I needed to face Letby in court, says victim's mum

The mother of one of the babies murdered by Lucy Letby said she felt at one point like she had "failed as a mum" because she had not been able to protect her daughter.

The girl, known as "Baby D" in the neonatal nurse's trial, died in June 2015. Letby was found to have injected air into her bloodstream.

In a new Netflix documentary, and using the pseudonym "Sarah", the baby's mum said the years since her daughter's death had brought "storm after storm, and it's not over, but I want to make it through".

Letby is serving 15 whole life sentences for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others - one on two occasions - at the Countess of Chester hospital between 2015 and 2016.

The makers of the documentary, The Investigation of Lucy Letby, have given Baby D the pseudonym "Zoe".

Speaking for the first time on camera, Sarah said Zoe had been born after 60 hours in labour.

She said Zoe had been taken to intensive care shortly after she was born.

"It was hard looking at her in the incubator... She was so fragile, small and precious," said Sarah.

But she added: "The doctors told us she was responding very well, she was responding as expected and there were no concerns."

Less than two days later, though, Sarah was woken up in the early hours of the morning by a nurse and wheeled into a room to a scene of "panic".

"The doctor was trying everything to keep her heart pumping," she said.

Tragically, Zoe could not be saved.

"That was it," said Sarah. "It was finished. It was over.

"I was just so angry and so sad and so confused."

The documentary makers had exclusive access to the key investigators at Cheshire Police, who spent years building the case against Letby.

The producers also had bodycam footage of the neonatal nurse's three arrests and police interviews.

They also spoke to Dr John Gibbs, one of the consultant paediatricians who first raised concerns about Letby with hospital management.

He remembered Letby as being "quiet", adding nothing about her had stood out.

But as the deaths continued, the neonatal consultants had noticed she was the one person who seemed to be on duty.

Gibbs said they raised their concerns on a number of occasions, but others defended her work.

When she was transferred from working nights to day shifts, he said the timings of the deaths and non-fatal collapses also changed.

Gibbs said: "At that stage, we as a consultant body realised that we could not delay any further. Lucy Letby had to be removed from the neonatal unit."

Eventually the police were brought in and Letby was charged in 2020.

Sarah said she knew attending the subsequent trial would be challenging.

She said she also "knew Lucy Letby was going to take the stand, so I needed to face her".

Sarah told the documentary: "I sat three metres away from her. She looked at me a dozen times, staring. Every time she looked at me I'd have to look down."

Letby was eventually found guilty of murdering seven babies, including Baby D, and attempting to murder seven more.

In the years since her convictions, though, there has been a growing campaign questioning their safety.

The documentary also interviews Letby's barrister Mark MacDonald.

Brought in to represent her in late 2024, he is convinced of her innocence.

"No-one saw her do anything wrong," he said. "There is no CCTV. There is no motive – none."

In early 2025, the findings of an international panel of medical experts working for Letby's defence team were revealed at a press conference.

They concluded there were alternative explanations for each of Letby's convictions.

The panel was led by a Canadian neonatal expert, Dr Shoo Lee, who told the assembled media: "We did not find any murders. In all cases, death or injury were due to natural causes or just bad medical care."

Lee became involved after realising that a medical paper he had co-authored in 1989 had been used in the prosecution's case. He said it had been misinterpreted.

Interviewed for the documentary, he said: "A young woman could be in jail for crimes that she did not commit."

The panel's findings, which have been submitted to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) as part of an application made by Letby's lawyers for her case to be investigated as a potential miscarriage of justice, have been rejected by Gibbs.

"We were understaffed - that's generally true in most departments on most wards on the NHS," he said. "But we had had those same staffing pressures before 2015 and 2016 and we'd not had those increased deaths then."

He said the consultants had been targeted online by amateur sleuths convinced of Letby's innocence.

Gibbs said they accused the consultants of lying to cover up their own failings.

Gibbs said: "Where's your evidence of that?

"Blaming a colleague – which is a dreadful thing to do - for possibly murdering and attempting to murder babies is the worst way in the world to try and cover up problems and inadequacies on the neonatal unit."

But he added: "I live with two guilts. Guilt that we let the babies down.

"And tiny, tiny, tiny guilt – did we get the wrong person? Just in case - miscarriage of justice?"

"I don't think there was a miscarriage of justice but you worry that no-one actually saw her do it."

Much has been made of the fact the evidence against Letby is circumstantial, but several interviewees point out the amount of circumstantial evidence is huge.

The police went through thousands of documents, and her original trial took more than 10 months.

Letby's case is now with the CCRC and her defence team hopes this will result in a further appeal.

A government inquiry into the wider circumstances surrounding her crimes is due to report back in late spring.

Speculation surrounding the case shows no signs of abating.

Det Supt Paul Hughes, who led the Letby investigation, said one key element was still unknown.

"The only person who knows truly why she did each of these awful events is Lucy Letby herself," he said.

Meanwhile, the parents of the babies who died do their best to carry on through each new revelation.

Sarah now has a son.

She said: "He's our reason for everything."

Sarah said she had always talked to him about Zoe.

"There's no getting over any of this," she said. "There's the sorrow, but there's the hope and the love we have for her.

"Ultimately, we're still here and I want to count my blessings and appreciate what I have."

The Investigation of Lucy Letby is available to watch on Netflix.

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