RedHanded - UPDATE: Is Lucy Letby Innocent?

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

An independent panel of experts has concluded that NO murders took place at the Countess of Chester hospital. If true, it would mean that Lucy Letby, currently serving 15 life sentences and branded the UK’s most prolific child serial killer, is innocent – and the subject of the worst miscarriage of justice in recent British memory.We go over what was covered at last week’s press conference – and whether it changed our minds on this complex case.Watch the press conference:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT8CO15IHMsStatistical Smoke and Mirrors with Prof John O’Quigley:https://youtu.be/k8jkl255PWI?si=DlYAFeNgU8NFlZ-YFull sources available on redhandedpodcast.com--Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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in video form. So if you want to watch us and not just listen to us talk about this entire case then head on over to YouTube right now and watch it there. The link will be in the episode description on the red-handed YouTube channel and there you'll be able to see the charts we're referring to and all that sort of good stuff. If you don't want to watch us then just listen to this episode it's all there but just wanted to let you guys know enjoy as much as you can it's horrible. All right Lucy Letbe let's talk. I feel like we have to. We do. Whether you want to or not, we've got to talk about Lucy Letbe. I do want to, but I don't know if my opinion has changed.

Okay, that's fair. My opinion has, but let's talk about it. Let's go. This is even more exciting. Let's do it. Let's do a very, very quick update in case anybody listening, watching has forgotten who the fuck Lucy Letby is. So in July, 2024, 34 year old neonatal nurse Lucy Letby was found guilty of murdering seven babies and the attempted murder of seven others at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016. She is currently serving 15 whole life orders as the UK's most prolific child murderer ever. Now this case, ever since it emerged, has been hugely

divisive and extremely controversial. Basically a lot of people were saying, how could this young woman who had seemingly dedicated her entire life to saving extremely sick babies have been killing them? She became the face of evil, and I think how normal she looked only added to the intrigue. Right from the start, there were those who questioned Lucy Lettby's conviction. But among miscarriage of justice campaigns in history, all of them, every single one, the Lucy Letby one is quite strikingly

individual, it does stand out. The more severe the crime, typically the harder it is for that person, the convicted one, to get anyone to back them. In Lucy Letby's case though, the speed and volume at which professionals and other commentators raised concerns is unique. At first, these people were laughed off as Lucy Letby truthers, conspiracy theorists who just didn't trust the system, be it the NHS, law enforcement, or the judiciary. And I will say I agreed. When you saw that sort of influx of people who were saying there's a problem with this conviction, et cetera, I kind of agreed that those people were conspiracy theorists. I thought she's been tried by a jury of her peers. We made that very clear in previous

episodes that we've done on this. They found her guilty. The jury found her guilty. Yes, we didn't get to see all the evidence that was used to prosecute her because we're in the UK. We don't have cameras in the courtroom. It's very difficult. There is a lot of like a lack of transparency around how some of these verdicts were reached. Also getting your hands on a court transcript wouldn't be easy even if you wanted to. Hannah, would you like to guess how much it would cost to get your hands on the Lucy Letbe entire 10 month court transcript from Manchester Crown Court in pounds.

In pounds. In pounds, Sterling. 10,000. 100,000 British pounder you knows. Why? I fucking don't know. But that's the cost of getting your hands on the entire 10 month transcript. When you Google it, I tried to, I was like, how much does it cost? How easy

is it to get these things? I wasn't specifically looking at the Lucy Letbe one. They say things like cost of transcription, et cetera, et cetera. A hundred grand. And it already exists. It's not like you have to hire someone to transcribe it. I'm sorry. Are you going to get Margaret Atwood to type it out for me? Why does it cost a hundred grand? It is bonkers. So yes, a lot of the information is very shrouded. Right. And in this country, you also can't interview jurors after the fact. So there's also that sort of stumbling block in terms of like how much we know about what went on. We had to trust that the evidence we did hear about that did come out into the newspapers, into, you know,

official records about what was used to convict her was all above board, but we didn't know what else had been said. We also didn't know what else hadn't been said. And I think those are some of the key points worth mentioning. And this, no, I'm not going to say it now. I'm going to say it at the end. Okay. So after all of that happened, famously we all remember in May, 2024, when a New Yorker article was released, which we couldn't even access here in the UK

because it was deemed to be in contempt of court. And that article called into question the statistical evidence that had been used to convict Lucy Letbe. And neither of us were that interested in it at the time, to be honest. We both read it and we were like, eh. And we said that in our previous update on Lucy Letby about that article specifically. It wasn't the statistical evidence that convicted her eventually. It was a part of the case,

absolutely, but the conviction was about the totality of the evidence, including the medical evidence about how the babies had died and also the circumstantial evidence and also the testimony of the doctors who worked on the ward as well. I did remember reading it and trying my best to be impartial, but when it's this case, that is hard and we're all imperfect and fallible. I remember reading it and being like, that's just not really the point. Yeah. I think this is the problem, right?

Is Lucy Lepy was convicted on various things. If you take a big step back and look at it, right, there was statistical evidence, there was medical evidence, and there was the circumstantial evidence, and like you said, there was a testimony of the consultants who had worked there. So if there was somebody poking holesial evidence. And like you said, there was the testimony of the consultants who had worked there. So if there was somebody poking holes at the statistical evidence, which is really what the New Yorker article was doing, I was like, okay, fine, the statistics weren't perfect, but what about the medical evidence?

What about the circumstantial evidence? What about the testimony of the doctors? So it felt like poking a hole in one of those, which wasn't the fundamental basis of what she was convicted. She was convicted on the medical evidence. That's what it was. The statistical evidence pointed at Lucy Lepy is how we were told is what happened. And then the medical evidence convicts her. That was kind of the narrative as I understood it. So when the New York article came out, I wasn't super swept up by that. I technically meant to be reading it in this

country, but we obviously did get our hands on it eventually. I wasn't convinced. But for those of you who are listening to this, watching this and screaming that the statistical evidence was flawed, I personally now agree with that and I will get to it. But for now, let's discuss what happened that led to the frankly unbelievable press conference that we all witnessed last week. And I want to say we all, but before we sat down and recorded, Hannah was like, ain't nobody talking about Lucy Letbe. And I was like, ain't nobody. Ain't nobody talking about Lucy Letbe. Everyone's talking about Kendrick Lamar. I know. Look, I stayed up till 2am writing these notes last night. So we're talking about

Lucy Letbe. And I sincerely hope that you guys do listen to this. I really, really would urge you all to go and watch the entire press conference. We will obviously link it in the episode description. It was bonkers and it was led, this press conference was led by a retired Canadian neonatologist turned farmer, who I just adore, called Dr. Shu Lee. Now Dr. Lee wrote a paper back in 1989, the year of my birth, that became a key piece of the medical evidence to underpin the prosecution case against Lucy Labbe. But Dr. Lee, who wrote this paper, was never asked by the prosecution who used his paper for any additional information about his paper. They also didn't approach him to come and be an expert witness. Nothing. Not saying

they have to, but none of that information was made clear to him. From his farm in Ontario, Dr. Lee said he didn't even really know anything about the Lucy Letbe trial. It doesn't seem to have been that big news outside of the UK. He says he saw a tiny little article in the newspaper about a nurse who had been convicted of murdering these babies. And he said, I just thought, oh, how terrible. That's what he thought. But when Lucy Leppie mounted an appeal last year, her defense team, her new defense team, did get in touch with Dr. Lee. And in his own words, he was troubled

when he saw how the prosecution and their star medical witness, had interpreted his research. Essentially, the prosecution had claimed that Lucy Letby killed several of the babies by injecting air into them and causing air embolisms. The prosecution stated, using Dr. Lee's 35-year-old paper,

