UK inquiry faults hospital for not stopping baby-killer nurse

Three babies may have survived and seven more escaped harm if managers had acted sooner on warnings about Lucy Letby, officials found in a long-awaited public report.MANCHESTER, England (CN) — Three babies, including two newborn twin boys, would not have died if managers had removed nurse Lucy Letby from a hospital ward sooner, a British judge found Tuesday.The findings come from a three-year public inquiry into how Letby killed and injured babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwest England. She was convicted of murdering seven infants.Justice Kathryn Thirlwall, the senior judge who led the inquiry, described a “complete failure” by hospital managers to protect the unit’s smallest patients, and said executives ran “an exercise in spin” to play down a rise in infant deaths to their own board.Thirlwall said a 2-month-old girl and two other babies who suffered unexplained collapses might also have been protected had a doctor caught an earlier insulin poisoning on the ward.One of those three babies, now 11, suffered a lifelong brain injury and needs round-the-clock care, officials wrote in the report.The three-volume report, commissioned two months after Letby was convicted of multiple offenses and costing $25 million, is based on evidence from nearly 400 witnesses.Officials found the hospital’s own patient safety department took no action until June 2016, when twin boys died within a day of each other, and did not contact police until April 2017 — nearly two years after doctors first raised concerns.Protecting the hospital’s reputation, Thirlwall concluded, was “prized more highly” than warnings from doctors, with parents “kept in the dark” for years about what happened to their babies.The judge made 14 recommendations, including monitors in every neonatal cot so parents can watch their babies remotely, and cameras trained on insulin storage fridges.She told NHS England, the public body that runs Britain’s health service, to set out a plan for the monitors by March 31, 2027.Government apologizes as police widen manslaughter probeYvette Cooper, Britain’s health secretary, told Parliament she was “profoundly sorry” for the failures.She said officials had been ordered to draw up plans for the cot monitors and would review national safeguarding guidance in light of the report.“The safety and safeguarding and well-being of babies must never again be treated as a side issue,” she said.Tamlin Bolton, a lawyer representing seven of the families, said the report “paints a damning picture of what happens when concerns over patient safety are not listened to or acted on.”Speaking outside Liverpool Town Hall, she said many parents “continue to live with the consequences of what happened to their children.” Executives, she said, “considered it better to say nothing in the belief a police investigation would go nowhere.”Cheshire Police said the department would review the report’s recommendations as part of Operation Duet, its ongoing investigation into corporate and gross negligence manslaughter at the hospital.Three former members of the hospital’s senior leadership team were arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter on June 30, 2025, and remain on bail, police said.A fourth person was arrested April 22 on suspicion of perverting the course of justice.Who is Lucy Letby?Letby is serving 15 whole-life prison terms, the most severe sentence under British law, with no possibility of parole.A jury convicted her in August 2023 of murdering seven infants, including two identical triplet brothers killed a day apart and a newborn weighing less than 2.2 pounds who was injected with air.Jurors could not agree on six other counts, and at a retrial in July 2024, Letby was convicted of trying to kill a baby known as Baby K, who was born 15 weeks premature.Her convictions make Letby the worst child serial killer in modern British history.The inquiry did not examine Letby’s convictions or any possible motive. Thirlwall said she approached the inquiry on the basis that Letby is guilty, noting an appeals court had already upheld the convictions twice.However, doubts persist.Nearly 30 international medical experts have challenged the evidence used to convict Letby, and her lawyers have submitted their findings to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the body that investigates potential miscarriages of justice.Two of those experts withdrew from her defense team Monday, saying while they still believed it “very unlikely” two babies were poisoned, some arguments made on Letby’s behalf were “inconsistent with the available evidence, science and established physiology.”Letby’s attorney, Mark McDonald, said the inquiry “proceeded on the wrong premise” and repeated errors made at trial.“It is particularly regrettable that Lucy’s application to participate in the inquiry was rejected,” he said. “Had she been represented, the inquiry would have been able to hear an alternative account.”Courthouse News reporter James Francis Whitehead is based in England.Categories / InternationalSubscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads