Law&Crime Sidebar - 'Bordering Sadism': The Disturbing Baby Murders of Serial Killer Nurse Lucy Letby

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

An unusual amount of infant deaths on a neonatal unit at a Chester hospital sparked an investigation that led to one common factor, Lucy Letby. The 33-year-old registered nurse was on shift every time a newborn died or became severely injured. The serial killer went on trial in Crown court, only to be found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to end the lives of six others. The Law&Crime Network’s Angenette Levy and Richard Scorer, Principal Lawyer at Slater and Gordon Lawyers, break down the disturbing case of Lucy Letby, one of the most prolific serial killers of children to this day.LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergWriting & Video Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa Bein & Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieThey Walk Among AmericaDevil In The DormThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Hello, Lucy, is it? Yeah. Hello, my name. I'm Chappellon, Louise. Lettby. A nurse in the UK will spend the rest of her life in prison for murdering seven. babies and trying to kill six others. We talk with the attorney who represents two of the families in this unimaginable tragedy. Welcome to Law and Crime's Sidebar podcast. I'm Ann Janette Levy. Lucy Lettby's job was to care for babies who were born prematurely in a hospital in the UK.

Babies, of course, are defenseless. They can do nothing for themselves and they certainly cannot protect themselves. The judge presiding over Lettby's case said she did something that bordered on sadism. A jury found Lett be guilty of killing seven premature babies and trying to kill six others by injecting the sick baby's IV lines with air, poisoning some with insulin, and force-feeding others with milk. This happened according to testimony over the course of a year from June 2015 to June of 2016. Lettby spoke to police back in 2018. They told me that there would be a lot more deaths and that I've been linked to somebody

that was there for a lot of them. Did you have any concerns that there was a rise in the mortality rate? Yes. Okay, so tell me about that. What concerns did you have? I think we don't just notice as a team in general, the nurse and staff that this was a compared to previous years. The jury deliberated for 22 days before reaching a verdict.

Here's Cheshire Police Detective Chief Inspector Nicola Evans following the verdict. This has been a long and emotional journey for all of the families involved in this case. I speak on behalf of the entire prosecution team when I say that all of their babies will forever be in our hearts. I would like to thank all of the families in this case for their exceptional resilience and strength throughout this entire investigation. Cheshire police collected writings from Lettby. One said hate and I am evil, I did this. After killing the babies, testimony revealed Lettby sometimes cried and even made keepsakes for the parents and dressed the babies for their funerals. The impact of this on the parents,

of the babies is almost indescribable. Sentencing remarks to the court said Lettby specifically targeted twins and triplets and that her actions were premeditated and that she harmed the babies when other staff were on breaks. Then the statement says she would often stalk the families afterward on Facebook searching their profiles. Let be refused to attend her sentencing for the crimes and under UK law there was really nothing the judge could do about it. He could not force her to attend. or send a feed of the hearing into her cell. The judge who presided over Lucy Lettby's case, Mr. Justice Goss had some harsh words for her.

Take a listen. There was a deep malevolence bordering on sadism in your actions. During the course of this trial, you have coldly denied any responsibility for your wrongdoing and sought to attribute some fault to others. You have no remorse. there are no mitigating factors. Joining me to discuss this horrific, and I can't emphasize that enough, horrific case is Richard

squarer. He represents two families who had three children who were murdered by this nurse. Richard, welcome to Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. Good afternoon. First of all, how are the families doing your clients? Well, this is obviously an utterly appalling and harrowing care. and I don't think parents who've lost children ever recover from that. And some of the detail of the impact on their lives was set out in the victim impact statements that were read in court.

And I don't think I can really improve on those. Those did describe very powerfully the utter devastation caused by these murders and the appalling crimes of Lucy Letby. And I think those statements in a sense say everything that can be said about the impact on the families or everything that they would want to say publicly and obviously said in the sentencing hearing. But I think also it's important to understand that there remain many unanswered questions about this. We obviously know now through the criminal case that Letby was guilty of these crimes. That's been proved beyond reasonable doubt. But there are a whole series of further questions, particularly around the actions of hospital management

and particularly the sense that hospital management was driven by reputational protection of the hospital rather than by patient safety. And I think those are the questions that I think, you know, my clients and many others are now obviously focused on trying to get answers to. And how are you doing that? I've read some stories about how your clients were kind of waved off when they raised concerns. Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah. So, I mean, after the death of their child, one of the families we represent had some correspondence from Ian Harvey, who was the medical director of the hospital at that time. And the correspondence indicated, although to be honest, it was fairly vague,

but it indicated that various investigations were being conducted. And it actually invited the family to make contact with Mr. Harvey. invited them to phone in and make contact and get more details. They tried to do that. They actually, they've told us that they tried to do that many, many times, but they were unable to get any response out of him. He never returned any of their calls and it never, never arranged a meeting, although the letters made reference to his wish to have a meeting, but none of that ever materialized. It's important to understand that, you know, the families we represent are very, very ordinary people, just normal families. They're not,

used to negotiating their way through an NHS bureaucracy, a health service bureaucracy, medical terminology, particularly, you know, in circumstances where they've lost children in very traumatic circumstances. So, you know, the hospital has a responsibility in this situation to reach out and try to help them through this process. And that, unfortunately, I'm afraid, is not what happened. And the sense we get is very much that Harvey was not interested in trying to be candid with them about what was going on, didn't respond to their calls. And, you know, they were left very much in the dark about the reality of what had occurred. Now, that was, as we understand it, this was before the police investigation got underway. And I think

Mr. Harvey, in his response to the newspaper article overnight, has tried to suggest that he was limited in what he could say because of the police investigation. But this correspondence that they received from him came before the police investigation, as we understand it. And so, and as I say, he was actually, you know, inviting them to get in contact and to get more information. And so, you know, their sense is very much that they were fobbed off. That's how they felt about it. They very much felt that he wasn't interested in engaging with them about what had occurred. And that's consistent with, you know, with what others have said about his attitude here.

And so, you know, we have a situation where. Families have been through this desperately traumatic loss of a child and were wanting to get some answers, you know, how did this happen? What were the circumstances and, you know, what went wrong? And none of that was really forthcoming in reality. And then, of course, the police investigation took over and that has lasted a number of years and has resulted in the criminal trial. But we still have this issue around the conduct of hospital managers, Mr. Harvey, one of the them and a key figure in this, but there are obviously others as well. And that's why we need the public inquiry, the public investigation into the surrounding circumstances. Have you filed

any type of civil action? Do the families have some recourse that way to get answers as well? Well, that's a part of it that's been dealt with by one of my colleagues here. But I think just to just to sort of give some context to that because obviously I'm you know you're an American program the and it may or may not be similar in America but the reality of most civil suits particularly in circumstances like this where it's obvious that the hospital are going to be found liable the reality of most civil suits here is that they you know they will end up being settled now I can't sort of say more about where that that aspect of it has got to but I would be surprised in the circumstances that we now know about, that ultimately that there won't be

settlements of civil suits. I'm sure that there will be. I think that's likely at the very least. But of course, when a civil suit is settled, in a sense you don't get a day in court, you don't get a proper investigation into the surrounding circumstances and the way in which, you know, management conduct themselves and the failures of management and so on. All of that kind gets ignored in a civil suit which results in a settlement you know there isn't a there isn't a trial i know that in america things are a bit different because sometimes you have kind of pre-trial depositions and other other legal processes where information can come out ahead of the trial but in our system if the civil suit is settled then or an admission of liability is made then that wouldn't

be a route through which a family can get answers about what has occurred here what has really occurred here and the failings of hospital management. That has to come through a public inquiry ordered by the government. Richard, when you have a child, it's one of the happiest moments of your life. Your clients gave birth to children and their children were murdered by somebody who was supposed to be caring for them.

I can't imagine what that is like going through something like that and then coming to the realization that this person did what she did. You know, the judge, I think, called her sadistic, Lucy Lettby. Have you ever seen anything like this in your practice, a nurse, somebody charged with caring for children, not even children, infants, murdering them? I've been reflecting on that actually over, you know, over the course of recent events. And I've done many, many distressing and harrowing cases over the course of my legal work, particularly around things like child abuse. and sometimes child murder. And this is undoubtedly one of the most horrifying cases I've ever come

across. And I think, you know, when the judge talked about sadism, that's absolutely right. She was murdering children and then purporting to express sympathy to their parents, you know, sort of stalking parents on Facebook trying to find out more about them, even after she had committed the murders, almost reveling seemingly in their grief. So, I mean, it is it is especially horrifying. And, And as you say, in circumstances where your child is born, born into a hospital in a setting where you would expect that a child is going to be safe, obviously first and foremost, safe and protected and looked after by specialist nurses who are, you know, seem to be very skilled. And in the vast majority of cases, are very skilled and very committed to their job.

And we should, you know, when we talk about nurses, we mustn't make the mistake of, you know, branding the profession negatively because most of them are fantastic. and what they do. But let be was obviously something else altogether. And it's just utterly horrifying. There is no, you know, there is, there is no other, words fail you when you, when you try to kind of conceive of how appalling it is. And so I think from my perspective as a lawyer, and obviously my perspective is different from that of the parents, because I didn't have to live through it. but from my perspective as a lawyer, it's really important. I think the parents share this view that we need to try to do whatever we can

to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen in the hospital system again. It's obviously always difficult to rule out or eliminate the possibility of things like this happening. But what you want is a system where any concern that's expressed about, something of this seriousness is investigated fully and properly and promptly. And we clearly don't have that in the National Health Service in Britain at the moment. There are lots of good things about the National Health Service, but we clearly fail when it comes to the investigation of concerns that are expressed both by patients and clinicians, by doctors within the system.

And in this case, you know, we had clinicians expressing serious concerns, you know, it was it was medical professionals who raised the alarm about this and then managers who seemingly wanted to brush it under the carpet. I mean, it's as, it's as shocking as that. And hospital managers should be concerned first and foremost with patient safety, not with protecting the reputation of their particular hospital. But in this case, it seems that reputational protection, you know, was at the forefront of their mind. And in one of the emails, that was actually what the hospital manager said, you know, so it kind of gave the game away. But we need to make

sure that that can never happen or that we do everything we can to reduce the possibility of it happening in the National Health Service in the future. Has Lucy Lettby ever made, any type of overture to your clients or any of the other families, any type of apology? I mean, what has anything like that occurred? No, not at all. And you may be aware that when we have the sentencing hearing earlier this week, she, she refused to come into the courtroom to be sentenced by the judge. So that meant that she didn't hear the victim impact statements, you know, on behalf of the families describing that

the trauma that they had been through, and she didn't actually directly hear the sentence from the judge, although she would have been informed about that in her prison cell. And that refusal to appear was enormously insulting, actually. And I mean, I've over many years represented many victims of serious crime. And it's really important for justice and accountability that the defendant is present to hear the court hand down the sentence. I mean, you know, some people have sort of expressed skepticism about the importance of this. It's actually really important for victims to have that part of the process. And it's very, very insulting when the defendant refuses to turn up. And we've had a bit of a debate in this country this week about how we need

to change the law so that judges have the power to force, either force the defendant to come into the courtroom to hear the verdict or have the power to require that the sentencing remarks are broadcast into the defendant's cell or alternatively that other penalties could be applied to a defendant who doesn't attend the sentencing hearing. So for example, you know, you might have an additional period added onto the sentence or you might lose prison privileges or some kind of penalty of that kind. And I think there's a lot of public support for that. Some of my colleagues in the legal profession have expressed skepticism about it, but I personally think it's an important change in one that we need to see. It's shocking to me that she could actually say I'm not

going to my sentencing. As, you know, as just a due process type of thing, I would think that the judge would be able to force her to, but obviously the laws over there are different. Yeah, and I don't know what the position is in America, but I mean, certainly here, the judge was very clear that he didn't have the power to force her into the courtroom. And he obviously, you know, was very frustrated that he was, you know, having to address an empty dock. But that was the reality of it. And I do think that's something that really needs to change. As I say, it's a really important part of justice and accountability for victims that when those victim impact statements are read out that the defendant is there to hear them and then the defendant is there to hear the

sentence and the judge's reasons for it. So the public inquiry, will happen. Where else do you all go from here? I mean, these families will never heal from this. This is going to leave them scarred for the rest of their lives, but at least they will have their other children that they can love and enjoy. And I think that, you know, as far as that's concerned, I think that, you know, people rarely, if ever get over the loss of a child. And And I can't, you know, I mean, I think that the families will deal with that in the ways that they can. And it will be, I'm sure, you know, very, very difficult at times. I think that one of the things that is important, I mean, as I kind of come back to the legal, the legal aspects of all of this, is that if we do have this public inquiry, we're going to have an inquiry, the question is just what form it takes.

but if we do have an inquiry and that inquiry will make recommendations, we absolutely need to ensure that those recommendations are actually implemented. And we've been around this track before. We've had lots of public inquiries in Britain over the years. I've been involved in some of them. And in the medical sphere, where there have been failings in the National Health Service, often the inquiries that have happened have made recommendations. and then those recommendations have been left on the shelf and never implemented,

which is really, really just desperately poor. I mean, inquiries can be quite an expensive undertaking. And you have the state spending money on inquiries. The inquiry makes a set of recommendations, and then those recommendations are just ignored. And we've had that actually time and time again in the NHS. And within the health service and previous scanners in the health service, we've had recommendations about whistleblowers

and what needs to happen to support. them. We've had recommendations about issues to do with hospital management, although I think we need to go further this time. But, you know, recommendations have been made in the past and not honored. And that is something that really needs to change. I get quite frustrated as a lawyer who's worked over the years in quite a number of inquiries that, you know, we go through a process, we get all the examination of the evidence, we get recommendations, and then they're just left kind of un-implemented and it's a really, really poor system. Well, Richard Scorer, thank you so much for joining us.

We appreciate it and we hope you'll come back sometime. Thank you. Pleasure. That's it for this edition of Law and Crime's Sidebar podcast. You can listen to and download Sidebar on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your podcasts. And of course, you can always watch it on Law and Crimes YouTube channel. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy, and we will see you next time.

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