that when a baby dies of an air embolism, they have skin discoloration and it looks mottled. But the problem is that's not quite always true. So the thing with air embolisms is basically to really definitively know that that's what's killed a baby or a person is you would need to do an x-ray quite quickly after the death. In lieu of that, then you can look for other signs, right? And they say skin discoloration is the sign that we had to look at because we didn't immediately suspect that that's what killed these babies, so we didn't do the x-rays in time. Therefore, we're looking for other ways to identify that these babies died of air embolisms. So Dr. Lee took issue with the fact that they had used the skin discoloration as a

method to diagnose air embolisms in these babies, because he says in his paper, actually only 10% of babies who died from an air embolism in the 54 cases that had been officially recorded up until 1989 when he wrote his paper, only 10% of those babies showed skin discoloration. And I know it's not a huge sample size, but in 54 babies where it's confirmed, we know for a fact they died of an air embolism, only 10% of them had skin discoloration. So then for the Countess of Chester Hospital and for the prosecution to say that all of the babies that they say, Lucy, let be killed with air embolisms. All of them had skin discoloration.

Dr. Lee was immediately like, well, what are the chances? That would mean there are so many more babies, statistically speaking, that would have had to die of air embolisms for all of these babies to show skin discoloration, if only 10% show that. He felt like statistically that felt like quite a big leap. Especially as Dr. Lee said, when there are other causes of death that always cause skin discoloration. Why are we immediately jumping to one that we only know shows it in 10% of cases?

But that's not it. Because Dr. Lee was also very concerned. And this is the kicker is that in his paper, he had only looked at arterial air embolisms. So when the air is introduced into the baby's artery, that's what he's referring to. That's when you see 10% of skin discoloration in air embolisms that are arterial. But all the babies who died at the Countess of Chester Hospital supposedly had air injected into their veins because the accusation of the prosecution was that Lucy Letby had been

injecting air into the IV of these babies. So it's going into their veins. So this is called a venous air embolism, not an arterial air embolism. So Dr. Lee studies, doesn't matter because it's arterial. And he actually takes it a step further and says, you do not get skin discoloration when you are dealing with venous air embolisms. He says that doesn't happen because the blood in your veins goes to your lungs where air bubbles are removed and therefore there is no skin discoloration.

You only see skin discoloration in 10% of cases with arterial air embolisms, which is not what the Countess of Chester Hospital was dealing with because they said it was venous. In those cases, you don't see skin discoloration. So you also don't have the x-rays to prove that those babies died of air embolisms. You've picked skin discoloration as the symptom by which you're diagnosing an air embolism, but it's completely wrong for the type of air embolism you're even claiming happened here. But the problem is and was that all of the evidence that was just explained existed when

the trial happened. So it was deemed by appeal judges that it wasn't new evidence because it isn't. It's an interpretation of evidence that already existed at the time of trial. And this is the problem. In this country, to get an appeal is very, very, very, very difficult. Like once you are convicted, the chances that you will have an appeal are slim to none because unlike in the US, for example, where you can say, you know, inadequate counsel, there's various other reasons you can mount an appeal successfully. And especially if you're on a death sentence or whole of life order. Lucy Letby is on 15 whole life orders, but is unable to mount one with this because they're saying this is not new evidence. New evidence is the only way pretty much in this country you can get an

appeal. Yeah, years ago we were thinking about making a limited series on people who are wrongfully convicted and then released in the UK. Turns out basically no one. So we couldn't make it because the stories don't exist because it is so difficult to get a conviction overturned. It doesn't happen. It's that our court system- But it's very, very rare. Yes. No, I mean, not that wrongful convictions don't happen.

Oh, right. Yes, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's that our court system is very built around protecting itself. And that's the problem. There was a very recent case of a man named Oliver Campbell, who has now been released, but we're talking people spend years and years and years and years in prison. Even if there is an appeal, you could be talking seven, eight, 10, 15 years before your appeal even gets heard. Whether you think Lucy Letbe is guilty or not,

the one thing I think we can all agree is there is something very broken at the heart of the British justice system, which does not allow for mistakes to be acknowledged because it's very protective of itself and operates with so much secrecy. So yeah, her appeal failed on that basis. But since Dr. Lee has updated his paper, the one he wrote in 1989, so it now includes Venus air embolisms. He's trying to basically create new evidence.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's pretty, pretty certain that's not going to make a difference because Lucy Letby has now exhausted all of her appeals. But Dr. Lee isn't giving up. He was seriously concerned about the idea that Lucy Letby had been convicted using what he saw as extremely shaky medical evidence. So he brought together a panel of leading medical experts from all over the world. And we're talking like leaders of neonatal units from some of the most prestigious institutions on earth. To say this panel was a who's who of formidable top dogs is putting it mildly. There just aren't better people out there.

No, not when you're talking about the subject matter at hand. They call it a blue ribbon committee. It's like best of the best of the best. Dr. Lee refers to them as the dream team and he's not lying. If you just look up the credentials of the people that are on the board, the level of experience that they have, you would be hard pushed to find anybody missing from that who should have been on that panel. No, exactly. Anything you often on Red Handed We Talk About expert testimony can kind of be a bit of a

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Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts, or Spotify. And basically this panel that Dr. Schule puts together, he writes to Lucy Letbee's defense and says, I want to put this panel together because I'm concerned about what was used to convict her. Will you give us all of the medical evidence that you have? And I will put this panel together and we will review it. That's what he says. And he says, but the condition that I have is is we will report back whatever we find, whether it is favorable to Lucy Letby or not. And Lucy Letby and her defense team agree.

So here, take everything that we have, please report back. And it's really, really important to point out here that all of them said, we did not do this out of sympathy for Lucy Letby. They were like, I don't know. I don't know whether she did it or not. That's not our concern. Our concern is at the start of this investigation that this panel decided to undertake was we will just do what an expert witness or a panel of expert

witnesses should do is offer an impartial eye over the medical evidence. And we will report back whatever it is that we find. And it's also important to point out that this panel did it at their own expense. They were not paid by Lucy Lethby's defense team that they did it all paid for it all themselves. They were pro bono. Dr. Shuli paid for his own flights from Canada, his own stay in London, everything.

And yeah, they said that they did it because they felt deeply uncomfortable about the conviction. And I think the other thing to point out is that these people are incredibly busy, like Dr. Shuli is retired, but he's a farmer now. He's busy and everyone on that panel is incredibly busy. And they are doing this, taking time out of their lives to do this. And also staking their reputations on the line because, whether anyone is watching this or not, it is an incredibly high profile case. And so for them to get

involved in this and to be as definitive as they have been in their findings, which will obviously come to, I have to believe that they believe they are sure about what they're saying. Because the ramifications for them professionally, if they are proven to be incorrect, it's not really worth it. So the press conference that no one knows has happened apparently, went out on Tuesday the 4th of February, chaired by MP Sir David Davis, who's done a pretty cracking amount of work around this case. And David Davis, if you're not from the UK, has got a very, very long history of campaigning

for miscarriages of justice, which in this country as discussed, not easy because our courts do not like to admit when they are wrong. He's a scientist and he's a statistician, and he has been inundated with messages from experts about the Lucy Letbee case since the New Yorker article. So even though the court script was priceless, he did manage eventually to get his hands on three quarters of it,

and he spent this summer pouring all over it. And David Davis says that he initially believed Lucy Letbe to be guilty. And then he thought perhaps it might have been a mistrial. So they got the right person, but by the wrong means. And he said he wasn't interested in getting involved in a mistrial situation. Yeah, because he gets all of these letters from these experts after the New Yorker article telling him, look at this, look at this, the stats don't make sense. And he has freed people through miscarriages of justice. Like he's your go-to man if you believe you have been the victim of a miscarriage. And he said, I'm not interested in getting involved in like the nitty gritty of court

business. If it's a mistrial, I'm sorry that happened to you, but I'm not interested in that. I'm only interested in miscarriages of justice. And I have to respect him that he spent three months of his summer reading over this transcript. And he admits, I went from thinking she was guilty to thinking mistrial to then where he is now. Because after speaking to medical experts, Sir David Davis realized that it had been a miscarriage of justice. But more than that, he now thinks that Lucy Letby is innocent.

