The 'inconvenient truths' Lucy Letby's supporters choose to forget: Trial podcast revisits the damning evidence against killer nurse to expose the 'propaganda', 'cherry picking' and 'arrogance' fuelling miscarriage of justice narrative

On a special episode of the Daily Mail's Trial UK podcast, Caroline Cheetham and Liz Hull are joined by veteran court reporter Kim Pilling to 'draw a line' under the rampant speculation still surrounding Lucy Letby's murder convictions.All three sat through the killer nurse's ten month trial, and also covered every day of her 2024 retrial.They argue that much of the prosecution's case has been underreported since Letby was found guilty of murdering seven babies and trying to kill seven more, leaving room for myths and distortions to take hold.During the podcast, brought to you by The Crime Desk, the reporters return to the article many credit with taking the miscarriage of justice narrative mainstream: Rachel Aviv's 13,000 word essay for the New Yorker, 'A British Nurse Was Found Guilty of Killing Seven Babies. Did She Do It?'The piece, published in the US while reporting restrictions prevented British outlets from covering the background to the case, was controversially raised by MP David Davis in the Commons and has shaped the arguments of Letby's supporters ever since.Pilling was clear that the aim was not to attack anyone for questioning the verdicts. On a special episode of the Trial podcast, Caroline Cheetham and Liz Hull are joined by reporter Kim Pilling to 'draw a line' under the speculation still surrounding Lucy Letby's murder convictions'I have no problem with Rachel Aviv, or anybody else, writing a miscarriage of justice piece,' he said.'But I think there's a balance to be struck if you're going to do that, and especially in the New Yorker. I would expect a fair summary of the prosecution case.''Bad statistics'One of the supposed flaws Aviv identified in the prosecution's case was its use of a chart showing that Letby was on duty for every unexplained death and collapse she was accused of at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.Those who protest Letby's innocence argue the chart was misleading, leaving out deaths that happened when she was not on shift and ignoring other factors, such as chronic understaffing and poor conditions on the unit.By relying on it, they claim, the prosecution planted the idea of her guilt in jurors' minds on the strength of flimsy data, despite the chart being shown in court only a handful of times.But Hull told the podcast the chart had crucially been compiled the other way round.Prosecution expert Dr Dewi Evans first combed through the medical notes of every baby on the unit, identifying which collapses and deaths were suspicious, and only then asked police to check who had been on duty.'Other deaths and collapses that happened over that period were not included on that chart,' Hull said.'They ruled out any deliberate harms straight away: heart defects, genetic defects, syndromes.'It's not correct when David Davis stood up in the Commons and said: "Letby wasn't on duty for the other six deaths that happened that year." Several of them were ruled out because of these congenital defects.'The graph just showed who was on duty and who was the commonality. Unfortunately for Letby, she was the commonality every single time.''They would have died anyway'Another claim often raised in Letby's defence is that the babies she was convicted of harming were so premature and fragile that their deaths and collapses could all be explained by natural causes.Not only does that ignore the medical evidence heard in court, but it also overlooks the text messages, as Cheetham points out, from Letby herself and her colleagues, revealing their shock at how suddenly the babies were falling gravely ill. Hull said it was difficult to watch people who had never sat in the courtroom insist the verdicts were wrongShe said: 'The Thirlwall report goes over quotes from doctors and nurses, junior doctors, registrars, consultants, nurses, whoever it might be. The common theme from all of them is: "We don't know what is happening."'You can see text messages to Letby herself at times. There's real shock from everyone that some of these babies were collapsing in the way they were.'Cheetham added that neonatal expert Dr Jane Hawdon made the same point in her evidence: that newborn babies do not simply collapse and die unexpectedly, and that deterioration is usually gradual.'That was also the evidence we heard in court from the medics,' Pilling said.'The sense of bewilderment at the nature of these collapses and just how sudden and unexpected they were.'The handover sheetsCritics also argue the prosecution made too much of the 257 confidential handover sheets police found at Letby's homes, pointing out that only 21 related to babies she was accused of harming.In court, Letby insisted the sheets had simply come home in the pockets of her uniform by mistake. She stuck to that account even when confronted with one sheet, from her very first shift as a student nurse, found carefully kept in a keepsake box decorated with roses.According to the reporters, prosecutors did not dwell on the sheets. The damage, Hull said, was done by Letby herself, whose explanation for keeping them simply 'wasn't believable'.This fed into a wider pattern of 'red flags' in Letby's behaviour, Cheetham added, one that was hard to grasp unless you sat in the courtroom.'People describe Letby now as being beige or vanilla. That there were no signs,' she said. 'You know, she seemed to have friends, she went to salsa class.'But actually, we did an episode after the Thirlwall report. You look at the red flags that were in there, flying high.'Her behaviour with a mum over the death of Baby C, bringing the cot, the cool cot in. "You've said your goodbyes. Put him in here."'These characteristics of her behaviour, actually, when you look back and pull it together, there are red flags all over the place.'An 'inconvenient truth'For Hull, one of the most important witnesses of the entire trial is now rarely mentioned: nurse Ashleigh Hudson.Hudson told jurors she had stepped away from Baby I and returned to find Letby waiting in the doorway of the darkened nursery, saying the infant looked pale. This, despite Baby I not being able to be seen as she was covered by a canopy. Baby I had been improving during the five days Letby was off work. Within hours of her return, the little girl collapsed and died.'This incident with Baby I is an inconvenient truth for those that say Letby has been the victim of a miscarriage of justice,' Hull said.'It doesn't fit with that narrative.''It feels arrogant'Hull said it was difficult to watch people who had never sat in the courtroom insist the verdicts were wrong.'It feels arrogant to me that people who weren't in that room for any length of time still have this opinion that the jury have got it wrong,' she said.'They sat there for ten months, they listened, and they took their job very, very seriously.'She added that the case was now being 'played out in public', criticising what she called a 'propaganda' effort on Letby's behalf.These are just a handful of the rebuttals to Letby's defenders. Listen to Cheetham, Hull and Pilling's forensic takedown in full by searching for The Trial UK wherever you get your podcasts.