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00:00If you're a doctor called to see a baby who's not very well at birth, not moving, not breathing,
00:19and within a few minutes of resuscitation, you hear this very annoyed cry.
00:30It's brilliant, and eventually they go home, and when they return for a routine review,
00:45now being well developed, two big eyes, big smile, that's very, very satisfying.
00:57Most babies who receive care in a neonatal unit not only survive, but survive and become healthy adults.
01:09Nursing staff in neonatal units are crucial. You rely on your nurses completely.
01:19What Lucy Lethby did is beyond understanding. It's utterly, incredibly shocking.
01:29Is she evil? Yes, she's evil, and I have no idea why anyone thinks that she's anything but guilty.
01:48So I'm like, if I'm selfish and I know the violence that you're dealing with, I have no idea why.
01:55And it's that I'm a bitch. I'm a 46-0-1-1-2-6-0-4-0.
02:01And the rest of the scene – I have no idea why, you're not able to make anything so bad and you're not a bad idea.
02:02It's African-American-American-American-American-American.
02:05And the rest of the process of the process of the process of the process of the process,
02:09You know, when I first went to see her, on my first visit, she was very wary of me.
02:26She doesn't know who I am.
02:30Why is it you're here?
02:33She wanted to know.
02:34Why me? To which I said, because I believe you're innocent, and she started to cry.
02:48Our criminal justice system has failed, has fundamentally failed.
02:56She's not innocent.
02:58The evidence was compelling, overwhelming, consistent.
03:02I'm astonished with what her current barrister is doing.
03:09I think it's been absolutely disgraceful.
03:15Behind these children are parents that are suffering.
03:21And what they will want, I am sure, at the end of the day, is the truth.
03:28So I think it's become a model of our lives.
03:38So, I think it is a little bit of evidence.
03:41And that's a threatening community where we are so focused.
03:43So with that, I think it's really a different topic.
03:43And that's what I mean by that.
03:48It's a really nice connection.
03:50It's easy to do in a business.
03:51I don't know if you're going to be able to do anything.
03:53It's easy to do in a business.
03:55But it's easy to do in a business.
03:57The box, I hate.
04:10The box is normally shoved in a cupboard.
04:15The box just gives you a horrible feeling in your stomach.
04:23We cried, didn't we, when we heard the verdict?
04:26Because it was the verdict that we wanted.
04:29So we thought that she would get punished for what she'd done.
04:34And we were able to then move on.
04:37But obviously it's not really worked like that.
04:42It's hard because obviously it's on the news and the radio most days.
04:46Even now?
04:48Even now.
04:48Yeah.
04:56I'm Camarland Sheborn and Brad.
05:04My parents had a dairy farm just five miles away from where I now live.
05:09If you look back to the 1970s, the care of premature babies was very, very limited.
05:15So I've got over 30 years of hands-on experience looking after sick babies.
05:18My parents had a dairy farm just five miles away from where I now live.
05:25If you look back to the 1970s, the care of premature babies was very, very limited.
05:31So I set about developing a newborn service more or less from scratch.
05:39So I've got over 30 years of hands-on experience looking after sick babies.
05:44I heard about concerns regarding deaths of babies in Chester by chance from a Sunday newspaper.
05:56By that time, I'd prepared dozens of reports for police authorities as an expert witness.
06:04And on this particular occasion, I was exchanging emails about a completely unrelated case.
06:11And I sort of added and said, by the way, I've heard about this case where there are concerns regarding babies dying.
06:20And just added, it sounds like my kind of case.
06:27These are the Let Me Files.
06:2917 cases, 20,000 pages.
06:32When I first met Chester Police, they didn't know, nor did I, that they were investigating a crime at that time.
06:44They were just looking at a number of deaths.
06:47There was a need for somebody from my background to find out what had led to these babies dying.
06:55So I said, let's look at a window of two years, 2015 and 2016, get me the clinical notes.
07:07I wanted to see all of them.