And Sir David Davis has been very clear about that. He's been very clear about his journey, his evolving perception of that situation. And even when I saw that he was chairing this panel, I did not believe that Dr. Xu Li and the other 13 medical experts who had assembled there would be saying anything really that definitive. When I heard there was a panel, I was like, okay, at most I thought they would say there are some issues, there are some inconsistencies, there are some problems here that we can point to with the evidence. That's all I kind of thought they would say, even though I knew that David

Davis thought that this was a full on miscarriage of justice. That is not what we got. What we got, in my opinion, was an absolute excoriation of the prosecution's case against Lucy Lampe. And I have to say, in all the time we've been doing this, nearly 10 years of doing this podcast, I have personally never seen or heard anything quite like it, where a panel have been that certain and that just blowing a hole through where a panel have been that certain. And that just blowing a hole through the prosecution's case to that extent.

The experts looked at the 17 babies that Lucy Letbe had been accused of harming. In total, there was about 35,000 pages of medical evidence for them to sift through. And in all 17 cases of all 17 babies, the experts came to different conclusions than Dewey Evans, the crown's star witness. So here's how they did it. The experts were paired up with a certain number of babies to look at and then they were asked to come up with a conclusion as to how that particular baby died. And if they agreed on the cause of death of a particular baby, then that was noted down. Immediately sounding a lot more rigorous than just having one man be like, how did all these

babies die? We'll come to fucking Dewey Evans in a moment though. If they didn't agree, then a third doctor was assigned to the team and they would add their thoughts on how and why that baby died, given the evidence that they could collect. Out of the 17 cases, there were only two where there was any disagreement between the medical experts on cause of death. And crucially, in all 17 cases, the doctors found no evidence of murder or foul play. Very, very, very definitive about that. So let's get into the meat of what they found. Now I'm not going to go through every single baby, because they don't go through every

single baby in the press conference. They go through a lot more than we're about to talk about. But again, I would really, really say just go watch the press conference because otherwise we're just going to see it repeating every word they say. It really is quite remarkable, but we'll go through a certain number of them that are worth discussing for our purposes today. The experts were able to show that each of the babies that the prosecution claimed had died from air embolisms actually died due to other reasons.

Baby one, for example, according to this panel, actually died of thrombosis because an IV had been passed through the baby's vein into its tissue. Hours went by with no infusion and that led to the formation of a blood clot and the clot dislodged and then it killed the baby. There wasn't an air embolism. It was never there. This is a theme that repeats itself across so many of these babies that they claim died of air embolisms. So what we're talking about here is, I mean, I'm a squeamish person and this was hard to envision.

So basically what we're saying is they're putting the needle into the baby's arm to put the IV in and they're doing such a poor job of it at this hospital that the needle passes all the way through the baby's vein into the tissue. So it's just gone straight through and they're not realizing that that's what's happened. And they've turned off the infusion and Dr. Xu Li says, even in adults, if there is an in-tissued IV, you can't leave it there with no infusion or even with an infusion. That's bad because it's just going into your tissue, but with no infusion. Because what happens is a blood clot starts to form on

the end of the needle. And then when an infusion is restarted without it being removed or with it being removed, the blood clot dislodges and can kill you. And imagine that in a already sick prenatal baby. And then they're saying, oh, it was an air embolism. No, it was because you inserted the IV wrong. Then there was baby four who had pneumonia, sepsis, and apnea. And this baby had all three of these things, fucking pneumonia and sepsis as a prenatal baby. But the prosecution in their medical evidence called this baby a stable baby. Not true. This baby had suffered multiple collapses before its eventual death.

And I'm sorry, we do say it's throughout because I don't know the sex of each of the babies, so please don't think I'm just being crude. And the panel found that this baby had actually been born after a membrane rupture. And that they knew this before the baby was born and the mother should have been given antibiotics before she delivered the baby, but she wasn't given any. And then they said when the baby was born and the mother should have been given antibiotics before she delivered the baby, but she wasn't given any. And then they said when the baby was born, the baby should have immediately been given antibiotics. But that wasn't the case. The baby did not get antibiotics for a long period of time. There was a long delay in treatment before the baby received antibiotics, which is why the baby gets sepsis. Now this

baby was also, according to the medical evidence that these doctors have looked at, in severe respiratory distress. And they can also prove that that was the case because three attempts were made to intubate this baby. So to, you know, add in a breathing tube, essentially. And all the while, this baby was getting worse, the infection was getting worse because they hadn't spotted the signs of an infection and they hadn't started antibiotics. Dr. Hsu even says the consultant who intubated this baby, quote, did not know what he was doing and that the baby died of the infection due to the delays in treatment. And again, this panel said there were no signs of an air embolism. And then we've got baby seven, the one the prosecution said was overfed and had air injected into its stomach.

The panel said all indications point to this baby also having suffered from an acute infection, just like baby four. There was no evidence of overfeeding or an air ablism either. Especially because that baby, baby seven, was presenting with large watery stools, which is not something according to Dr. Lee that is associated with overfeeding, but rather with the type of infection the baby was later identified as having when it was moved to Alderhay Hospital. So they move the baby incredibly sick and they say, oh look, we moved the baby, it gets better, it's because somebody was trying to kill the baby here.

When that baby gets to Alderhay, they're like, this baby's got an infection. They start antibiotics and then the baby gets better. So, yeah. Next up, let's talk about baby 15. And you might be being confused if you do know this case inside out, that in the trial, they refer to these babies with letters, but for some reason, this panel decided to call them numbers. I didn't want to spend another two hours and

say up to four in the morning trying to cross reference which baby was which. The point stands that the point is the same. They're looking at the same babies. They're just called different things. So baby 15, this baby, you might as might remember from our episode on this, the prosecution claimed had died from blunt force trauma to the abdomen. So someone had hit this baby, Lucy Loughby had hit this baby. And also air had been injected into this baby's stomach. And also, you know, triple threat, there was also a venous air embolism. So once again, air introduced into the IV.

Now according to the panel, the damage seen to this baby, so the damage to the abdomen, they said could not have been caused by a strike. That is not what caused this. They said that this damage that the baby had suffered that looked like blunt force trauma, according to the prosecution, had clearly been caused during delivery because it was more consistent with a wrenching action. And they said to make it worse. And this is just unbelievable.

They said to make it worse. And this isn't something the consultants are denying. They said basically the baby had started to present with like a distended abdomen with gas filling up inside. And so to try and relieve that distension, the consultants had blindly needled the baby's abdomen with a needle to try and release some of this air. Dr. Shulianne there says that is completely inappropriate treatment. It never should have been done.

