Letby is serving 15 life sentences after being convicted of murdering seven babies and the attempted murder of seven more, but a report by a former senior detective has cast doubt on the evidence
Lucy Letby “had no motive” to murder babies and is the victim of “the greatest miscarriage of justice in decades”, according to a report from an ex-top cop. Retired detective Stuart Clifton’s review found “no evidence” Letby caused deliberate harm to tots in her care.
The former nurse is serving 15 life sentences after being convicted of murdering seven babies and the attempted murder of seven more. But Stuart, a cop for 31 years, found no medical evidence any of the babies suffered intentional harm.
The former detective superintendent caught killer nurse Beverley Allitt, dubbed the Angel of Death, who convicted of the murders of three infants and an 11-year-old boy, and the attempted murders of three others.
He told The Sun: “This is likely the greatest miscarriage of justice this century -and that we have seen in a very long time.
“The inquiry in the Letby case seems to have started from the presumption that there were unlawful acts being committed at the neonatal unit at Chester Hospital. That’s a dangerous presumption to start from.
“I think what one should do from the start is what we did in the Allitt case. That was, look at the evidence that is available which would support the supposition that these children died as the result of criminal hands.”
He said it was his view there is “no evidence at all” that children were murdered, which he supported by arguing that numerous reviews were made between 2015 to July 2016 by senior paediatricians, none of whom found there was a criminal in the hospital.
During Letby’s trial, prosecutors said she murdered babies by injecting air into their bloodstream and poisoning them with insulin. They also pointed to the notes, shift patterns which showed she was working during every suspicious collapse and other odd behaviour.
The only forensic suggestion babies might have been intentionally harmed was high insulin readings in two babies who collapsed.
But Stuart’s report found Letby was not working for one of these and argued prosecution speculation she spiked a feed bag was simply “Alice in Wonderland”.
And it accepts new evidence from experts that insulin rates can cluster in premature babies owing to “autoimmune antibodies”.
The report finds the only clinician who found medical narratives the babies had been harmed was Dr Dewi Evans, who claimed “foul play” within ten minutes of looking at the first file despite years of experts failing to find any suggestion of intentional harm.
Stuart’s report questions how Evans found evidence supposedly “missed” by the previous neonatal reviews and a new international panel of world-experts after the conviction.
The prosecution case also used a staffing rota to show Letby was present for all 14 murders and attempted murders. But the report claims this ignores the fact that dozens more cases were given to police to review, suggesting they cherry-picked cases.
From his experience catching Allitt, Stuart wrote: “We learn that those intent on killing or harming do not wish to be seen whilst carrying out their criminal acts.”
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