07:09What I discovered was that there were events where a baby would suddenly collapse, with most failing to respond to resuscitation.
07:20So all of this was very, very peculiar because babies on neonatal units don't suddenly deteriorate and die.
07:30It just doesn't happen suddenly.
07:31I identified a time and a date where there's somebody hurting these babies.
07:41This is not some sort of accident.
07:44This is not incompetence.
07:46Something deliberate has happened here.
07:51Intentional harm.
07:52What I said to the police was that they should look at the shift systems and find out who's on duty for all of these collapses.
08:05And in looking at all of these cases, all of these events occurred when these babies were in the care of one particular nurse.
08:13Quite often in the sole care of one particular nurse.
08:19Hello, Lucy, is this?
08:20Yeah.
08:20Hello, it's mine.
08:21In Chesterfield.
08:22So they did step in two seconds.
08:23Oh, yes.
08:24Yeah, thank you.
08:28Can you send me to the door to step in a step?
08:29Yeah.
08:30No problem.
08:33Come here.
08:43So you're probably in the back seat over here.
08:46At the beginning, we didn't know that much about her, but we knew, you know,
08:51she was this blonde-haired, blue-eyed, pretty nurse that was the face of the hospital's fundraising campaign.
08:58There was nothing unusual about her.
09:03She was kind of this typical girl next door, I suppose.
09:07Everyone was shocked.
09:09I really don't think people could quite believe that a nurse could be responsible for something so horrendous.
09:17Within the space of a year, unusually, 15 babies died on the neonatal unit.
09:25And doctors noticed a common factor.
09:29Lucy let me.
09:29The nurse had been on shift for all of the unexplained collapses.
09:34They told me that there would be a lot more deaths and that I've been linked to somebody that's there for a lot of them.
09:41Did you have any concerns that there was a rise in the mortality rate?
09:46Yes.
09:46OK, so tell me about that.
09:48What concerns did you have?
09:52I think we don't just notice as a team in general and this and staff that this was a rise compared to previous years.
10:00Lucy Letby was born in Hereford, grew up there, went to school there, had dreams of becoming a child nurse.
10:14She had been working at the hospital since graduating from the University of Chester.
10:21She would go on holiday with friends that she worked with, attended salsa dance classes.
10:27All these things sound very normal.
10:29They don't sound like someone who was able to carry out such heinous crimes.
10:35Searches of her home in Chester and her parents' house in Hereford uncovered patient records and handwritten notes.
10:42In which she says, I am evil. I did this.
10:46I don't deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I am not good enough. I am a horrible person.
10:53Dr Dowie Evans was the lead prosecution expert.
10:56It was his job to explain to the jury how these babies came to be murdered by Lucy Letby.
11:04She poisoned some with insulin, some she injected with excessive air and others she simply physically assaulted.
11:13Her denials kept coming.
11:14I was in court as Lucy Letby gave evidence.
11:18She said all of this was a conspiracy against her, that she did nothing wrong.
11:22We can now report that Lucy Letby has been found guilty of the murder of seven babies.
11:29Do you feel as though justice has been served?
11:33Yes, I do. Yes, I do.
11:34Lucy Letby has now exhausted all her attempts to overturn these convictions.
11:54So she's now facing 15 life orders in prison.
11:58She will die in prison.
12:04She will die in prison.
12:28You know, I grew up in a very rough councillor state in Birmingham.
12:38I saw on a daily basis injustice.
12:43I started working on miscarriage justice cases actually when I was at university.
12:48And I wanted to help those who were being wrongly convicted of crimes.
12:52I wasn't always a criminal defence barrister.
12:59I spent 14 years in the National Health Service working as an operating theatre assistant.
13:05So my whole background has been NHS and an understanding of the difficulties of working under pressure with lack of resources.
13:14I have a client that says that they're innocent.
13:19I have a conviction from murder.
13:21If they're innocent, then something went wrong.
13:31During the trial, the tsunami of media attention on her, of guilt, it all came from a specific perspective.
13:42And that perspective was all very one-sided.
