In 2018, the case of Lucy Letby made headlines when the former neonatal nurse was arrested in her home in Cheshire, England, under suspicion of fatally harming at least seven of her neonatal patients. Her subsequent trials divided public opinion on her guilt as independent medical experts reexamined the evidence. Director Dominic Sivyer’s (The Masked Scammer) documentary The Investigation of Lucy Letby delves deep into the case with never-before-seen footage as well as interviews with case investigators, a friend of Letby, and one of the victims’ parents. The documentary was made in partnership with the UK’s ITN Productions.
Editor’s note: The names in quotations have been changed by the filmmakers to protect the participants.
The use of digital technologies in the interviews of “Sarah” and “Maisie” was a creative decision by the filmmakers, with consent from the two participants, to uphold their anonymity either by request or due to court order.
Letby is a former nurse convicted of murdering seven babies and convicted of attempting to murder seven more at Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, England, where she worked in neonatal intensive care between 2015 and 2016. She was first arrested by Cheshire police in 2018 and eventually charged in 2020. Letby pleaded not guilty to all 22 counts. Her first trial began in 2022.
According to her former co-workers, nurse Letby seemed like any other nursing grad when she began working in Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal ward in 2012. She is described in the documentary as shy, quiet, and dedicated to her job. By the spring of 2015, she’d qualified to work in neonatal intensive care. But soon after beginning her new duties, consulting doctors noticed a troubling pattern. In just over two weeks, three babies suffered sudden, catastrophic medical events and died. At first, doctors weren’t sure what to make of these tragedies, but when they kept occurring — with no known medical explanation and at a rate well above the unit’s normal rate of losses — they reported the incidents to the hospital’s risk management team and the director of nursing.
After an examination of staff schedules, the hospital found that only one person was consistently present during the dates in question: Letby, who’d been assigned night shifts. The infant deaths, which by July 2016 totaled 13, stopped when Letby was moved out of the neonatal unit and put on administrative duties. Once police were brought in, investigators tapped medical expert Dr. Dewi Evans to review over two years of cases from the hospital. Evans found that there were suspicious events in about half of the cases he reviewed and concluded that the harm done to the victims could have been intentional. Police identified Letby as their suspect. She was arrested in 2018.
When the case went to trial, the prosecution presented evidence found in Letby’s home, including medical records related to some of the victims, and notes by Letby that seemed to be admissions of guilt. “I am evil I did this,” one note reportedly said, according to a BBC report on the trial. “I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them,” another reportedly said.
Yes. In 2023, Letby was initially found guilty on 14 of 22 counts of murder and attempted murder, and given 14 life sentences. The jury acquitted Letby of two additional counts of attempted murder and could not determine a verdict on six more charges. But Letby’s parents, as well as her friend interviewed in the documentary, have always maintained her innocence. In the film, Letby’s friend criticizes the defense team at the time for not calling any expert medical witnesses to counteract the prosecution’s theory.
But Mark McDonald, part of Letby’s new defense team, argues in the documentary that every single piece of evidence presented in her case was circumstantial: McDonald argues no one had seen her harm any of the victims, either in person or on CCTV. And there was no evidence tying her to the scene of the crimes that couldn’t be explained by her job.
After attempting to appeal her verdict, Letby was eventually convicted of an additional attempted murder charge in 2024, which added another life sentence to her total. The former nurse is currently serving out 15 life sentences in prison while she waits for the case to be reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, an independent public body that investigates potential miscarriages of justice in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Once the commission completes its review, Letby may be given a chance to appeal.