And according to this panel of medical experts said that that needling punctured the baby's liver. And that process then led to massive internal bleeding, which was noted in the post-mortem report for that baby. But at trial, it was presented that this baby had died of an air embolism. Because, you guessed it, it had skin discoloration. So massive internal bleeding and a punctured liver due to consultants needling this baby was ignored, and massive internal hemorrhaging was ignored, but it was written down that the

cause of death was down to an air embolism purely because of skin discoloration. And it was wrong because it was venous, according to them. So yes, it was just mind boggling because they also say, well, what else could it have been because there was so much gas inside this baby? What else could it have been if it wasn't somebody injecting air into the abdomen? Well, the panel easily explained this by saying that baby had been manually resuscitated multiple times, which is what would have led to the introduction of all of that air into that baby's body. Baby Nine was also supposed to have died of abdominal damage due to air being pumped into

its stomach, causing splinting in its diaphragm. This baby was on and off life support, resuscitated multiple times and had chronic lung disease and an infection, although no antibiotics were administered. The consultants who testified stated that they believed that apnea alarm had been switched off. It turns out, according to the panel, the alarm wasn't off. The nurses were right. It didn't go off though because the baby was gasping. An apnea alarm will only go off if there because the baby was gasping. An apnea alarm will only go off if there is no breath at all for a set period of time. So once again, it really just seems, and this is sort of a running theme, that the consultants

are not on the ward that often. The nurses are the ones there all the time. And they seem to have, in many regards, a better understanding of the equipment that's going on. So they're saying the apnea alarm was not switched off. It wasn't going off because the baby was gasping and if you're gasping, the alarm only goes off if there's no breath for 20 seconds. So of course it wasn't going on because the baby was gasping, but it was in respiratory distress. And the consultants are just like, it was off. It must have been off. It couldn't have been that we didn't notice this. So again, no foul play. According to the panel, the doctors at the hospital failed to respond to the infection and the baby died.

They also claimed something similar in the case of baby 11 at trial. So consultants had intubated this baby with, according to Dr. Shu Lee and this panel, the wrong size tubes. And they also said that the intubation had been done badly and had caused trauma to the baby. They also said, the panel, that the consultant who had intubated this baby had then also used the wrong device because basically there was lung collapse that was happening. So they had intubated the baby and then tried to use a device to, I'm not a doctor, reinflate some of the collapsed lungs. But what the panel said is they were using the wrong size tubes. And he was saying

they were essentially using a tube that was way too small. So it's like Dr. Lee says in the press conference, so trying to stick a straw into a hosepipe and trying to inflate it. Like it's not going to happen. You need much more pressure and you need a bigger tube. And they were saying the consultants again did not have the relevant experience or clearly the relevant knowledge to know what size device to be using, what pressure to be using, and they weren't doing it properly. And they'd already caused trauma when they had intubated this baby poorly. So this is all happening, but the doctors, the consultants who did this said that the oxygen alarms had been switched off. So when the baby started to experience respiratory

distress because the lungs hadn't been reinflated, they said, well, we didn't know. The nurses on the ward said the oxygen alarms were going off. And the kindest they could say is maybe the consultants didn't hear them, but we heard them. The alarms were going off. And again, according to Dr. Lee, he questions not the qualifications of the consultants who were on this ward. But the thing that they're sort of saying is that qualifications and experience are not the same thing. So this hospital prior to this spike in deaths that we saw, hadn't been used to

dealing with babies that were that sick. So this panel is made up of people who specialize in dealing with babies that are that sick. And they're saying these babies should have been cared for in an institution that knew what it was doing. It's not that these consultants aren't qualified, it's that they don't have the experience to have been dealing with babies this sick because they weren't used to it. And they were making mistakes. And that is what led to a lot of these deaths, according to it. And they were making mistakes. And that is what led to a lot of these deaths,

according to them. UFO lands in Suffolk, and that's official, said the News of the World. But what really happened across two nights in December 1980, when US servicemen saw mysterious lights in the forest near RAF Woodbridge and claimed to have had a close encounter with an actual craft? forest near RAF Woodbridge, and claimed to have had a close encounter with an actual craft. Encounters, a new podcast available exclusively on Wondery+, takes a deep dive into one of the most famous and still unresolved UFO encounters to ever take place in the UK. Featuring shocking testimony from first-hand witnesses, hosts, journalist, podcaster and UFO researcher Andy

McGillin, that's me, and producer Elle Scott take us back to the nights in question and examine all of the evidence and conflicting theories about what was encountered in the middle of a snowy Suffolk forest 40 years ago. Are we alone? Encounters is a podcast which is going to find out. Listen to Encounters exclusively and ad-free on Wondry+. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or in Apple podcasts. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream

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Disgusting so sorry. Until you're wearing orange jumpsuit it's not real now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace from law and crime this is the rise and fall of getting listen to the rise and fall of getting exclusively with one 3 plus. Next up probably the one that everyone remembers the most and kind of the smoking gun for a lot of people us included at a

particular time. 2 of the babies that died had been given synthetic insulin is what the prosecution claimed at trial. Yes. We're only going to talk about baby six because they're both quite similar situations. Baby six had sepsis and hypoglycemia, so needed insulin. But after it was administered, the baby became hypoglycemic and was treated with 10% dextrose and antibiotics, but the baby's blood sugar stayed low. Yeah. So hyper is when your blood sugars are too high, you need to be given insulin. Also babies and even infants who are not even prenatal have a lot of difficulties managing their

blood sugars. Like it's difficult for them to do that. And so when you're hyperglycemic, you need insulin to bring it down. When you're hypoglycemic, it means you need glucose to bring your blood sugars up. So they're kind of trying to balance the two. The doctors kept pumping Baby Six with the same percentage of glucose constantly, every two hours or so, but still the baby's blood sugars didn't come up. And this for me was, like you said, absolute smoking gun. Everything else I was like, okay, air embolisms, blah, blah, blah. Like, you're sure there could be other explanations. Like people were saying the idea of synthetic exogenous insulin being

inserted into these babies, that's no mistake. Insulin is a very, very controlled drug. It's very, very clearly labeled. How is that happening by accident? So this was the big question, but we have an explanation according to this panel. So yeah, they constantly giving this baby that is hypoglycemic 10% doses of dextrose every two hours and nothing is going on, nothing is happening. The blood sugars aren't coming up.

10 hours later, they discovered that once again, the baby's IV was in tissue. Which again means that the needle had passed straight through the baby's vein and was sitting in the baby's IV was in-tissued, which again means that the needle had passed straight through the baby's vein and was sitting in the baby's tissue. And so the glucose solution that they were pumping into this baby's body every two hours was just being pumped into the baby's tissue, not into the baby's bloodstream, which is why obviously the blood sugar levels weren't coming up. But the way it was said at trial was there must have been synthetic insulin inserted into the IV drip of that baby.

And that's why the blood sugars weren't coming up. And actually a nurse even reported seeing that there was not only swelling around the arm where it had been in-tissued, there was swelling around the groin, the legs and the thighs of this baby, which means that the in-tissued IV had been in there for a long time. And we know it had been in there for a long time. And we know it had been there for 10 hours before anybody realized what had happened. So when they realized this, the IV was stopped and it was reinserted this time correctly and the IV bag was changed.

And this time they're still giving the same dose of glucose. They're still giving the 10% dextrose. And according to Dr. Lee, this only makes hypoglycemia worse. And Dr. Lee stated that they teach medical students not to do this, not to keep giving a baby who is hypoglycemic just the same percentage of dextrose again and again and again, if it's not bringing up the blood sugars. He called this a basic thing and said that what happens is essentially becomes a vicious cycle. So the glucose goes in, the 10% dextrose goes in, the body produces insulin because these babies aren't diabetic, they're just struggling to manage their blood sugars.