13:45I need to turn that around.
13:50I need to change the narrative.
13:53Hi there.
13:53Hi.
13:54Thanks for doing this.
13:55We'll now let these planning a fresh appeal.
13:58I'm joined by Mark McDonald, her new barrister.
14:02Mark, thank you so much for joining us.
14:04Look, she was convicted in two separate trials in the last year, wasn't she?
14:09Is there really a strong case here that she's innocent?
14:13Absolutely, there is.
14:16I'm right at the start of this process.
14:19There are thousands of pages I need to read and get my head around.
14:23This is the Lucy Letby story.
14:26And certainly, this story really doesn't seem to be going away, Owen, does it?
14:29No, it really doesn't.
14:30It just seems to me that if you write down, I did it, I'm an evil person, that you're pretty much, I mean, Lucy Letby has sort of pretty much banged her rights here.
14:39Can I ask you finally, Mark McDonald, this is the first time some of these families are speaking publicly.
14:44And this article starts with them saying, we want to say, shame on you all.
14:48That's the message from those who are calling for the release of Lucy Letby.
14:50Lucy Letby was convicted of seven counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder.
15:04It's always a pattern in these cases.
15:07And that pattern is, that nurse is on duty.
15:13Then you have a number of unexplained deaths.
15:17And then in hindsight, it's always because that nurse did something.
15:24It's happened a number of times.
15:27There are four nurses currently in prison, serving life for this type of event.
15:35Being armed and having the knowledge that I have of the nurse cases,
15:41from the moment she was arrested, I knew how it was going to play out.
15:45I could have written the prosecution's speech.
15:53It was textbook.
15:54I start right back from the beginning, right back as if Lucy had just been arrested
16:22and she knocked on my door and she said, help me.
16:26I'm going to try and focus on six areas.
16:32So we know that she's been convicted and just recently her appeals have failed in the Court of Appeal.
16:39So, there's only one option.
16:45The Criminal Cases Review Commission.
16:48This is a body set up to see whether or not the matter should be sent back to the Court of Appeal based upon new evidence.
16:55So that's the body I've got to deal with.
16:57That's what I've got to do.
16:59I've got to make an application based upon anything I can discover from going through these six main points.
17:09That's really my main focus of attention.
17:11If you're going to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, public pressure around a conviction will play upon the mind of those people.
17:25It will.
17:26Inevitably so.
17:27Now, you don't overturn a conviction because there's an article in the Times about it.
17:38The only way to overturn this conviction is to not just question the evidence that was put before the jury, but demolish it.
17:57I've been involved in court cases for over 30 years, and where my report was supportive of the prosecution, I've not lost a case.
18:17So, on the whole, I think my track record is very satisfactory.
18:21People seem to have forgotten that the victims are the babies.
18:29The victims are the families.
18:31The only people that know is our close friends and family.
18:51We've never gone public at all.
18:54It's nice to be able to tell our story, because so many people have an opinion, but they weren't actually there and they didn't deal with her.
19:07Our son was born in the Countess of Chester Hospital in 2015.
19:20He was full-term and healthy.
19:22He'd been healthy all the way through the pregnancy, up to that point.
19:27He was taken away somewhere.
19:30They just said, oh, it's OK, he just needs a little bit of help breathing.
19:34We were taken back to the room where I'd been in labour, and we were just left there on our own, not really knowing what was going on.
19:44We were obviously worried.
19:46Maybe we were there a couple of hours, wasn't we?
19:48Mm.
19:51Seemed to last forever, didn't it?
19:53Mm.
19:53Then a nurse came in with the box.
20:05She came straight up to us.
20:08I didn't really see her.
20:09I just saw the box.
20:12And I burst into tears.
20:13I remember saying to her something like, oh, my God, is he dead?
20:22And she just laughed.
20:25She was laughing when she thought that we thought the worst had happened.
20:32And she said, no, we just give these boxes out to all the parents of babies who have been really poorly.
