Speaker 1: Before we begin, please be aware this episode contains discussions
Speaker 1: around infant deaths and other difficult topics. Please take care
Speaker 1: while listening. Certainty has a reputation for being the finish line,
Speaker 1: whether that's in a criminal trial or a scientific study.
Speaker 1: You gather evidence, you form a hypothesis, you test it,
Speaker 1: you doubt it, you stress it from every angle, and
Speaker 1: only then if it survives, do you arrive at certainty.
Speaker 1: There's an old scientific principle that says extraordinary claims require
Speaker 1: extraordinary evidence. That's supposed to be the order of things.
Speaker 1: The more explosive the accusation, the more incontrovertible the proof.
Speaker 1: But in emotionally explosive cases, especially those involving children, something shifts.
Speaker 1: Certainty can stop behaving like the end result of careful
Speaker 1: analysis and start behaving more like a social ritual. Here's
Speaker 1: what I mean. When something horrifying happens, Ambiguity feels intolerable,
Speaker 1: It feels unsafe, so we reach for narrative closure. The
Speaker 1: media reaches for a coherent villain, politicians reach for reassurance,
Speaker 1: institutions reach for control, and slowly, certainty begins to function
Speaker 1: less like a reasoned position and more like a place
Speaker 1: of belonging. The narrative about me as a psychopathic, sex
Speaker 1: crazed fem fatal hardened in the tabloids long before appeals
Speaker 1: courts dismantled key forensic assumptions. The certainty was loud, the
Speaker 1: evidence was not. Now that doesn't mean every high profile
Speaker 1: conviction is wrong. What it does mean is that sometimes
Speaker 1: the volume of certainty exceeds the foundation of evidence beneath it,
Speaker 1: and when that happens, doubt becomes socially dangerous. People who
Speaker 1: ask procedural questions are treated as sympathizers. Journalists who probe
Speaker 1: inconsistencies are framed as insensitive. Experts who disagree are accused
Speaker 1: of undermining victims. The signal shifts from here is why
Speaker 1: we believe this to everyone decent believes this, and once
Speaker 1: belief becomes a moral litmus test, the space for inquiry shrinks.
Speaker 1: From a psychological standpoint, this is deeply human. Accusations of
Speaker 1: harming chilln trigger one of the strongest protective circuits we have.
Speaker 1: Disgust narrows our thinking. It sharpens categories innocent or evil.
Speaker 1: That reflex is adaptive in evolutionary terms. It's messier in
Speaker 1: legal ones. Courts are built around structured doubt, reasonable doubt.
Speaker 1: There must always be room for doubt, especially in light
Speaker 1: of new evidence. Far too often our legal systems fall
Speaker 1: short of this ideal, and in the court of public opinion,
Speaker 1: that ideal is hard to imagine. Socially, doubt often looks
Speaker 1: like betrayal, and certainty of someone else's moral corruption becomes
Speaker 1: a badge of honor. So what happens when that certainty
Speaker 1: lands on you? I'm Amanda Knox and from Vespucci and
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts. This is doubt the case of Lucy let
Speaker 1: Be Episode ten, Reasonable Doubt.
Speaker 2: When the headlines were read about myself, you know, I
Speaker 2: was a villain, you know, from the get go. I
Speaker 2: mean it was the lowest of the low that you
Speaker 2: could be, the way that I was portrayed. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: just difficult to talk about when it comes to that,
Speaker 2: and I just hate that I'm associated with that.
Speaker 1: This is Anna Vasquez of the San Antonio four. She
Speaker 1: spent nearly fourteen years in prison after being wrongly convicted
Speaker 1: of molesting children in her care. The prosecution built the
Speaker 1: case on recovered memory testimony that was later discredited. It
Speaker 1: took nearly eighteen years for Anna and her three co
Speaker 1: defendants to be exonerated. They were all gay women. The
Speaker 1: courts ultimately determined that the crimes they were accused of
Speaker 1: never even happened.
Speaker 3: You know, when I saw images of Lucy in the media,
Speaker 3: I definitely saw myself with fear at the isolation and
Speaker 3: this disassociated sense of self.
Speaker 1: That's Heidi Goodwin. In twenty fourteen, Heidi walked out of
Speaker 1: prison after nearly a decade behind bars. She had been
Speaker 1: convicted of harming a child in her care under a
Speaker 1: shaken baby syndrome diagnosis, a theory later challenged in court. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the court determined that again, there was no crime at all.
Speaker 3: You're being accused, especially of something that as a woman,
Speaker 3: we are designed to nurture, whether that's our own or
Speaker 3: someone else's.
Speaker 1: Heidi and Anna are friends of mine, both wrongly convicted
Speaker 1: of crimes against children, both members and advocates for the
Speaker 1: Innocence Network, and both survivors of the machinery of public certainty.