Body produces insulin, brings down the blood glucose levels, they're given more, it happens again and again and again. What needed to happen was they needed to increase the percentage of glucose they were giving for the baby to be able to overcome the problem, for it to actually be able to raise its blood sugar levels. But they didn't do this for nine hours. And guess what? When they fixed the end-tissued IV and they eventually gave this baby 15% dextrose, the hypo was resolved. The accusation at trial was that synthetic exogenous insulin was added to the baby's

IV bag and that is why the baby remained with low blood sugar. Even though they were giving the baby the wrong dose and for hours the glucose wasn't even entering the baby's bloodstream because the IV line was in-tissued and the doctors knew that. But what about the high insulin low C peptide situation? We talked about this in our original Lucy Letvy episode and it was very convincing back then before we had all of this additional information. Uh-huh.

That's what I thought. Well, the relationship between insulin and C-peptide, the relationship you just explained, is very well tested for, according to this panel, in adults and even in older children. But they're very, very clear. This standard, this like ratio, this balance between insulin and C peptide is not the same in preterm infants. So what they've done at trial is take a standard that fits adults and

maybe older children and applied it to prenatal babies for which it is not the same. So this panel got expert evidence from a man named Dr. Jeff Chase, who has spent, according to them, his entire career studying this particular thing. And according to him, here's what we have. The C-peptide levels found in baby six would be low for an adult with that same level of insulin in their bloodstream. But for a preterm baby, like baby six was, the level of C-peptide

found was actually just average. So there was no red flag there immediately, or there shouldn't have been if the medical expert knew what he was talking about. Secondly, Dr. Chase also said that if the insulin was high in the baby's body, potassium would have been lowered, but it wasn't. So again, there's no indication that high levels of insulin were being pumped into this baby. Also he said the glucose levels would have been much lower if synthetic exogenous insulin had been used, and they weren't. He also said that preterm babies also have a lot of antibodies in their system, which bind to insulin.

So when you measure these babies for insulin, you are at risk always of getting false positive higher than normal insulin readings. That is just something that happens. Finally, he also said that antibiotics can affect the insulin C-peptide levels in prenatal babies. And this baby, as we already said, had sepsis and was on antibiotics. So, to conclude, according to this panel of medical experts, there is no medical evidence

for murder in any of the 17 cases of baby death that Lucy Letbee was convicted of. And to summarize all of the problems that were happening on the neonatal ward at the Countess of Chester, we're actually just going to hand over to the man himself. So just to summarise all the findings we had in terms of the medical problems that we are seeing at this hospital, we found that the medical histories were incomplete. It was a failure to consider the obstetric history. There was disregard for surveillance warnings about bacterial colonisation. There was misdiagnosis of diseases in these babies. They were caring

for babies that were probably beyond their expected ability or designated level of care. There were unsafe delays in diagnosis and treatment of ac designated level of care. There were unsafe delays in diagnosis and treatment of acutely ill patients. There were poor skills at resuscitation and intubation. There was poor supervision of junior doctors in procedures like intubation. There were poor skills in basic medical procedures like insertion of chest tubes. There was lack of understanding about basic things like respiratory physiology and how to mechanically ventilate the baby. There was poor management of common neonatal conditions like hypoglycemia. There was lack of knowledge about commonly used

equipment in the NICU like Neopath and Capnograv. There was failure to protect infants who were at risk, for example hemophilia, from trauma during intubation. There was a lack of teamwork and trust between the health professions. There were also statements given by many witnesses which point to serious resource infrastructure deficiencies, and these specific concerns that were expressed by individuals include inadequate numbers of appropriately trained personnel in the unit, lack of training for assigned nursing roles, inadequate staffing and workload overload, poor plumbing and drainage resulting in the need for intensive cleaning in the

unit. And this is a potential factor in stenotrophomonas metophilia infection because this particular bacteria thrives in water and particularly in dirty water and bad water. There was poor environmental temperature control in the facility. There was difficulty in finding a doctor when the need arose. There was congestion at the medication cabinet and profession trolley. There was lack of appropriate facilities for sterile preparation of drugs. Some high-risk infants had been born and cared for at higher level institutions but were born and cared for at higher-level institutions but were born and cared for in this hospital, and there were delays in transfer of sick infants to higher-level facilities when the need arose. So these are not things that we

invented. These are statements given by people who worked in the unit. Our conclusions of this panel, therefore, was that there was no medical evidence to support malfeasance causing death or injury in any of the 17 cases in the trial. Now I have only presented to you seven of the cases, seven of the 14 of which you have convictions, but the others are similar. It is just nuances, changes of variation in the details. Death or injury of all the affected infants were due either to natural causes or to errors in medical care. There were serious problems related to medical care

or 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. In all cases, death or injury were due to natural causes or just bad medical care. Lucy was charged with seven murders and seven attempted murders. In our opinion, the medical opinion, the medical evidence, doesn't support murder in any of these babies. Just natural causes and bad medical care.

Our full report will go to Lucy's barrister later this month. And then it will be up to him and the courts to decide what next to do. to the President. David Davis and Mr Mark McDonald for their efforts, and Sir David in particular for graciously organising and chairing this meeting. I would also like to thank the members of the International Expert Panel. They are some of the most experienced and best minds in neonatology in the world today, and they are incredibly busy people who have given freely and generously of their time to this effort to uncover the truth. And they have done so with objectivity and impartiality, knowing that, regardless of whatever they say, whether it is favourable or unfavourable to Lucy, it would be released because they did not come into this to free Lucy. They came into this to discover the

truth. Finally, we hope the authorities will consider our findings seriously and act accordingly, because you will not find a better panel of experts anywhere in the world. These are the best in the world that you can find, and they come from the most prestigious institutions. They come from Boston Children's Hospital, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Imperial College, Catalan Institute, UUUM, Tokyo National Child Center, and so on. These are truly the best.

And today is actually a historic day, because it is possibly the first time that a group of the top minds in neonatology in the world have come together voluntarily and pro bono to provide clarity to some very vexing questions about a troubling case. So, pretty definitive. No murders. At all. According to Dr. Schooley and the dream team, the baby's deaths were all results of failures

across the board, not the actions of just one nurse. And he quite strongly called into question the competence of consultants who work there. And if you are American, consultant means super doctor. It is not like a word for like trainee. No, no, no. Consultant is top of the chart. And he calls out not only the fact that they didn't know what they were doing, also that they were barely on the ward at all. Yeah. They should have been making rounds twice a day. They were making rounds twice a week.

It's not good. No. And the bacterial infection that he's talking about there, there is evidence and people on the ward, including the consultants, were aware of this. There was an infection in the water and they were trying to control it, but they couldn't, they couldn't get a grip of it. So the water in the water was infected with something called pseudomonas, I'm probably saying it wrong, pseudomonas bacteria, which can be lethal. And multiple of these babies died of infections and were not given antibiotics in time.

So yes, watch the press conference. You've heard us talk about a few of these babies. They do a much more in-depth job of it. And yeah, I think the question you have to ask yourself, and people will be asking themselves, I ask myself is, can we believe all this? Like you said correctly, Hannah, we've talked before about the challenges

of just listening to expert evidence and how it's not everything in a criminal case. But in my opinion, and it's just my opinion, these people, these 14 people that made up this panel are incredibly highly respected medical experts. So I think one of the questions is like, how did this happen? If they're saying there were no murders, there was no crime committed here. It's all down to poor medical treatment, absent or poor medical treatment. That's what they're

saying. How did this happen? If there is so much evidence to the contrary, medically speaking to murder, how was Lucy Letby convicted of so many murders? Well, and I did not know this. And I had to check this multiple times because I couldn't believe that it was true. Not one single clinical medical expert was called by Lucy Letby's defense to speak in her defense. Not one. Why? What's happening?