20:42When she offered to take us to go and see him, Dr. Breary was there.
20:48And he just explained that he didn't know what was really the issue.
20:54Three times he'd been resuscitated.
20:57They couldn't explain why.
20:59I was very upset.
21:03I was frightened.
21:06Yeah, I just felt confused and just didn't make any sense.
21:12Dr. Breary told us that he felt that with his condition, our son would be better cared for if he was sent to Liverpool Women's Hospital.
21:25Personally, I think he would have stayed at Chester.
21:28I think he'd have died.
21:29That decision is what saved him, I think.
21:34Yeah, and we'll always be grateful to that doctor for that, won't we?
21:37So, away from Chester, we picked up really quickly and then we were sent back home again.
21:47It was only when we saw her face in the newspaper later on that we both recognised her straight away.
21:54And the nurse that gave us the box was Lucy Latbey.
22:00A lot of people ask me whether I think she's guilty or not.
22:26And I said, the honest answer is I don't know.
22:28I just don't think she had a fair trial.
22:31I'm Dr. Phil Hammond.
22:34I was an NHS doctor for 35 years and alongside that, throughout my career, I've worked as an investigative journalist for Private Eye.
22:41The first big story I covered was the Bristol Heart Scandal, which at the time morphed into the largest public inquiry in British history.
22:49I wasn't paying a lot of attention to the trial of Lucy Latbey, but when the verdict came out, I initially wrote a column supporting it.
23:01And then my inbox filled up with emails from really eminent people, including some of the most senior people in these fields, saying, actually, no, I think you're wrong.
23:11And that really started to worry me, so that's when I stopped sleeping.
23:15I knew it was going to be tough and difficult, but there was no alternative other than to investigate.
23:23The bottom line for me is, does the evidence stack up?
23:25This is the trial of Lucy Latbey.
23:32Today we'll be bringing you everything that happened.
23:34In the end, the jury decided that Lucy Latbey was guilty, but I think all of us that were sat there in that courtroom understood why they'd come to that decision.
23:45It was multiple strands of evidence.
23:47The medical evidence was obviously important, but there was lots of different pieces of the jigsaw that came together.
23:52One of the most incriminating pieces of evidence was the green post-it note on which she'd written,
24:01I am evil, I did this, and I killed them on purpose.
24:07I think the police couldn't quite believe it, that they'd found something so significant when they'd raided her house.
24:14I think the confession notes matter, and I think they were highly convincing to the jury.
24:21What the jury didn't hear is that she was encouraged to write them by her counsellor.
24:26It's all the difficult emotions and feelings going through your mind, I want you to write them down.
24:31She also wrote slander, discrimination, why me?
24:35I haven't done anything wrong.
24:38It was a counselling exercise.
24:40The police uncovered 250 handover notes, most of which were in a bag under her bed.
24:51Those notes are supposed to go in the confidential waste bin.
24:54They aren't ever supposed to go home with staff.
24:57The prosecution said this was evidence that Lucy Letby was keeping trophies of her crimes.
25:02Loads of nurses have said to me that they commonly take handover notes home with them by mistake.
25:08They've got them there, and it just happens because you're so busy at the end of the day.
25:12They discovered that she'd done hundreds and hundreds of Facebook searches,
25:16often for the parents of the babies that she murdered and harmed.
25:21Some of the searches took place at very odd times, late on Christmas Day.
25:26The nurse who I interviewed said, yeah, we do Facebook searches.
25:30We keep in touch with people.
25:33It's only seen as suspicious through the context of someone you think is a mass murderer.
25:37So after a trial lasting for over 10 months and more than 110 hours of painstaking deliberation,
25:43the jury is seven months...
25:44It was the sum total.
25:47You can't take one piece of evidence and say that proves she's innocent or guilty.
25:52It was almost entirely circumstantial.
25:57It was a very proficient and aggressive prosecution case.
26:02But when you actually said, where's the evidence?
26:04It just wasn't there.
26:06It just wasn't there.
