Lucy Letby’s parents have condemned a documentary that contains police footage of her being arrested in her pyjamas at their home, in their first public statement on the case.
Susan and John Letby described the release of the recording as a “complete invasion of privacy” and also claimed the chief investigating officer in their daughter’s case “seemed to have a deep hatred” of them.
A trailer for the Netflix programme shows officers arriving at the nurse’s family home, where she was staying with her parents, in Hereford in June 2019 and entering her bedroom. She is seen sitting up in bed, looking confused, as police say they are arresting her on suspicion of murder and attempted murder. She is then led away in her dressing gown.
Speaking publicly for the first time since their daughter was jailed for life in August 2023, the Letbys said they would not watch the documentary, adding: “It would likely kill us if we did.”
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Letby, 36, was convicted of the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of seven others at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016.
In January, police confirmed that she faced no further criminal charges after a decade-long investigation into the deaths of two infants and the attempted murder of seven others. The decision prompted renewed calls for her convictions to be reviewed amid mounting concern about how the original case was handled and presented to the jury.
The case is being considered by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) which deals with potential miscarriages of justice.
Letby’s parents said in a statement to The Sunday Times: “We’ve always imagined that if something life-changing is going to happen to you the next day, you would somehow have a premonition that something was about to happen. We can honestly say that on the eve of all three of the arrests we had absolutely no idea they were coming.”
John and Susan Letby arriving at Manchester crown court during their daughter’s trial in 2023
ANTHONY DEVLIN/GETTY IMAGES
Netflix’s feature-length documentary, made by ITN Productions, claims to feature further unreleased footage of Letby during her arrests and police questioning and interviews with the police, experts and lawyers on both sides.
During her trial Letby claimed she had been taken to the police station in her pyjamas. This was disputed by the prosecution, who accused her of trying to garner sympathy with the jury. Nick Johnson KC said she was a “very calculating woman”. He added: “The reason you tell lies is to try and get sympathy from people, you try and get attention from people.”
Letby was arrested three times. On the first occasion, in July 2018, she was led out of her home wearing a blue tracksuit. As she is led away during the 2019 Hereford arrest, a visibly upset Letby is heard saying to someone off-camera: “Don’t look, just go in.”
Letby’s arrest in 2018
PA
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Her parents questioned why police had decided to release the footage and said Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes, the investigating officer, seemed to have a “deep hatred” of them.
They said: “Why is Paul Hughes, with whom we always co-operated fully, allowed to show the world what took place in our house that morning and Netflix not even have the decency to tell us?
“He seems to have a deep hatred of us even though it was us who first went into Blacon police station in March 2017 to report that [the hospital consultants] Stephen Brearey and Ravi Jayaram were making Lucy a scapegoat.”
Netflix documentary ‘on another level’
They added: “The previous programmes made about Lucy, including Panorama and the almost nightly news showing her being brought out handcuffed in a blue tracksuit are heartbreaking for us. However, this Netflix documentary is on another level. We had no idea they were using footage in our house. We will not watch it — it would likely kill us if we did.
“We have, however, stumbled on pictures of her being arrested in her bedroom in our house and her saying goodbye to one of her beloved cats which are even more distressing. Heaven knows how much more they have to show. All this taking place in the home where we have lived for 40 years. It is in a small cul-de-sac in a small town where everyone knows everyone. It is a complete invasion of privacy of which we would have known nothing if Lucy’s barrister had not told us.”
Video that will be shown in the Netflix documentary
They added: “What we go through every day is nothing to what Lucy goes through but we still have to live here. Will our house become a tourist attraction like Lucy’s in Chester? We will find out the following day when everything is plastered over the papers and the news will be full of it.”
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Dame Esther Rantzen is among those backing calls for the case to be re-examined. Rantzen, who was a household name in the 1970s and 1980s as host of the BBC’s That’s Life, told The Sunday Times: “I know that the bereaved parents are still mourning the loss of their babies and dread having to relive those tragedies if a retrial is agreed.
“But I believe it would be tragedy upon tragedy if the loss of their babies resulted in the life imprisonment of a nurse whose own life had been shattered beyond repair and who deserves justice.”
She added: “I have no medical or legal expertise. Throughout my professional career as an investigative journalist I have tried to uncover the truth and I know how complicated and difficult that can be. It may be that Lucy Letby is a serial killer but it may be that she is not. She had twice been refused permission to appeal against her convictions. But I believe the time had come for all the evidence to be examined.”
Lucy Letby appears in court via video link in 2024
JULIA QUENZLER/REUTERS
Criticising the release of the footage, Rantzen, who was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer in 2018, said: “This week a photograph was published of Lucy Letby being arrested when she was in her bedroom. But when she described being taken to a police station in her pyjamas, the prosecution alleged that this was untrue and that she had invented this detail in order to create sympathy for herself. But the prosecution was wrong. It was not an invention. It was the truth.”
Defending the documentary, which also includes an anonymous interview with a mother of one of the victims, Ian Rumsey, managing director of content at ITN, told The Telegraph: “This was an incredibly challenging story to tell. We’ve presented perspectives from all sides to let viewers draw their own conclusions. I’m enormously proud of the entire team, who’ve attempted to make the definitive documentary about this tragic case.”
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The Investigation of Lucy Letby will be released on Wednesday.
Letby has always maintained her innocence. In February last year, her legal team presented reports from a panel of 14 international experts which, they say, casts doubt on the jury’s guilty verdicts.
Led by the Canadian neonatologist, Dr Shoo Lee, the panel said no murders took place at the hospital and instead babies collapsed or died because of natural causes or poor care.
In April, their findings, plus those from another 12 experts, were submitted to the CCRC. It subsequently confirmed it was examining whether her case should be sent to the Court of Appeal for a third time.
However, the parents of Letby’s victims remain “utterly convinced” of her guilt. In their closing statements last year to the Thirlwall Inquiry into the deaths the families said: “[We] know the truth about what really happened. Letby murdered and attempted to murder babies. The [press] conference and messages that Letby’s team are broadcasting, far from bringing comfort and assurance, cause distress. The message is conveyed in a way that shows no respect towards how families might be affected by it.”
Mark McDonald, Letby’s lawyer, said: “There are many victims in this tragic story, the families of the children who died; Lucy Letby, who, if the 30-plus experts are right, is innocent and has been wrongly incarcerated for life. There is also Lucy’s parents whose whole life was their precious child. The disclosure by the police of the footage of Lucy in bed as the police raided being shown on national TV is clearly distressing, unnecessary and very painful.”
Cheshire Constabulary said it “has provided interviews with key members of the investigation team as part of the documentary along with limited investigative material to visually explain the case on an exclusive basis.
“The force — and the officers who feature in the programme — have received no payment for their involvement.”