Member-only story
SECOND THOUGHTS
Locked Up For Life, But Is She Guilty?
Or the scapegoat for a hospital’s failings . . .
Vilified in the media after her conviction, is she the victim of a grave miscarriage of justice?
My news media consumption is a mixed bag. I spent most of my life in the States and, although I’ve lived in France for more than a decade, I still read the New York Times and Washington Post. Also LeMonde, in English I confess, because it helps me better understand my country of residence.
Most mornings we eat breakfast while listening to the news on BBC Radio4, evenings we watch BBC News and sometimes Channel4. Televised broadcasts provide superficial coverage of world events, but a casual viewer could easily think little else happens throughout the UK but government screwups, murder and mayhem. The more sensational the case, the better.
Colleagues reportedly called Lucy Letby an “angel of death,” and the Prime Minister condemned her. But, in the rush to judgment, serious questions about the evidence were ignored.
Last year, after a ten-month trial a 33-year old neonatal nurse, Lucy Letby, was found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six more while they were in her care. The story was top of the UK news most nights — emerging details, interviews with grieving parents, images of a smiling Letby baby in arms.
Letby, with her scrubbed, girl-next-door looks, the least likely-looking serial murderer imaginable. Hardly the Angel of Death described by the tabloids. But she was always there when it happened, and what about those notes . . .
I was hooked. I’d been director of media relations for a major California healthcare organisation, written features on neonatal care for a nursing journal — even made a neonatologist the hero of my first Harlequin romance. But the Letby case was a tragedy. Although there was a poignancy to the images of a tearful Lucy in handcuffs, it was overshadowed by the death of so many babies, the enormity of it all.