Apparently, Lucy Letby's defense, who are not the same team that are now conducting her appeals, thankfully, had a clinical expert on retainer. But apparently he wasn't that strong in his conviction and they thought it would make the defense look weaker, so they just didn't call him. And you can say, okay, well then there you go. They tried to find a medical expert who wasn't that strong in their conviction, so maybe this panel of 14 dream team are bullshit. Well no. Other experts, including Dr. Nina Modi, who is professor of neonatal medicine at Imperial College in London, and also the former president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, who was on this panel by the way, with Dr. Xu Li, reached out to the defence and said she would testify, and they never got back to her.

But Lucy Letby in this country does not get an appeal based on inadequate counsel. Next up, let's look at the Crown Star witness, singular, retired paediatrician Dr. Dewey Evans. When he was called in by the Cheshire police, he looked at the medical evidence for 10 minutes before he declared that he knew that it was murder. That's not being hyperbolic. That's not us making it up. He went on a podcast and said that. He says that proudly. He says, took a look at those notes over a cup of coffee, 10 minutes. I knew we were looking at murders. Excuse me.

He also said, in 35 years of working as an expert witness, I've only lost one case. Like, are you Lionel Hutz? Like, what a weird thing to say. It's like he thinks he's an investigator or he thinks he's a prosecutor. That's not your job. You're an expert witness. Your job isn't to be winning cases. No, money down. So yeah, Red Flag doesn't seem like a particularly impartial expert if you're trying to win. And it actually turns out he wasn't an impartial expert at all. No. Now before we get into Dewey Evans' work here, I just want to point something out that came

up in the Q&A of the press conference, which once again, my jaw was already on the floor, went even further down. Dr. Shuli is asked by one of the journalists, how many peer-reviewed papers, Dr. Lee, have you published in your career in medical journals? And he says, over 400 in my career. The panel assembled there, the 14 of them in totality, have thousands and thousands and thousands of peer-reviewed journals between them, published. Do you know how many 67-year-old retired pediatrician and star witness for the Crown prosecution how many Dr. Dewey Evans had? No. Not even one single peer-reviewed paper. Dr. Schule's like 400.

And when he's asked, do you know how many Dr. Dewey Evans has? And he's like, I don't know. I don't know him. I don't know. And Dr. Schule makes a very clear point. The panel that are there are all there because he asked them, because he knows the best of the best in the world. And he's like, I don't know this guy.

How many? And the journalist is like zero. Just something worth mentioning. And Dr. Lee didn't know Dr. Evans at all, but he was shocked to discover that while they'd found so many issues with the hospital itself, as in the panel had found those problems, Dewey Evans had found none. He didn't mention anything. All of the problems that they just mentioned in that clip we played you, he didn't find a single one of those. And how can that be when there was clear evidence of babies dying of natural causes or because of bad treatment or the infection in the water? Why didn't Dewey Evans say any of that? Well, I know why, it's because he went straight to murder in 10 minutes. He says it himself. And that's the problem that this panel is saying, right? They say there was so many easier, more obvious explanations for why so many of these babies

had died. But for some reason, some reason, Dewey Evans ignores all those and goes to murder and is using things like skin discoloration to prove air embolisms when there is a much clearer explanation like the fact that the baby had an infection and wasn't given antibiotics. So yeah, pretty bizarre. So let's talk about Dewey Evans and his involvement with this case. So like I said, he was brought in by the Cheshire police to assess and examine the medical evidence that had been collected. And he was given a lot of medical evidence from the consultants at the hospital, at the

Countess of Chester hospital. He looks at them and originally identifies 61 serious and suspicious incidents, all involving death or sudden collapse. 61. He then looks deeper into these 61 cases that he's identified and he begins to categorize them into two categories, suspicious and non-suspicious. And he ends up with 25 in the suspicious camp and 36 in the non-suspicious camp. Now we don't know how he decided which events were suspicious and which events weren't. He doesn't show his working. And he noted down some cases as being suspicious in that 25 group category, even though there

were other cases in which a baby had died in essentially exactly the same way, but he had marked that down as non-suspicious. And we don't know why. What's the difference? Well, we do know why. I'm just trying to build tension. And there were also times that are worth mentioning that he encounters a baby in this data who had collapsed under much more suspicious circumstances.

For example, there was a baby that had died of asphyxia. Asphyxia, that seems like a very, very suspicious thing to die of. It was proven that that baby died of asphyxia. Hand over the mouth, pillow over the face, smother, it's a fucking neonate, of course it's going to die. And at first, Dr. Dewey Evans puts that asphyxia baby in the suspicious category. But later, he moves that baby into the non-suspicious category, with no explanation as to why. But what if I told you that all 25 of the events

he puts in the suspicious category have one thing and one thing in common? Lucy Letbee was working on that one. Mm-hmm. That was my not smoking gun. It was my Occam's razor of this whole thing. It was for so many people. Like, roll the tape.

I said, from the off, it's a neo, babies die. Mm-hmm. The insulin wasn't even really that much of a big deal for me because I was like, mistakes happen all the time. What changed my mind was, she's the only one that's there every time. Yeah. It's damning.

Like, can we get a picture of the chart up here? It's a chart. Nurses names, baby deaths. Who's there? Who's there? It was fucking slam dunk. And it was presented as if there were no other quote unquote suspicious deaths on the ward, which we now know to be not true, but may it be a lesson to us all. But also that's the prosecution's job. So it's a tricky thing. It's a tricky situation, but I think it is. It's so misleading. It's so misleading this chart. And when I said at the beginning when I wasn't sure if I changed my mind. I haven't changed my mind on the arguments that were being presented before this press came out.

Because what really wound me up was people saying, well, I just don't believe anybody would do that. And that is not an argument. And I stand by that. I stand by that also. But that, after the trial, before all of this came out, the only argument I was coming across was not medically evidence-based at all. And all we had up until that point was what we had been presented with as medical evidence. We now know that to be flawed. Also statistical charts that made it look like anytime a baby had a serious collapse

or death, Lucy Letby was there. Exactly. So I'll give you my sign off at the end, but I have not changed my mind that it was a good enough argument for people just to say, well, the NHS is shit and I just don't believe anybody would do that. Yeah. Now I agree with you and yes, let's come to it at the end, but this really, really, really, really, I don't know what the word is, threw me off a cliff when I understood what had happened here. There is a fantastic article that's written by a man named David Rose, something Rose,

Mr. Rose, and it's on our head. We'll link it in the episode description. He breaks it down. He shows you all the charts. He shows you how easy it is to manipulate. Go look at it, but we're also going to explain in some capacity now. So the chart that we've just been talking about that was in the papers that convinced me that showed that 25 baby deaths and collapses were all in a neat line next to Lucy Letbee's

name on the rota. It's bullshit. It was all shaped around Lucy Letbee babies that died when she wasn't there, just weren't included. Yes. And he knew when he was looking at those 61 suspicious events that he identified first, he knew which ones Lucy Letby was on the ward for. So that's how we know he picked the 25 that he wanted for the suspicious category based on the fact of knowing. If he had found all 25 of those to be suspicious, he had no idea which nurses were on the ward.

I'd be like, okay. He fucking knew which cases were related to Lucy Letby being there that day. And he removed the asphyxia death from suspicious to non-suspicious when he found out that Lucy Letby wasn't there when that baby died. And what's even more shocking, this is shocking. When you plot the nurses that were on the ward against all 61 suspicious events, initially suspicious events or serious events that Julie Evans found, there is no correlation.

