Canadian doctors lead a group of international medical experts who believe that the most productive children’s killer of modern times may have been wrongly convicted in modern times.
Lucy Letby, the former nurse for newborns, was found guilty in two legal proceedings in 2023 and 2024 to murder seven premature babies and to try to murder seven more. The deaths were all happened between 2015 and 2016 in the Chester Hospital in northwestern England, where she worked.
The public prosecutor argued that Letby deliberately injected the endangered infants – a few days old – deliberately with air, poisoned them with insulin or overfeeded with milk.
Letby, then in his early 30s, was sentenced to 15 life reasons, which means that it will never be advised. Appointments against their conviction were rejected.
British headlines described them as “Great Britain’s worst child series killer” and “as cold, calculating killer”. The case was closed.
Dr. Shoo Lee, the retired head of the Department of Neonatology at Toronto University, believes that Letby may be wrongly convicted, and presented these results on Tuesday at a press conference in London.
Lee, the President of the Canadian Newborn Foundation, put together a body to examine the medical evidence presented in this case after greater doubts about the law enforcement.
“As a committee, we came to the conclusion that there was no murder,” he told CBC News in an interview shortly after the press conference.
“I usually don’t do any medical cases”
Lee was first asked by Letby’s Defense team about the case in October 2023 when he was on his family farm near Edmonton.
“I received this e -mail from some lawyers in Great Britain and asked if I would look at a case,” said Lee. “I was busy harvesting, so I just ignored it.”
The public prosecutor’s office in the case of Letby had argued that the nurse injected air into the veins of the baby and had been strongly based on medical evidence after the hospital staff had reported some of the died babies about tanning of skin.
They argued their case with a 1989 research paper about air embolism that Lee had also made.
“I usually don’t make medical legal cases,” he said. “I don’t enjoy her, so I don’t do it.”
But in this special case: “Because they used my paper to condemn them, I was curious about what they said and what they did.”
Lee said what he found was wrong. “What they said and interpreted to condemn them was not what I said in the newspaper.”
The public prosecutor emphasized various skin discoloration in the dead babies. Lee told the press conference that he recently updated his newspaper and found no cases of skin discoloration that were associated with air embolism by the venous system, and added: “So let us remove this theory.”
He tried to present his evidence at Letby’s Court of Appeal in April 2024, but it was not permitted.
“The judge said that the defense had the opportunity to call me during the original process and they didn’t do it,” he said.
Why he was not just called Letby’s legal team.
Panel unanimously came to a unanimous conclusion
Lee provided a team of 14, what was “an international expert committee of the top people in the world in neonatology” to check the evidence.
The committee consisted of six Canadians, while the others came from the USA, Great Britain, Japan, Germany and Sweden.
Lee worked free of charge and said that they wanted to “give an opinion on whether the evidence used for the convict (Letby) was or not was correct. And what were the causes of death or injury.”
Your conclusion was unanimous.
“These babies died either for natural reasons or poor medical care. That happened,” Lee told CBC News.
Lee sat next to a British MP, Letby’s lawyer and a former head of the British Royal College of Pediatrics at the London press conference and went through the results. (None of the babies involved can be identified in British law.)
For example: Baby 1, he said, died of a blood clot, not in air. Baby 4 was sepsis and pneumonia, no murder. Baby 9 suffered from bad care and death was avoidable.
“If this happened in a hospital in Canada, we would close it,” Lee told CBC News.
The jury also heard non-medical evidence
The Letby case has fueled a number of conspiracy and alternative theories, not least on social media.
But Lee is not concerned about putting his name into the knowledge of the panel.
“I already have a good reputation,” he said. “Everyone knows my work and I am confident about my own work. There are also 14 experts – 13 others with me – who say the same thing.”
Letby’s jurors were more than just taken into account as medical evidence.
During the first 10-month procedure, the public prosecutor moved to accounts of doctors and nurses. The jury also had access to tens of thousands of pages with medical notes, text and social media messages with colleagues and hospital -swipe card data.
The public prosecutor also presented handwritten notes found at Letby’s house. This included sentences such as “I killed them” and “I’m evil”, but also words like “despair”, “hate my life” and “Why I?”
The notes were presented like a confession – something that Letby never did. After the conviction, Some criminology experts claimed that the notes are meaningless and possibly written as part of the therapy..
Critics of the public prosecutor keep no obvious motive or psychological background that corresponds to that of a serial killer who has ever been presented. But the public prosecutor said Letby was shifting when the deaths occurred, even when it changed from work from night to day.
The police are currently examining the care of around 4,000 other babies who were approved in hospitals in which Letby worked as a newborn nurse.
A public investigation is also underwayInvestigation of deaths in the Countess of the Chester Hospital near Manchester, including the hearing of the experiences of the bereaved.
“What does she do in prison?”
The mother of a baby -Letby was sentenced to murder for experimental told British media“We had the truth. We believe in the British judicial system. We believe that the jury has made the right decision.”
But Dr. Lee is confident of the knowledge of his panel.
“I know that Canadians have a feeling of fair game and Canadians have a feeling of law and wrong,” he said. “If there was no murder, there can be no murderer. So what does she do in prison?”
He said: “This case has to be checked and you have to do a repetition.”
Letby’s only remaining chance to avoid life behind bars is now when checking independent criminal matters. It has the authority to investigate cases in which people believe that they have been wrongly convicted or convicted and sent back to court as a potential miscarriage.
The Letby lawyer asks the Commission to check the case based on Lee’s results.
The Commission confirmed this week that it received an application from her lawyers.