Speaker 1: For Anna, her prosecution took place in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 1: Her case was one of the last gasps of the
Speaker 1: Satanic panic that gripped the US in the eighties and
Speaker 1: nineties a period of intense cultural anxiety about alleged ritual abuse.
Speaker 1: It was also a time when anti gay prejudice was
Speaker 1: still openly mainstream. In that environment, identity became part of
Speaker 1: the story and assumption traveled faster than proof.
Speaker 2: To be villainized for the person that I am, and
Speaker 2: for them to come up with this narrative of you know,
Speaker 2: praying on children and you know, having this orgy with
Speaker 2: myself and my three other friends against these four innocent
Speaker 2: little girls, it's one that's just that's really just detrimental
Speaker 2: to me. And unfortunately, because of what was happening in society,
Speaker 2: the climate, and the way they view the LGBTQ back then,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, this other panic is in called
Speaker 2: the Satanic panic. And when you have an extrat witness
Speaker 2: coming on and putting that in their notes, Amanda, the
Speaker 2: law enforcement gets I feel like they got roued up.
Speaker 2: You know, this Satanic panic was real. I mean, these
Speaker 2: people were using this in court cases, in several court cases,
Speaker 2: and I had no idea that this was actually happening,
Speaker 2: you know, at the very young age of nineteen, completely
Speaker 2: naive too. The way the system can be twisted in turn,
Speaker 2: and not be for you anymore. But now they're against
Speaker 2: you and they're firing at all rounds. Yeah, but it
Speaker 2: didn't matter. There were so many inconsistencies in the trials,
Speaker 2: but there was no getting away from that expert witness
Speaker 2: coming in and saying there was signs of sexual trauma.
Speaker 2: Now we know years later, of course, it's you know,
Speaker 2: been twenty four, twenty six years now that oh we
Speaker 2: made a mistake, we testified wrong to that that wasn't
Speaker 2: actual proof of signs of sexual assault. And you know,
Speaker 2: now we're exonerated. But it took years and years and years.
Speaker 2: But we had no fighting chance. I mean, and like
Speaker 2: you said, yeah, children are vulnerable. We want to protect children.
Speaker 2: It just sucked to be on the other side of it.
Speaker 2: And now I'm this horrible person, this horrible monster. It's
Speaker 2: just really mind blowing that an allegation like that could
Speaker 2: lead to a conviction on absolutely no basis.
Speaker 1: Heidie's prosecution relied on a different narrative, one rooted in
Speaker 1: medical certainty rather than moral panic, but the effect was
Speaker 1: the same.
Speaker 3: I was, I believe, twenty two, twenty three years old,
Speaker 3: and I was living outside of Portland, Oregon, and I
Speaker 3: became a caregiver for two children over roughly a two
Speaker 3: month period. One of them was fifteen months old. This
Speaker 3: little girl lost consciousness in my care I had to
Speaker 3: call nine one one, and then the wave of accusations, Oh,
Speaker 3: it's shaken baby syndrome. Oh, it had to have happened
Speaker 3: in this window, so therefore it had to happen at
Speaker 3: your house, and you were the only adult there, and
Speaker 3: only adult could be responsible for inflicting these types of injuries.
Speaker 3: And that's basically what convicted me. They had to convince
Speaker 3: the jury that I snapped, because how else could they
Speaker 3: get them to believe that someone that looks like me,
Speaker 3: speaks like me.
Speaker 1: Has no history of violence, like you, has.
Speaker 3: No history of violence whatsoever. Mother, you know, raising her children,
Speaker 3: all of the things that we're supposed to be doing
Speaker 3: and looking like and acting like. That was the only
Speaker 3: way they could convince them was to say that I
Speaker 3: must have snapped, and we now know that, you know,
Speaker 3: none of that is actually true. Our experts were able
Speaker 3: to determine that there were pre existing conditions and those
Speaker 3: could possibly have led to the loss of consciousness. I
Speaker 3: think for me, finally realizing that I don't have to
Speaker 3: be the one to figure that out. That has been
Speaker 3: a struggle, like I feel like I've had to answer.
Speaker 3: I've had to be the one to answer for what
Speaker 3: happened and figure out what happened and explain what happened
Speaker 3: to defend myself when I am not a professional.
Speaker 2: That would know those things.
Speaker 3: You know, all I know is that I wasn't responsible
Speaker 3: for harming anyone, and and so that was It's been
Speaker 3: over twenty years of my life now.
Speaker 1: In my case, things went off the rails early. The
Speaker 1: story exploded internationally, and suddenly the police were operating under
Speaker 1: enormous pressure to produce answers and to produce them fast.
Speaker 1: I've had to ask myself how much that urgency influenced
Speaker 1: their decisions. Do you think the fact that our cases
Speaker 1: were all highly emotionally charged fed into how law enforcement
Speaker 1: went about investigating the case and all of the shortcuts
Speaker 1: and mishandling that took place.
Speaker 3: I do, specifically, I think that there was pressure. I
Speaker 3: think that the county that I was convicted in has
Speaker 3: a lot of these types of cases actually litigated or tried,
Speaker 3: and has a high rate of conviction. Now, whether they're
Speaker 3: all innocence cases, you know, I can't make that claim,
Speaker 3: but I know that it also has a high rate
Speaker 3: of innocence cases that have been overturned with some of
Speaker 3: the guys as well. So I think that there was
Speaker 3: pressure on the Child Abuse Intervention Detective Unit to do
Speaker 3: what it does. And there were terms used at the
Speaker 3: time like she's being railroaded, they're making an example out
Speaker 3: of her, things to that nature. So yeah, it was
Speaker 3: crazy because the judge in the case, all said and done,
Speaker 3: he stated at sencing, you know, I'm not sure we
Speaker 3: got this right. Wow, don Or the verdict of the jury.
Speaker 2: Wow, what about you? Anne?
Speaker 1: I mean clearly the headlines were like taking advantage of
Speaker 1: the case to sensationalize it. Do you think that that
Speaker 1: impact of the investigation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it was something that somebody could, you know,
Speaker 2: climb the ladder on because it was just the way
Speaker 2: that it read, you know, it was just so horrific that, yes,
Speaker 2: we have to get a conviction, and yes, this could
Speaker 2: put me in you know, as judge. As a matter
Speaker 2: of fact, in Liz's trial.
Speaker 1: She's referring to one of her co defendants, Liz Ramirez.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that prosecutor did become judge. It was almost like
Speaker 2: they were just solely focused on No, there was no investigation,
Speaker 2: there wasn't anything, you know, it was just us.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that really threw me through
Speaker 1: an existential loop was when I was convicted, Like, the
Speaker 1: jury comes down, you are a monster.
Speaker 2: Definitively, this is the.
Speaker 1: Rule of law. And like I felt like my entire
Speaker 1: sense of self completely splintered apart because it was like
Speaker 1: this idea of a person, this story of a person,
Speaker 1: had now more reality around it than me. Right, Like
Speaker 1: this idea of an evil, sex crazed, murder orgy person
Speaker 1: was now the official truth, and everyone was now going
Speaker 1: like all reality was now around this official truth, and
Speaker 1: that you know, that idea of a person was sentenced
Speaker 1: to this many years in prison, and that was now
Speaker 1: the story that they were telling. My friend's family, her
Speaker 1: surviving family is now like, Okay, we got the bad guy.
Speaker 1: The bad guy's put away, but but it's me. It's
Speaker 1: me that's being sent to prison, not the bad guy.
Speaker 1: That's not the truth for me. Like I had this
Speaker 1: really existential crisis moment because in that moment, I realized
Speaker 1: the truth didn't matter. And as a part of that,
Speaker 1: I didn't matter and what do I do with that?
Speaker 1: And that was like a really dark moment for me
Speaker 1: as a twenty two year old kid. Do you guys
Speaker 1: remember what that was like for you?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: It ruptured like my sense of identity and autonomy and
Speaker 3: it you know, we have layers of childhood traumas things
Speaker 3: that happen, you know, And it surfaced all those insecurities
Speaker 3: and fears right that told me I'm not good. Something
Speaker 3: must be bad enough about me that makes this thing happen.
Speaker 3: I knew that I wasn't responsible for hurting a child
Speaker 3: or anyone, but I'm bad because this is happening and
Speaker 3: I have to go away and accept this somehow.
Speaker 4: It was just like really defeated feeling.
Speaker 3: I really was convinced that I was bad somehow and
Speaker 3: that this was supposed to be happening.
Speaker 2: To me totally.
Speaker 1: And you know what's interesting, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: guys know this. There are post it notes that Lucy
Speaker 1: let Be wrote where she was like, I'm not good enough,
Speaker 1: I am evil?
Speaker 2: Wow, yeah what about you?
Speaker 1: Anna?
Speaker 2: It wasn't so much I'm thinking I'm a bad person.
Speaker 2: But what it did make me do is start questioning
Speaker 2: my faith. M Am I going through this because God
Speaker 2: doesn't like it? You know? Am I going against my
Speaker 2: faith and what I should be right living as a woman,
Speaker 2: getting married, had and children.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a crazy thing that's happening to us, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's a crazy thing that is happening, and your brain
Speaker 1: is trying to make sense of it. I like, how
Speaker 1: do you make sense of it? It just does not
Speaker 1: make any sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was like clinging on to things like what
Speaker 3: did I do in my past life? You know, totally Harma,
Speaker 3: but ultimately, you know, feeling like I'm just this is
Speaker 3: where I belong? How this is where I belong.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's funny that you say that, Heidi, because I
Speaker 2: felt that same way after, you know, a certain time,
Speaker 2: all the way in prison. I was like, you know what,
Speaker 2: I need to stop asking why because I'll never know.
Speaker 1: I wish I could tell you that. This episode features
Speaker 1: an interview with Lucy herself. I've written to her in
Speaker 1: prison and to her family, and spoken with her lawyer
Speaker 1: on several occasions, and she and her team have decided
Speaker 1: that now is not the time for her to speak
Speaker 1: out publicly. No one else knows the stakes of that
Speaker 1: decision better than them. It would be nice if verdicts
Speaker 1: were only as strong as the evidence and interpretation reached
Speaker 1: by a jury. Sadly, that's often not the case. I
Speaker 1: know plenty of Innocence Project attorneys who have to turn
Speaker 1: down strong cases for innocence because there's no viable procedural
Speaker 1: route to freedom. I get messages all the time from
Speaker 1: people stuck inside claiming innocence, some of whom have exhausted
Speaker 1: all their appeals. There's little I can do to help
Speaker 1: them because in the US or the UK, there is
Speaker 1: no right to being free just because you're innocent. There's
Speaker 1: only a right to a fair trial. As of today,
Speaker 1: Lucy Letby's convictions still stand and she's been refused permission
Speaker 1: to appeal through the Court of Appeal, but for her
Speaker 1: current lawyer, Mark MacDonald, the case is far from over.
Speaker 5: So there's two elements to this. The first element is
Speaker 5: the most important element. You don't undo a conviction unless
Speaker 5: you have the legal arguments and the expertise to be
Speaker 5: able to do so, and so that's with all the
Speaker 5: expert reports than an expert sort have come forward from
Speaker 5: across the world. The second is to change the narrative
Speaker 5: around her to use that media storm and ferrari that
Speaker 5: was around her when she was convicted and to turn
Speaker 5: the story. And the reason for that is because we
Speaker 5: do have a system in this country post conviction system
Speaker 5: which many argue is not fit for purpose, that innocent
Speaker 5: people do remain in prison and that the system has
Speaker 5: let them down.
Speaker 1: According to Mark, Lucy's path back to the Court of
Speaker 1: Appeals runs through the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the body
Speaker 1: tasked with reviewing potential miscarriage of justice. He says that
Speaker 1: in recent years the Commission has faced mounting criticism, particularly
Speaker 1: after several wrongful convictions were overturned despite earlier decisions not
Speaker 1: to refer those cases back to court.
Speaker 5: And as a result, a number of people have had
Speaker 5: to resign and there's a massive spotlight on them. So
Speaker 5: there's that, and there's a criminal Court of Appeal, and
Speaker 5: this is my view, that feels a reluctance to go
Speaker 5: behind a jury's verdict. That they seem that there's a
Speaker 5: finality to a jury system and as a result are
Speaker 5: reluctant to really interfere with that, even when there can
Speaker 5: be compelling evidence or conviction is unsafe and we as
Speaker 5: defense balanced, as I've often given a hard time when
Speaker 5: we get to the court of appeal by the judges
Speaker 5: because we're seen as people that shouldn't be interfering with
Speaker 5: the system almost And if you are somebody that has
Speaker 5: a strong narrative of guilt around you, then you're finding
Speaker 5: both those bodies really against you right from the beginning.
Speaker 5: And so it's important to get an alternative narrative, and
Speaker 5: they're not a false altenative plan, not a pretend narrative,
Speaker 5: but simply tell the truth as to what's going on.
Speaker 5: In exposing the issues.
Speaker 1: For Mark, it's clear the media played a powerful role
Speaker 1: in amplifying the story of Lucy Ledby's guilt. Now he's
Speaker 1: using that same platform to scrutinize the case.
Speaker 5: And so yes, there's been a campaign in the media
Speaker 5: to which I have fronted and have driven it intentionally.
Speaker 5: But as I say, if you don't have the legal
Speaker 5: argument in the first place, doesn't matter about anything else
Speaker 5: in relation to the media, You're just not going to
Speaker 5: win that legal element. The expert element is the priority.
Speaker 1: It's the pairing of expert testimony and media scrutiny that
Speaker 1: he believes creates momentum. That's where doctor Shulee and the
Speaker 1: international panel come in independent specialists whose findings challenged the
Speaker 1: original medical narrative and who were willing to stand by
Speaker 1: those conclusions publicly.
Speaker 5: He contacted me and said, look, if we find that
Speaker 5: actually she is guilty, they're not going to say it.
Speaker 5: So Lucy had a decision does she go with that?
Speaker 1: But as you heard in the last episode, in.
Speaker 5: All opinion, the medical opinion, the medical evidence doesn't support
Speaker 5: murder in any of these babies.
Speaker 1: But challenging a conviction in public is always a risk,
Speaker 1: even if you have the expert testimony to back it up.
Speaker 1: Mark's arguments were met with sharp scrutiny, particularly around the
Speaker 1: families of the children who died.
Speaker 5: I often get an interview what about the families? And
Speaker 5: the one thing I've said now is I have over
Speaker 5: one thousand pages of expert evidence from twenty four separate
Speaker 5: individual experts. I am happy to give them to the
Speaker 5: families and they can say it. And I am happy
Speaker 5: to provide the neonatologists to sit with them in the
Speaker 5: room and explain the issues of where things have gone wrong,
Speaker 5: number one. But number two, it's about getting to the truth.
Speaker 5: What these parents want to know, What they desperately want
Speaker 5: to know is what happened to their child. You see,
Speaker 5: first of all, they started off with the fact that
Speaker 5: their child has died, and they've had to go for
Speaker 5: the grief of losing their child. And then years later
Speaker 5: somebody has come to them and said, in fact, we
Speaker 5: think your child was intentionally hurt and murdered. And then
Speaker 5: they've had to sit through a trial and sometimes given
Speaker 5: evidence in front of the jury in that trial, and
Speaker 5: then she's been convicted of it. And then in a
Speaker 5: lung comes mart McDonald and said, I think this conviction
Speaker 5: might be unsafe, and I think she may be innocent.
Speaker 1: Whatever happens next in Lucy Ledbe's case, one fact does
Speaker 1: not change. Parents lost their children and families continue to
Speaker 1: live with that loss. Legal challenges may move forward, appeals
Speaker 1: may be argued, evidence may be re examined, but grief
Speaker 1: does not depend on a verdict.
Speaker 5: And they can be angry, and they have a right
Speaker 5: to be angry, but they need you know, I would
Speaker 5: say they have to be angry with the right people,
Speaker 5: because if she is innocent, that what has happened, what
Speaker 5: has gone so wrong both with the police, both the
Speaker 5: prosecution and the health service that they've been so let
Speaker 5: down because the one thing that Sheley has identified is
Speaker 5: a systematic poor healthcare for medical staff towards their children.
Speaker 1: This is one of the hardest parts of any wrongful
Speaker 1: conviction case. The families of the victim grasp onto the
Speaker 1: answer given to them as a source of closure, and
Speaker 1: then when an innocence claim arises, it's like that closure
Speaker 1: is being ripped away. In my own case, the Kircher
Speaker 1: family has made it clear through their lawyer that they
Speaker 1: still doubt my innocence. I understand why it's difficult for
Speaker 1: them to let go of the answers offered to them,
Speaker 1: however wrong they were, and they are not outliers in
Speaker 1: any way. In most wrongful conviction cases I've studied, the
Speaker 1: families of the victim hold firm to the narrative originally
Speaker 1: offered to them by the prosecution. If Lucy let Be
Speaker 1: is innocent, then that means that hospital administrators and Cheshire
Speaker 1: police and the prosecutors and judges have denied them closure
Speaker 1: and instead thrown them into years of having to publicly
Speaker 1: relive their trauma of having answers given and taken a
Speaker 1: way that is psychological torture. That no grieving parent deserves.
Speaker 1: In recent months, the Crown Prosecution Service announced it would
Speaker 1: not pursue several remaining charges against Lucy let Be. Prosecutors
Speaker 1: said the evidence in those cases would not meet the
Speaker 1: threshold required for conviction, the standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt.
Speaker 1: Some of that evidence overlapped with material previously examined in court,
Speaker 1: including in the case of Baby k Peter Elston, a
Speaker 1: scientist and reporter, was one of the very first voices
Speaker 1: to express concern about the case, even before the first
Speaker 1: trial had finished. He was arguably instrumental in getting the
Speaker 1: pro Lucy let Be movement started. For Peter, this newest
Speaker 1: decision by the CPS signals to something very important.
Speaker 6: November twenty twenty were brought by the Merseyside the Regional CPS, whereas.
Speaker 4: This recent announcement was made by.
Speaker 6: The Serious Crime and counter Terrorism Unit of the CPS,
Speaker 6: which is a national.
Speaker 4: Part of the CPS.
Speaker 6: The original decision to bring charges should not have been
Speaker 6: made by the Merseyside branch of the CPS or complex
Speaker 6: serious cases charging decision has to be made by the
Speaker 6: Serious Crime Division of the CPS.
Speaker 4: So why it.
Speaker 6: Was made by the regional CPS is a really important
Speaker 6: question that needs answering because if the strength of the
Speaker 6: evidence in relation to the recent charges the Cheshire Police
Speaker 6: wanted the CPS to consider was the same as the
Speaker 6: evidence in terms of drenthless the original charges, then it
Speaker 6: puts into question why charges were brought in twenty twenty.
Speaker 6: Not a lawyer, so I do need to be a
Speaker 6: bit careful, but I think it's quite likely, given the
Speaker 6: number of experts who found holes in the evidence, had
Speaker 6: it been the Serious Crime Division EPs who were asked
Speaker 6: bring charges against Lucy let me, they would have said no.
Speaker 6: They would have looked at the evidence and they would
Speaker 6: have said, sorry, that's just not good enough.
Speaker 1: The decision to not pursue further charges does not overturn
Speaker 1: any of Lucy Letby's convictions, but it has added another
Speaker 1: layer to the public debate surrounding them. For Peter Elston,
Speaker 1: the public discourse around the case is vital.
Speaker 6: I feel desperately sorry wrongly convicted. People who are not
Speaker 6: these cases don't, for whatever reason, generate the same interest,
Speaker 6: But Lucy Letley's case Hans and the role that the
Speaker 6: public has played in driving interest, driving public opinion, getting
Speaker 6: journalists interested it's essential.
Speaker 1: Because, according to Peter, both the CCRC and the Court
Speaker 1: of Appeals do not exist in a vacuum.
Speaker 7: They're both very political institutions who will look at the
Speaker 7: way the wind is blowing, and if they see that
Speaker 7: public opinion has shifted and is very much in Lucy's favor,
Speaker 7: that they're far more likely the decides in her favor.
Speaker 6: The reality is, this is the way things have to
Speaker 6: happen if you've got a lot of public voice behind
Speaker 6: the defendant, a wrongly convicted individual, and that I think
Speaker 6: that make things a lot quicker. But it really is
Speaker 6: absolutely essential or public opinion to play a role in
Speaker 6: these cases.
Speaker 1: Whether or not public pressure should influence legal institutions is
Speaker 1: a matter of debate, but in Lucy Letbee's case, the
Speaker 1: legal fight now unfolds alongside an increasingly vocal and heated
Speaker 1: public conversation.
Speaker 5: We've been told about court is guilty and we sort
Speaker 5: of all knoll our heads and think over, well, you know,
Speaker 5: she must be must be guilty of all of that.
Speaker 8: Parents of the convicted baby killer Lucy Letbie have told
Speaker 8: Good Morning Britain their daughter is innocent and the victim
Speaker 8: of a horrendous miscarriage of justice.
Speaker 5: Big day for Netflix today they have a Lucy Letbe
Speaker 5: documentary and it features unseen footage from her arrest day.
Speaker 9: Police went out to tender with documentary companies for this
Speaker 9: footage and actually it's completely.
Speaker 5: Backfired on them because it was a pr exercise on
Speaker 5: behalf of Cheshire.
Speaker 2: Please, the people on readit have been insane.
Speaker 9: I've always thought she was guilty merely from the media coverage.
Speaker 9: I guess something feels really off about this case. I'm
Speaker 9: nowhere near as convinced as I used to be. I
Speaker 9: now have reasonable doubt, to be perfectly honest. Hopefully we
Speaker 9: get to the bottom of this once and for all.
Speaker 10: If she's the monster we were told, then she's where
Speaker 10: she needs to be.
Speaker 4: If not, then that means we have monsters loose.
Speaker 5: There was no monster, and she's the scapegoat for systematic feelings.
Speaker 5: I don't buy into any of all this.
Speaker 4: Lucy let Be was innocent, sick of it, rather bored
Speaker 4: of it. I think she's as guilty as sin I suppose.
Speaker 4: I don't care that much about the privacy of Lucy
Speaker 4: let Be.
Speaker 5: She killed babies.
Speaker 4: I don't really care about her welfare.
Speaker 5: The Crown Prosecution Service that she won't face any further charges.
Speaker 10: Relution let Be was convicted back in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 10: I was sure she was a baby killer. I now
Speaker 10: believe that she's an innocent woman. Escapecoat was up subconsciously
Speaker 10: looked for the British justice needs to right that wrong.
Speaker 10: Justice may be blind in this country, but it's not infallible, and.
Speaker 8: I do think the armchair detectives online don't help at
Speaker 8: all of this kind of like, oh, well.
Speaker 10: I think she's there or I think she's that.
Speaker 2: It's like, no, we need to.
Speaker 6: Look at facts.
Speaker 4: Make no mistake. In the eyes of the law.
Speaker 8: The facts are Lucy let me as a convicted murderer.
Speaker 1: The noise surrounding the Lucy Ledbey case only continues to increase.
Speaker 1: It's something that Anna Vaskez and Heidi Goodwin will never forget.
Speaker 1: It shaped how they were seen and how their cases
Speaker 1: were later reconsidered. I know that my relationship with public
Speaker 1: scrutiny is a little complicated because I do think that
Speaker 1: at a certain point the public scrutiny and the public
Speaker 1: fascination with the case both hurt and ultimately helped me,
Speaker 1: because it got a lot of people to automatically assume
Speaker 1: that I was a horrible monster, But it also introduced
Speaker 1: the case to people who otherwise would not have heard
Speaker 1: about it, who are knowledgeable about these things, and who
Speaker 1: came out and became advocates and started like turning the
Speaker 1: like turning the tide and like introducing a new narrative.
Speaker 2: And so I'm wondering, like, what is your.
Speaker 1: Personal relationship with public scrutiny and how it helped or
Speaker 1: hurt your path to you know, freedom and exoneration.
Speaker 3: For me personally, it's not puzzle piece. Why do we
Speaker 3: rely so much on what media is saying or science
Speaker 3: that can be you know, absolute until it's not. How
Speaker 3: can we do these things better and how can they
Speaker 3: be reported by her?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like we want to rely on experts, especially in
Speaker 1: the world of the medical field. We want to rely
Speaker 1: on media professionals to be giving us true information.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I feel like the media helped to put me away
Speaker 2: and it actually helped to exonerate me. And it's all
Speaker 2: about the narrative, right.
Speaker 1: Anna's case was covered in an award winning documentary called
Speaker 1: South of Salem, The Story of the San Antonio Four.
Speaker 1: Her face sits front and center on the poster.
Speaker 2: I was fearful when they introduced the possibility of doing
Speaker 2: a documentary about my case. It wasn't until you know,
Speaker 2: I actually sat down with Debthlanazi, who is the director
Speaker 2: of the documentary, that we had a conversation face to
Speaker 2: face while I'm still in prison, that I felt like
Speaker 2: comfortable with thinking that this this lady is going to
Speaker 2: tell my story the truth of it. I didn't know,
Speaker 2: you know, after seven and a half years of filming, Amanda,
Speaker 2: I didn't know what to expect out of all them years.
Speaker 2: What are you actually gonna put into this film.
Speaker 1: And what narrative are you going to present?
Speaker 2: Right, So it wasn't until I actually, you know, we
Speaker 2: actually viewed it that I was like, wow, I made
Speaker 2: the right choice, and yeah, I mean there's documentation in
Speaker 2: our Court of Criminal Appeals ruling where it you know,
Speaker 2: has selfless to Salem in there. So I think it
Speaker 2: was very powerful. I think that you know, going out
Speaker 2: in the public and having these speaking engagements and you know,
Speaker 2: all these different things that it helped to really tell
Speaker 2: my story the right way, the truth.
Speaker 1: But of course, just because a conviction is overturned, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that certain simply disappears, it shifts, the verdict
Speaker 1: may change, but for many people the doubt doesn't. I
Speaker 1: know that one thing that I get a lot, and
Speaker 1: I'm curious to know if this happens to you.
Speaker 2: Guys.
Speaker 1: What still happens to this day is if somebody hears
Speaker 1: from another person that they know me or they've interacted
Speaker 1: with me before, inevitably someone will ask them, oh, do
Speaker 1: you think she did it? Like this happened twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: and like still to this day people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: do you think she did it?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 1: That's like this is when we talk about how you
Speaker 1: have to prove your innocence every day for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life.
Speaker 3: I had, for the most part, tremendous support from everyone
Speaker 3: that knew me. There were a couple of one offs
Speaker 3: I found out later down the road that behind closed
Speaker 3: doors would say do you think you know? But I mean,
Speaker 3: I guess that's to be expected. I've now experienced people
Speaker 3: questioning my integrity and my involvement in the case they
Speaker 3: believe that they can use it to their benefit. I'll
Speaker 3: just be honest. I've not spoken about this publicly, but
Speaker 3: my ex husband used in our divorce to try to
Speaker 3: leverage it to uh discredit me, and that probably hurt
Speaker 3: more than anything else.
Speaker 4: That sucks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what about you Anna the documentary who was rolling out?
Speaker 2: You know, all these different things were happening us around
Speaker 2: in my case, and one of the things that I
Speaker 2: first went through was, uh, the comments. Don't fucking read
Speaker 2: the comments, guys. I mean, you know, it doesn't ever matter,
Speaker 2: but it was heartbreaking to hear what they were saying.
Speaker 2: You know, I had to just let it go, like,
Speaker 2: I know what happened, I know truth, and I'm staying
Speaker 2: with it, so I can't be concerned what other people
Speaker 2: are coun me.
Speaker 1: Anna's conviction was not only overturned, it was formally expunged
Speaker 1: from her record. Heidi is still fighting to have her
Speaker 1: conviction fully vacated and cleared.
Speaker 3: I want it gone so that no one can use
Speaker 3: it to hurt me or hurt my family. What it
Speaker 3: will never do is give the time box or healing.
Speaker 2: You know, for me, it's one speaking with exoneration and expungement.
Speaker 2: It's like reaffirming what I've always said. I'm innocent, right,
Speaker 2: but I think it's still can be used against us,
Speaker 2: And that's my fear too, right, just the accusation only
Speaker 2: because like, you can't tell me that it can't happen,
Speaker 2: because it fucking did. That's the issue that I can't
Speaker 2: rep my mind around and can't stand when people say
Speaker 2: get over it, move on. You can't.
Speaker 1: After being defined by this, like we all know that,
Speaker 1: we still live with the stigma of it. So what
Speaker 1: does freedom even really mean?
Speaker 2: That's a great question.
Speaker 3: I think that it's about reclaiming our own power. That's
Speaker 3: as you know, as close as to freedom as we're
Speaker 3: going to get the freedom physically.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, I feel a freedom.
Speaker 1: Obviously, except that you still have this policy of not
Speaker 1: being around little kids.
Speaker 2: It's funny that you say that, Amanda, because that's where
Speaker 2: I was going to say, I'm not free. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: you know there's so many of my closest friend and
Speaker 2: have children. I don't know how to get past it,
Speaker 2: and I.
Speaker 5: Wish I could.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that if I were to get that back, I
Speaker 2: think that's when I would feel freedom.
Speaker 1: You have a lot of fear, that's totally justified.
Speaker 3: I was going to school for early childhood development. My
Speaker 3: goal was to have a daycare or be a foster parent.
Speaker 3: I will never want to run a daycare, and you know,
Speaker 3: even with my children when they have become babysitters or
Speaker 3: for caring for their children, like I have to tamp
Speaker 3: down that fear that I have for them of you know,
Speaker 3: what if something happens for Peter Elston.
Speaker 6: In some ways, I've been a bit disappointed that that
Speaker 6: hasn't been a bit hasn't been more anger expressed by
Speaker 6: the general public. And I guess because you know, people
Speaker 6: have busy lives. They may say that she's innocent, but
Speaker 6: they don't think that this could happen to them.
Speaker 4: They're very much mistaken.
Speaker 6: People say that they can't be wrongly accused of harming
Speaker 6: someone in their care, then they're very much mistaken.
Speaker 4: This can happen very easily.
Speaker 1: That may be true in some cases, I know from
Speaker 1: personal experience, but in Lucy Letb's case, the question remains
Speaker 1: deeply contested. For many, the verdict is settled, Lucy let
Speaker 1: Be is guilty, case closed. But for others, including Peter
Speaker 1: Elston and Mark McDonald, it's not a question.
Speaker 5: Lucy let Me will be freed. These convictions will be overturned.
Speaker 5: The only question is right.
Speaker 7: Oh, without a doubt, they will be overturned without a doubt.
Speaker 1: For now that remains a prediction. Lucy let Be is
Speaker 1: serving whole life sentences in prison. Cases like this don't
Speaker 1: just test a defendant, They test the system that judged her,
Speaker 1: because if the convictions are sound, the system worked, and
Speaker 1: if they are not, it failed in ways that can
Speaker 1: never be fully undone. The implications of this case go
Speaker 1: far beyond just Lucy herself, the justice system, the medical system,
Speaker 1: the media. As doctor Phil Hammond put it, if this
Speaker 1: turns out.
Speaker 6: To be willed, every single level that the British establishment
Speaker 6: would be torn to shreds.
Speaker 1: If we want any of these systems to be better,
Speaker 1: we have to be willing to embrace the feeling of doubt,
Speaker 1: however uncomfortable it is. Thank you for listening to doubt
Speaker 1: out the Case of Lucy let Be. Doubt the Case
Speaker 1: of Lucy let Be is brought to you by Vespucci,
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts and Knox Robinson Productions. I've been your host
Speaker 1: Amanda Knox. This episode was written by Natalia Rodriguez. The
Speaker 1: co producer was Lucy Ditchmont. The assistant producer was Amy Gill.
Speaker 1: Senior producer is Natalia Rodriguez. The sound designer is Tom Biddle.
Speaker 1: The theme music was written by Tom Biddle. Legal advice
Speaker 1: was provided by Jack Browning. The producers at iHeart Podcasts
Speaker 1: are Chandler Mays and Katrina Norvell.
Speaker 2: The executive producers.
Speaker 1: Were Joe Meek, Amanda Knox, Christopher Robinson, Daniel Turkin, and
Speaker 1: Johnny Galvin. Thank you for listening.