26:22It's right, isn't it, not to say, as many people have said,
26:32that the health of many of these babies was very poor.
26:36And that many...
26:37I know.
26:37And many...
26:38You see, that is...
26:40Come on, Trump, Dave.
26:40That is incorrect.
26:42That is incorrect.
26:43I've been involved...
26:44Well, they were in a high dependency unit, weren't they?
26:46At the time, none of these deaths were seen to be deliberate actions.
26:49There were a number of post-mortems from the babies
26:53that found that they had died of natural causes.
26:57And once the police got involved, they contact a senior coroner.
27:00She goes back and she says, there's nothing suspicious here.
27:04But they don't listen to that.
27:07And they carry on with the investigation.
27:11Then, fallen into their lap, appears Dr. Barry Evans.
27:19Dr. Barry Evans jumps in a car, drives up to the police station.
27:34They give him a set of notes of one of the patients
27:37to which Lucy Letby had been looking after.
27:40And he says, within 10 minutes,
27:45I knew that deliberate harm had been caused to this baby.
27:53There were other medical experts in this case for the prosecution.
27:58And there was a neonatologist called.
28:01She was only brought in to peer review what Darry Evans had said.
28:11He's the one that was there right at the beginning.
28:15But the whole thing rests upon him.
28:20If he is wrong,
28:23then like a pack of cards, the whole case falls apart.
28:26Since the trial,
28:34I can't find another neonatal expert
28:36who's prepared to back up his ideas.
28:38Find me one.
28:39I've said to Darry Evans,
28:40you must know people who prepare to back you up.
28:42He said, oh, I'm out of touch with everyone now.
28:44I can't find anyone.
28:45That's extraordinary to me.
28:47At the trial of Lucy Letby,
28:53the question was, did she do it?
28:56Now, the start of the public inquiry,
28:59set up to answer different questions
29:01about what happened at this hospital.
29:04But with growing speculation about this case in recent weeks,
29:08with more questions about the verdicts,
29:10the chair of the inquiry began this morning by saying this.
29:15In the months since the Court of Appeal handed down its judgment,
29:20there has been a huge outpouring of comment
29:23from a variety of quarters
29:25on the validity of the convictions.
29:30So far as I'm aware,
29:32it has come entirely from people who were not at the trial.
29:35I think the inquiry is looking at all events
29:38leading up to the deaths of these babies.
29:42It's not looking at whether Lucy Letby is guilty or not.
29:46That's been agreed in a court,
29:47so there's no question about her guilt.
29:50What is astonishing is the noise from people
29:56who feel that they can make outrageous comments
30:00through scientific papers such as Private Eye.
30:07The most hysterical support for Lucy Letby
30:15has come from the great metropolitan elite,
30:19or I call them God's most entitled.
30:22In Wales, we've been told for the past 700 years
30:26that we're not good enough.
30:29Ever since the Lucy Letby case came up on my radar,
30:49I haven't really slept.
30:51I'm thinking about it every single night.
30:53I'm waking up in the middle of the night thinking,
30:54have we got this right?
30:55Are we going wrong?
30:59I think what worries me most about this
31:01is, you know, hundreds of babies die avoidably
31:05in the UK, in the NHS, every year
31:07because they don't get superb care.
31:11And Chester clearly had problems with staffing.
31:17In the middle of the deaths,
31:19one of the consultants wrote to the manager
31:20and said, we're seriously understaffed,
31:23we don't have enough incubators,
31:24the whole thing's falling to pieces,
31:26and if you don't sort it out,
31:27babies are going to keep dying.
31:29There was clearly serious problems.
31:33So if there are plausible alternative explanations to this
31:36that aren't murder,
31:37such as suboptimal care,
31:39and Mark McDonnell can show that in a few cases,
31:43then all of the cases may fall.
31:46I think it would be good to do it face-to-face with him.
31:59I've now been approached by two neonatologists.
32:01Both of them seem to be incredibly experienced and both of them are willing to help.
32:09They've got access to the medical records and they are working on it.
