might be a witness whose evidence could be tailored as needed. The sticky notes were written on the advice of an NHS therapist given to Letby after a spike in infant deaths. According to Whitby in her police interview, they were the product of her terrible fear that “I might hurt them without knowing it, by my practice.” It also contains phrases such as “slander,” “discrimination,” and “victimization,” which arose from a feeling that the unit — which Maisie says was always a “clique” — was using to distract from systemic failings. The decline in mortality rates when Letby left can be attributed to the fact that the unit was downgraded at the same time and began treating fewer sick children.

MacDonald (who did not become involved in the case until after Letby’s conviction) contacted the author of the paper from which Evans drew most of his conclusions, told me they were wrong and set up a committee of independent experts to review the clinical notes, find alternative explanations for all the prosecution’s theories, and thus, as he told the assembled press, “no murders.”

The film includes contributions from the unidentified mother of one of the children, which is of course heartbreaking. But it’s an important decision to include them. They are there to make good television for producers, attract viewers and influence their emotions, and even if this is not the intention, they manage between them emotional interference and a rational assessment of the facts. Which, even in this partial account, certainly needs to be reconsidered in a court of law. The reports are with the Criminal Cases Review Committee. Its decision is expected in the fall. Everyone continues to suffer.