It's just complete scatter gun, right? But if you pick any nurse at random and look for another 25 suspicious events, pick any out of those 61 like Julie Evans did, with no explanation of how you've distinguished between suspicious and non-suspicious, you would be able to make any of those nurses look guilty. Look like they had been there for 25 serious collapses and deaths. If you just pick the ones that are related to when they were there. Lucy Letby was picked because of, and this is, this is not me making this up, because of the gut feeling and concerns of the consultants on the ward, that they picked her because they, they felt like she was the one

doing it. But those are the very same consultants who Dr. Lee doesn't think know what the fuck they're doing. And who were making rounds twice a week rather than twice a day, which is what they should have been doing. And they testified against Lucy Letbee at trial. Many of the nurses stood by Lucy, actually four of them wanted to testify on her behalf, but were told by their manager that it wouldn't be good for them if they did. I mean, how fucking broken is the system? I don't know how to

answer that question. I don't know, I don't know how to answer that question. I don't know how a better system exists. There's some ideas. But before we get into that, I do want to talk about the chart. So this chart is something that the prosecution in the Lucy Letby case kind of implied that they've come up with. They've created this idea for doing it. Now, we've seen it before in cases exactly the same. It's almost become a blueprint for this kind of case of blaming nurses for the deaths of babies. And it's been used in two particular cases that jump out that I found during the research. One is a woman named Lucia de Beurt, who was in the Netherlands, and another woman called

Daniela Begialli, who was in Italy. Both of these cases bear a striking resemblance to the Lucy Letbe case. Both were nurses, as I said, charged with killing babies. And they follow almost the exact same pattern. So they work in a hospital. That hospital, one year, suddenly has a spike in infant deaths. Then what's happened is a chart is created pointing the finger at one nurse, in this case, Lucia or Danielle.

And it's also important to note here that although the Countess of Chester did, in fact, see a spike in infant deaths, the year that they sort of raise the alarm about something going on, it went from like four deaths to eight deaths over the course of one year. And that seems shocking, double your numbers. But actually a similar spike was observed in three other hospitals of a similar size at the same exact time in other parts of the country. But there was no serial killer on the loose pointed at in any of those hospitals.

Now the hospital also, and this is worth mentioning, downgraded itself the day after Lucy Letbee was suspended. A clear sign, according to people like Dr. Lee, that the hospital knew they could not provide the adequate levels of care that babies that sick needed. And on top of this, like I said, they had major, major issues with plumbing and sewage on the neonatal ward. Pseudomalus infection was in the water and the consultants were aware of this. But they don't look into that

possibility. They just go straight to serial killer. How would you, because something that we've said previously, when the consultants are pointing the finger at Lucy Letbe, previously we have said, why would they do that? Why would they bring scrutiny onto their ward that they're running poorly if they didn't really think she did it? How would you defend that? I kind of now feel like I kind of can't believe I said that. I feel like it's so obvious. They were providing, because I was going on the assumption that these consultants were providing adequate care for these babies. So then why would they draw,

maybe they're inundated, maybe there's too many babies. We all know the NHS is on its knees. It's struggling with a lack of capacity for the amount of demand. So I just thought these consultants, these nurses are doing the best that they can. Somebody, there is malfeasance at play. Somebody is doing something to undermine what's going on. But we didn't know about the infection in the water. We didn't know about the fact that why would I think that consultants, consultants on a neonatal ward are doing rounds twice a week rather than twice a day, like they fucking well should have been doing. And also it's reported in this that they weren't even reachable outside of

hospital hours. What the fuck is that about? And the idea that you have somebody like Dr. Schooley of his standard, he's a preeminent neonatologist, even though he's retired now, saying that these consultants did not know the basics of manual ventilation, how to intubate, how to deal with hypoglycemia, these basic things. We weren't aware of that. So if you're running on the idea that the consultants know what they're doing, then you're thinking, well, why would they draw attention to poor care on their ward if that's not the case? You're

looking for an alternative explanation for why baby deaths doubled. But when you add into the mix the fact that these consultants, like I said, they're the ones who point the finger at Lucy Lettby. They're the ones who helped G.E. Evans and the Cheshire police create that chart and the prosecution create that chart based on their gut feelings that Lucy Lettby was the one, though, like we've already said, they could have picked any nurse that they had some bad feeling about. I'm sorry, is that good enough to have somebody spend the rest of their life in prison or to point the finger at them? I feel like there were so many things that were left out of our analysis that we were doing the best with what we were given.

And now I look at it and I think if they really were providing such inadequate care and when they've been asked by newspapers after the Shuli panel, after he said they didn't know what they were doing, they didn't know the basics of this, they have refused to comment. Now, of course they've refused to comment, but if it's true that this level of trauma, puncturing a baby's liver with a needle causing internal bleeding and then saying that baby died of an air embolism because of a nurse, it does feel like scapegoating. It does feel like a cover-up. And these are things that I absolutely hold my hands up and said weren't possible before because I didn't think that consultants could be doing such a bad job.

There is some other evidence against Lucy Letby that was presented at trial. I never bought this. Either way, a lot of references were made to notes that she'd made in her diary saying things like, I'm sorry, I'm evil, I don't deserve to live, I killed them on purpose, I'm not good enough, blah, blah, blah. But she also wrote some other stuff, which stuff like I haven't done anything wrong, slander, I hate myself, everything got on top of me, et cetera. Yeah, you can use that if you want.

I was never even when I thought she did it, I didn't care about what she'd written about in her diary. And it really does not stand up against a medical panel like the one that has just been completed. It just doesn't really matter. And also, Lucy Letbe had said in a police interview, they were telling me that my practice might have been all wrong and not good enough. And it made me feel guilty and isolated, which it would. This was never shown to the jury, but it's clear here that at the time, Lucy Leppie was in a place where she was being told

that she was the reason for these babies dying. And so she's believing that. She's believing that she's not good enough. And imagine the feeling if you are not a serial killer, but you're actually just a person who wanted to save sick babies. She was also told that she couldn't speak to anyone about the case except her therapist, who was the one who told her to write those notes down.

Again, not something for some reason that wasn't told to the jury. Well, quite, none of this is presented to the evidence, but I would implore you, if you are ever in a situation like this, literally only speak to your therapist, do not speak to anybody else apart from your therapist and your lawyer, full stop, not even your mom.

Now I understand absolutely, and this is something that is very important that we talk about, I understand completely that the parents of the babies who died at the Countess of Chester hospitals, this will be an incredibly painful time. There is no doubt about that. And I just want to say, I cannot stress enough, that us discussing this is in no way intended to cause them any more pain and suffering than they've already been through. I literally can't imagine what it must be like to go through possibly all the challenges anybody goes through to have a baby and then for that baby to die, either because you think it's been murdered by somebody, or if you watched

this press conference and have changed your mind and think that it was because the consultants and the hospitals let you down and in many of these cases the deaths were avoidable because those babies just needed antibiotics. I cannot even imagine what that must be like. But the staggering lack of any real evidence in this case, pointing definitively to Lucy Leppe as being a killer is something that cannot be ignored. And I honestly think however hard this is, because a lot of people are saying, you know, this is dragging it up for those families again, this is so painful for them, you shouldn't be talking about this as distasteful, et cetera.

I understand the empathy, but the fact is that it's better that everybody knows the truth, the families included about what really happened to their babies, no matter how hard and how sad it is. Because if we write these deaths and these collapses off as just being the work of a serial killer, we will have missed vital opportunities to learn important lessons about the level of care being provided to mothers and babies in our hospitals. And also, if we just say it's a serial killer and there's no problems on the wards, there's no problems at all, more babies are going to die. And that's something that nobody should want. And I'm not saying anybody does.

No, and I think I've said always about this case, like things can be two things. Like the NHS can be on its knees and Lucy Leib a killer. Both of those things can be true, it doesn't have to be one or the other. But it looks like... Yeah, it looks real bad. It looks real bad. So yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, anyone who's living in this country right now, there's no question the NHS is on its knees. And this is sad because like in the years before the pandemic, the government increased money going into the NHS significantly, but outcomes have only got worse. And, you know, people will be saying, well, what can we do? What can we do about this situation? What is the solution here to things like the nurses being told that they shouldn't testify, etc.? Well, so

David Davis and other experts who are involved in this situation are calling now for an airline industry style, no fault reporting system within the NHS. So what they're saying is there's kind of this culture of blame within the healthcare service where people are like, it's not my fault, it's not my fault, it's your fault. It's like this culture of blame shifting and the way in which whistleblowers are treated. I even hate the term whistleblowers because it sounds like they're doing

something wrong by doing it. Like people who are raising the alarm about problems, we need to move away from this culture of blame and to one that is like, okay, this mistake was made, what can we learn from it? You're not immediately gonna get sacked because you made this mistake, but you need to be able to own up to it so that we can have a culture that's focused on learnings

and improving outcomes and safety. That's literally how the airline industry is as safe as it is today. I know we spoke a couple of weeks ago about a blackboard crashing into a plane, but those things are shocking because they're rare. Because they're rare. Because if a pilot makes a mistake,

they're not immediately sacked. There is an investigation into what happened, and then safeguards are put in place to make sure it doesn't happen again. You also might be wondering how a jury of peers who listened to evidence for 10 months could have got it wrong. Very wrong.

In exactly the same way we got it wrong because they weren't presented for the evidence that was there. So yes, there is no perfect system. The jury system has a lot of problems, but I don't think in this particular case, it's the jury system that is the problem. It's the fact that they weren't given the information and what they were given was misconstrued. All we can tell you to do is watch the press conference and make your own mind up. And it is easy to understand, even I understood it.

What should have happened is that a panel of experts like Dr. Lees, or even better the same one, should have been used to examine the medical evidence before it went anywhere near a court of law. All the Cheshire police had to do was instead of just finding one person, Dewey Evans, get a panel of experts like this in these kind of complex medical trials, complex medical cases, sorry, and they should have examined all this data and they would have told you, there's no murders here, there's no crime here, and then we wouldn't have wasted millions and millions and millions of pounds, in my opinion now, putting a woman in prison who is innocent. And it never should have

gone anywhere near a criminal case, but that's not what happened. So what now? What's going to happen now? Well, the case is currently with the CCRC, which is the Criminal Cases Review Commission here in the UK. And she's lost her, not lost her, she didn't even get the appeal. She tried to appeal and she was told no. So now the CCRC is kind of her last port of call. So they will review all the evidence, allegedly, and hopefully this panel, hopefully this press conference as well. And they will decide whether or not there are enough grounds for this case to be pushed back to the appeals court and for the appeals court to be forced into giving Lucy Letbee a new trial. Whether this happens or not is yet to be seen, but I sincerely do hope that Lucy Letbee receives

a new trial in which this evidence is presented properly to a jury so that it can be assessed correctly. Those cases I told you about before that bear a striking resemblance from Italy and from the Netherlands, both of those women have now been exonerated because their court systems took another look at it. And the judge in the Daniella Jalali case actually said, the facts do not exist with regards to this, looking at the chart that was used to incriminate her. So yes, I have changed my opinion totally on this case from where I stood before. When she was convicted, I didn't question why she might have killed this baby.

Like you were saying, that kind of seemed to be the thing that people say, why would she possibly do it? She was a nurse, why would she possibly do it? Because it happens. I don't, you know, of course on this show we talk about why people kill. That's not my primary preoccupation with cases like this. And also I believed the medical evidence. I believed the idea of exogenous synthetic insulin being inserted into IV bags. I believed the idea of air embolisms. We've all heard of those things. I believe

that they could have been the case. But we saw so little of what the actual medical evidence was. We trusted the courts. We thought there was smoking gun evidence, that fucking chart, the statistical evidence that put that little line right next to Lucy Letby's name. But now I realize you can shift that and literally swipe and make any nurse look guilty. There was the medical evidence. There was the circumstantial evidence. We were told that, you know, Dr. J. Ram had seen her standing over a baby's oxygen levels were dropping and doing nothing. That's the closest anyone saw to her doing anything. That's it.

It came down to me when I thought Lucy Letby was guilty, the totality of the evidence against her that we were told. And at the time, it didn't make sense to me that the NHS would say there was a serial killer on the loose rather than address issues within the hospital. But I think I've addressed why I think that is now the issue. And I honestly now do think, and I honestly don't know what the opinion is of people out there. And I will be interested to see, and I'm sure there will be a lot of heated conversation if anybody's watching this. I do now believe that Lucy Letbe was

scapegoated for poor medical care that was being delivered mainly by the consultants on the ward. That's what I think. I mean, it's very difficult to disagree with that. But now I'm honestly just struck with terror that there'll be something else that whacks all of that out, you know? And I think that's a lesson to take from all of this. I think based on everything that we've spoken about, whether she's guilty or not, she does deserve a second go at fair trial. Yeah, I think the thing for me that I would find hard for anything to knock this back into, I think she's guilty, is purely because of the panel saying of the baby she was convicted

of having killed, having murdered, they weren't murdered. No, I know, but we were convinced by the interim, you know, like it's- I know, I know, I know. And I'm not saying I disagree with you, I now currently agree with you, but I'm scared that I'm going to have to U-turn again in six months. I think that's the thing for me though. Now, and you're right, we thought that before with the statistical evidence, with the medical evidence, we thought smoking gun.

That's the thing for me now is because people will say, well, they're saying this, but there was all this other evidence. I'm like, but if there was no crimes, if there were no murders, then nothing else matters. Even if Lucy Letby had written in our fucking journal, I love killing babies. If the doctors are saying there were no murders, then nothing else matters. I agree. Yeah. But let's see. And just to round off, we should remind everyone on the 22 counts on which she was tried, Lucy

Letby was only convicted of 15 of those and there were 61 suspicious events in Jewie Evans' initial report. So the other babies who died, we don't know. Nope, we don't. I explained. And everyone's just like, that's fine because we don't have any need to explore their deaths because we got our woman, she's in prison. And I do just want to end by talking about the third wall inquiry.

So the third wall inquiry was set up and it is currently running, I believe it's due to wrap up in March. Basically was an inquiry put in place to understand how Lucy Letby had got away with it for so long because she's convicted. That's the facts on the ground. Third wall inquiry looking into how she got away with it for so long. There are obviously now calls in the light of this press conference and all of this extra evidence about the statistics to say that that should be expanded and they shouldn't just be looking at how Lucy Letbee

got away with it for so long, but looking at a wider scope of why there were 61 or let's say unexplained and serious collapses or deaths. Because like you said, even if Lucy Letbee is guilty, why is nobody looking into why these other babies died? So yeah, that's it guys. Yeah. And there's no magical neonatal world where no babies die. No, of course not. I don't think that's what we're saying at all. No. And that's why they're saying a no fault reporting system. These babies were mostly very, very sick, but clearly things could have been a lot better on that ward.

So there you go. Lucy Letbe, part three. And yeah, of course, you know, I sincerely hope, like I said, that Lucy Letby does get another trial and whether you think she's guilty or not, I think everybody should agree that there are enough problems there now that a new trial should be warranted. And I really, really do hope that that is what happens. And if that does happen, then we'll be back with a Lucy Letby part four to infinity. And hopefully you will be there too. We'll see you then.

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