32:14All right, speak to you soon.
32:15Bye-bye.
32:21I've been working as a consultant in a tertiary neonatal unit for just over 25 years now.
32:28My role as a medical expert witness is to go through the evidence in detail
32:36and to try to reveal the truth of what has happened to these babies.
32:41The first report that we looked at was on baby O.
32:54Today, in this episode, we're focusing on the 15th baby in the case,
32:58who the prosecution say Lucy Letby murdered during her first shift back at work
33:02after her holiday to Ibiza at the end of June 2016.
33:07Baby O was a baby that was one of three identical triplets.
33:11And when Lucy Letby came on to shift,
33:13there were no concerns about baby O's health.
33:16But a few hours later, he collapsed and started to deteriorate.
33:21He then collapsed a second time and then passed away.
33:28The doctors could find no medical explanation for this
33:30other than Lucy Letby was around at the time of his collapse.
33:35I saw pictures of the autopsy.
33:39There were incredible abnormalities in the liver.
33:44The pathology opinion was that the liver abnormalities were so severe
33:49that they looked like what you'd get in a road traffic accident.
33:53I had concluded that this baby had suffered from trauma to the liver.
34:00But as well as that, this baby was the victim of air injected into the bloodstream.
34:05You both put together a joint report on baby O.
34:20And for the purpose of this discussion,
34:23baby O is the one said by the prosecution
34:27that Lucy Letby somehow damaged the liver by some blunt trauma.
34:35Is there a reason for his collapse?
34:39I think the overall conclusion that we came to
34:43is that there are justifiable medical explanations
34:49which led to the collapse of baby O.
34:55And the first signs of a change happened around about midnight.
35:01We can see in those charts changes in temperature,
35:04changes in heart rate,
35:07and some gradual increase in abdominal distention
35:11that was noticed by the nursing staff.
35:13He had two medical reviews
35:16and neither picked up on the changes.
35:19This had happened overnight.
35:21I mean, is that surprising?
35:22Is that something that you would expect?
35:23I think that's not desirable.
35:26It should have been picked up.
35:27It should have been picked up.
35:28Yes.
35:28Yes.
35:29It was then at 2.40...
35:31I can see there was the emergency call.
35:34Why do you think this trial did not respond to the resuscitation?
35:38I was instantly struck by the use of these extreme high ventilator pressures.
35:46During the resuscitation?
35:47During the resuscitation meant that the lungs were pushing right down on the diaphragm.
35:52At a late point in the resuscitation,
35:55one of the consultants who was there
35:56decided to put a needle into the abdomen to decompress it.
36:00Would that have been a cause of action you would have chosen to have done?
36:04Absolutely not.
36:05So the most likely consequence of that
36:09is that as you put the needle in,
36:11there would be some bleeding
36:13and you would cause damage to the liver.
36:16This cannula insertion into the liver
36:18have caused that amount of bleeding.
36:20Yes.
36:20We believe there is good evidence to suggest that it did so.
36:24Without a doubt, this is not a query.
36:27This is what happened.
36:28It is obvious.
36:32OK.
36:33All right.
36:33Well, thank you for that, Aaron.
36:35That's very helpful.
36:35I think it's now my turn to get this to the Criminal Cases Review Commissioner as soon as I can.
36:43I have never read a more detailed report than the report that they repaid.
36:59The two experts say that no crime was committed.
37:04When Lucy Letby came in and gave me the box, I opened it.
37:24There's a wrist strap, there's a baby hat, there's a blanket and then we had the notepad which she told me,
37:42oh, you can keep that as a diary.
37:44I think if something like the box would be given later on, or after we'd seen him, or after they'd explained something, it might have been different.
37:59But at that point in time, to come in and laugh, it's just not normal, is it?
38:10I just think she's done something.
38:11Obviously, there's no concrete evidence, we don't have a magic ball that we can go back and look at, but it's just too much.
38:21He was fine when he was smaller, wasn't he?
38:24Yeah, yeah, yeah.
