LAUREN FRAYER, HOST:

We now turn to a true crime case that fascinated Britain, where I live. Lucy Letby was a neonatal nurse who was convicted of quietly murdering the babies in her care one by one, often at night, at the hospital where she worked. The tabloids called him the angel of death.

(SOUND OF MONTAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Party girl, graduate, bright young nurse.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: Lucy Letby seemed like an ordinary woman.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: For evil, hiding in plain sight.

FRAYER: The news focused on her youthful, blonde appearance; How he had scribbled the words “I am evil”; I did this in her journal. But as Letby is sentenced to life in prison, some forensic experts are now asking: Did Letby really do this? Or at least was there a fair trial? And to explore this question, I’m joined in our London studio by the BBC’s Stephanie Hegarty, who hosts a podcast called “Lucy Letby: The Killer’s Questions”. Welcome.

STEPHANIE HEGARTY: Hello. Thank you for accepting me.

FRAYER: Thank you so much for coming. So let’s dive into the evidence. On what basis was Letby convicted?

HEGARTY: So this was one of the longest trials in British criminal history. This process took 10 months, and he was eventually convicted on 15 counts of seven murders and eight attempted murders. And there was plenty of evidence. The police investigation lasted about six years, I think, from 2017 until the main trial last year. So the backbone of the case, the prosecution’s case, was that Letby was the only nurse who was always there when babies collapsed and some died unexplained or unexpectedly.

FRAYER: So he was in the room. Were there fingerprints, was there a murder weapon?

HEGARTY: That’s a big problem with this essay. There was neither forensic evidence nor eyewitnesses. No one saw Letby commit a crime. The prosecution’s main reliance was on medical evidence rather than forensic evidence. So notes on the baby’s condition, nursing notes, medical notes. There were a variety of different ways in which he was convicted of harming these babies. Someone was injecting air into his veins. One was injecting air into their stomachs through feeding tubes. Another gave them insulin when they didn’t need it. And again, no one saw these events happen.

FRAYER: There were some of these notes, as well as some diaries. I mentioned these scribbles, I did this – so apparently it’s really damning evidence. However, we later learned that the situation was not as it seemed.

HEGARTY: It was a Post-it note, and the image was shared quite widely in the media. Them…

FRAYER: The front page of the newspapers.

HEGARTY: Yes. And this Post-it note had a bunch of scribbles and scribbles on it. But there was a part where I was bad; I did this. And this is damning at first glance.

FRAYER: Creepy.

HEGARTY: There were other things, there were a lot of things written on that Post-it note. One of them was: why me? One of them was something like this: I didn’t do anything wrong. This situation was not covered so widely in the media. This was written in response to advice from one of his counselors to, you know, get it all off his chest – a therapeutic kind of process, I guess.

FRAYER: And then that was used against him at trial.

HEGARTY: The prosecution touched on this repeatedly.

FRAYER: So what concerns are being raised now and by whom? Already in jail – 15 charges…

HEGARTY: Fifteen life sentences.

FRAYER: Yes. Fees…

HEGARTY: Yes. She is only one of four British women sentenced to spend their entire lives in prison. The backbone of the case is really based on statistics and proves that the one person who is always there when these things happen is a nurse. You know, is it possible for someone to be in the ward more often? Is it possible that a nurse works with sicker babies and therefore is more likely to be present when the baby dies?

FRAYER: At trial, the babies who died in Letby’s care were given nicknames, so they were Baby A, Baby B, etc. was. I think it went back to Baby P or Q. That’s a lot of babies, a lot of grieving families that it’s painful for this to be covered and for us to even have this conversation. Can you talk about the sensitivity you need to bring when reporting on such a subject?

HEGARTY: There is a process that these families go through, you know, the first of these cases happened in 2015. It was very important to finally get an answer. And the fact that these questions have now shaken any sense of closure has been devastating, as I think everyone can understand.

FRAYER: These murders coincided with a rise in infant mortality in Britain. Austerity measures have led to staff shortages in hospitals. Maternity outcomes are now worse in Britain than in most of Europe. Tell me about the underlying systemic issues.

HEGARTY: We found in our reports and in some of the leaked documents from the Countess of Chester Hospital where all of this happened, that the situation was really challenging. He was facing very serious difficulties indeed. The staff was inadequate and unskilled. There were also problems in transportation services. So these hospitals operate in a network where really sick babies are transferred to a hospital that can deal with more complex problems. And there were serious problems with this service; The service was unavailable when they needed it.

Later, there was a bacterial outbreak in a ward. This is called pseudomonas. It’s not that harmful to healthy people, but it can be really dangerous in the intensive care unit, especially the neonatal intensive care unit. We have not been able to directly connect any of these events to the deaths or crashes in this case. But they certainly painted a picture of a unit that was not operating at its best.

FRAYER: UK laws differ from the US when it comes to reporting an ongoing case. However, some of the news about Letby was censored in this country. There was a story in The New Yorker magazine that was not allowed to be published in the UK. When this story appeared online, friends here were sharing the PDFs because the website was blocked in the UK. Tell me how these legal restrictions complicate things. your own reporting.

HEGARTY: That’s because England has a really strong disrespect for the law of the courts. The media is only allowed to report what is happening on a day-to-day basis at this hearing. And people are not allowed to speculate about guilt or innocence or what the outcome of the trial might be. It was really hard to get people to talk, even if it was off the record, it was – or, you know, a private phone call, which was completely legal. People were really reluctant because they were afraid.

FRAYER: There’s a serialization and obsession in America with missing girl cases, and the victims are mostly young, white women. Lucy Letby is a young white woman. Did race and gender influence the way this case was prosecuted or its media coverage?

HEGARTY: I think there’s a fascination with female killers, so definitely gender. There is also a fascination with women who might harm children. So I think that’s actually the nature of crimes. But throughout the trial, little was revealed about who this woman was beyond painting a picture of someone very ordinary. In these cases where women harm children, there is often a history of psychiatric disorder. There was nothing like it in Lucy Letby’s history. He was also a very popular person in the ward. She was thought to be a skilled nurse. The judge also said this while giving the sentence. As I said, although it was not ordinary, it was nothing else. And I think that created a kind of fascination with who he was and why these crimes were committed.

FRAYER: This is BBC reporter Stephanie Hegarty. Her podcast is called “Lucy Letby: The Killer’s Questions”. Thank you very much.

HEGARTY: Thank you.

Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use And permissions pages www.npr.org For more information.

NPR transcripts are created by an NPR contractor on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authorized record of NPR programming is the audio recording.