38:26It wasn't until he was about five years old when we started having serious issues with him.
38:33He is delayed at school by about two years from where he should be, he still can't write very well.
38:39And he's had really bad seizures, where they've not stopped for 15, 20 minutes.
38:51The first one was horrific, wasn't it?
38:54Yeah, just come out of nowhere, didn't it?
38:57Occasionally, he'll ask us, if he has a fit, will he die?
39:02And that, I find, the most scary thing.
39:05All weekends, he kept saying to me, I wish I was normal, I wish I was normal.
39:10And it's so sad, because I keep trying to say to him, well, you are normal for you.
39:15Like, we love you how you are, but he just wants to be like everyone else.
39:21The day that she was given a sentence, obviously it was all over the news.
39:26He's seen it on the telly.
39:29And he saw our reactions.
39:31Yeah.
39:32And obviously he wanted to know why Mummy and Daddy were upset.
39:37He was always crying, wasn't he?
39:38Mm.
39:39And he was asking, he was saying, is that who I think it is?
39:42He said, that's the nurse, isn't it?
39:45That's the naughty nurse that tried to kill me.
39:47She's not guilty.
39:48You're sure of that?
39:49Yes.
39:50Yes.
39:51Listen, I'm working night and day on this case.
39:55If I thought for the moment that she was guilty, I wouldn't be doing this.
40:00My argument is, and I know expert evidence from leading neonatologists.
40:13Well, let's have a look at it.
40:14Yeah.
40:15If they got the evidence, publish it.
40:16Send me a copy.
40:17Let's see where we go to.
40:18Yeah.
40:19He's a barrister.
40:20Well, it may be said by one expert, but I have other experts that have a completely contradictory
40:35view.
40:36None of that argument regarding miscarriage of justice applies in any of these cases.
40:42These were stable babies.
40:45They were vulnerable babies because of their prematurity, but their prospects of survival
40:50was excellent.
40:51Now, this is a kind of chart that was used in Chester to monitor a baby's well-being.
41:02This one is for illustrative purposes only to avoid any difficulties with confidentiality.
41:07It shows a heart rate, which is nice and normal.
41:12All of these are indications of a baby being well, but despite all of this, what happened
41:20here?
41:21Well, Lucy let me arrived.
41:24The little baby was assaulted, and he died as a consequence.
41:32The babies that collapsed all had records similar to this.
41:39Let me appears, and suddenly one has a baby who is at death's door.
41:53And those believing in her guilt say, well, she was on duty for so many of these deaths.
42:02The answer is, of course she was.
42:05Because if she hadn't been, she couldn't have had the finger pointed at her.
42:10My name's Peter Elston.
42:15I've spent most of my career in the financial industry applying statistics.
42:19As an investment manager for 35 or so years.
42:23When it comes to these sorts of criminal cases, many of them can be appraised using statistics.
42:32There were a lot more than just the seven deaths that Letby was being charged with.
42:38There were 17 in total.
42:40So what was going on there?
42:42Was there another serial killer?
42:44When the verdicts were announced, I wrote about it on my blog saying that,
42:49I think anybody can see from that roster chart with this uninterrupted line of X's.
42:55That would have been extremely convincing.
42:59But frankly, this was deeply, deeply flawed indeed.
43:04And I don't think any statistician would give it any credence whatsoever.
43:08The actual rota evidence that every time a baby died, it was Lucy and only Lucy who was there,
43:13is just plain wrong.
43:15Because you only included the babies who died while she was there.
43:18Statistics did not play a part in Letby's conviction.
43:25Whilst statisticians said,
43:28well, what about the babies who died who are not on the spreadsheet?
43:35And, of course, my answer was, well, their deaths were not suspicious.
43:39Or there was an explanation for the deaths.
43:41I suppose I found myself, after the trial, really at the centre of this network.
43:58Statisticians, doctors, scientists.
44:01Many of us are working quite closely with Mark McDonald, the lawyer.
44:06Before the retrial, it became apparent that that swipe data was actually incorrect.
44:11Have I been to see Lucy? No.
44:13I think she knows that I exist.
44:16I think she knows that there are a number of people who are working hard to get her out.
44:28So, one of the members of this growing network is a computer scientist
44:34who's actually based in the U.S.
44:37Hi there.
44:38Hi, Stephen.
44:39Good to see you.
44:40Hi, Peter.
44:41Good seeing you.
44:43Stephen's been doing some really detailed research
44:48by reading through the transcripts, looking into one particular case,
44:52the case of Baby C.
44:54Maybe we should just go through this, Baby C, guys,
44:56because this is, like, one of the most unbelievable things I've seen.
45:04Lucy Letby wasn't the designated nurse for Baby C, but she was on duty,
45:11and in fact, she was around a lot of the time when he was sadly passing away.
45:16Prosecution alleged that she injected air into his tummy via his feeding tube,
45:22and this caused his tummy to inflate like a balloon and his diaphragm to splint,
45:28which eventually caused him to suffocate.
45:34Basically, what happened is they identified the attack that took place on Baby C
45:41as taking place on the 12th of June.
45:43All of the experts, like Dr. Evans, agreed that this attack took place on the 12th of June.
45:49They developed a theory, and that theory revolved around an x-ray taken on the 12th of June,
45:55and they said it had too much air, and the explanation was that it was an injection of air.
46:01During the trial, they realized Letby wasn't there,
46:04and they're now saying the attack happened on the 13th.
46:08Right.
46:09But they're still trying to take the evidence from the 12th.
46:12Right.
46:13But what is in evidence is sworn witness testimony saying she wasn't there.
46:19Yes.
46:21And at what point did the prosecution council realize that there was this mistake, do you think?
46:32So the prosecution circulated a draft of their opening speech to the media before they gave it.
46:39So in their draft, they said their radiologist identified this harm on the 12th.
46:45But when they talked to the juries, when they actually gave the speech in the transcript,
46:50there's no mention of the day.
46:52Yeah.
46:53So they kept what the radiologist said and just removed the day because the day was wrong.
47:00It's kind of, it's quite brazen, what they did there.
47:04Well, you've uncovered something quite remarkable here.
47:07What, what do you plan to do with all this?
47:10I've been working with a number of journalists.
47:14Hopefully it should make a splash.
47:16Using this method.
47:19But during the trial, it transpired that Lucy Letby wasn't working on the 12th of June when the X-ray was taken.
47:26There's just been a really good Radio 4 documentary.
47:32It transpired that Lucy Letby wasn't on duty.
47:35And it's possibly one of the reasons that the lead prosecution expert, Dr Dowie Evans, appears to have changed his mind.
47:42And in my email exchange with him, he says he now believes that the babies were only destabilised by having the air injected into the stomach and weren't killed.
47:53Now, to me, that's really serious because that means the jury was misdirected.
47:56They were told this was the cause of death and it was something else.
47:59The thing I find extraordinary is that Dowie Evans is now saying he's only just finished the final report, well over a year after the trial ended.
48:08So that suggests he still hasn't quite got to grips with the case and there may be significant doubt as to how BBC died.
48:21Dr Dowie Evans says he's drafted a new report.
48:28So out there is a new report from an expert who's changed his mind.
48:38On a murder case, I have never known anything like this to happen.
48:46They thought she was there.
48:49They made a mistake.
48:51She wasn't there.
48:59Today is a bit of a game changer.
49:01Mark McDonald managed to get the best experts in the world.
49:04The report demolished the case against her.
49:07People were speechless.
49:08Free, multi-lectic.
49:10The families are devastated.
49:11I could not believe what I read.
49:13They're hopeless.
49:14They're hopeless.
49:15They're hopeless.
49:16Other people fail.
49:17You can't get joy.
49:24All right.
49:25Just take care.
49:26Now wait one for you.
49:32Time to move.
49:34Do not want no shakes.
49:35Time to move.
49:37You
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