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. After ten months of intense, complicated testimony, the
Speaker 1: jury in Lucy Letby's case is finally ready to give
Speaker 1: a verdict. In all, the jury was asked to consider
Speaker 1: twenty two charges. Seven of those were counts of murder,
Speaker 1: the rest attempted murder. It actually took the jury four
Speaker 1: days to deliver all their verdicts. You see, in England
Speaker 1: a jury can return a verdict while still deliberating over others.
Speaker 2: She's found guilty of murdering four babies and attempting to.
Speaker 3: Murder too, and then slowly his time went to meet
Speaker 3: all the vertices.
Speaker 1: Can Reporter Kim Pilling, who had sat through every single
Speaker 1: day of the ten month trial, remembers how the room
Speaker 1: felt each time the jury would announce a verdict had
Speaker 1: been reached.
Speaker 4: You know the tensionless you earn, Pindrop was yet very tense.
Speaker 1: Fourteen guilty verdicts all told the rest. The jury either
Speaker 1: landed on not guilty or they were unable to decide. Lucy,
Speaker 1: who had become more withdrawn and seemed to retreat into
Speaker 1: herself over the trial. Was only present for the first
Speaker 1: two days of verdict announcements.
Speaker 4: She didn't come back for those last thirty.
Speaker 1: Through her lawyer, Lucy let Be told the court that
Speaker 1: she was too unwell to attend anymore. That included when
Speaker 1: the judge would sentence her. Later, she would refuse to
Speaker 1: leave her cell as Justice Goss read her sentence. That decision,
Speaker 1: one of the few she was able to make for herself,
Speaker 1: didn't go over well with the families of the babies
Speaker 1: she had been found guilty of hurting.
Speaker 5: They were all there to met their victim personal statements
Speaker 5: in person, many of them, and I think they wanted
Speaker 5: to stare.
Speaker 1: Her down, But for many there would still be some
Speaker 1: satisfaction with how heavy the hammer of justice fell on
Speaker 1: Lucy let Be. She would be facing one of the
Speaker 1: harshest sentences ever handed down in the country.
Speaker 5: She was facing that she would face her life in prison.
Speaker 1: I'm Amanda Knox and from Vespucci and iHeart Podcasts, This
Speaker 1: is Doubt the Case of Lucy let Be Episode six,
Speaker 1: The Misfits and Ghouls.
Speaker 3: The defendant, Lucy Letby has refused to attend court for
Speaker 3: this sentence hearing.
Speaker 1: Lucy let Be's absence was definitely something that Justice James
Speaker 1: Goss had to deal with in court. We've had an
Speaker 1: actor read portions of his remarks.
Speaker 3: I shall deliver the sentencing remarks as if she was
Speaker 3: present to hear them, and I direct that she is
Speaker 3: provided with a transcript of my remarks and copies of
Speaker 3: the victim personal statements read to the court.
Speaker 1: On August twenty first, twenty twenty three, Justice Goss delivered
Speaker 1: his much anticipated sentencing decision.
Speaker 3: Lucy Letby over a period of almost thirteen months between
Speaker 3: June twenty fifteen and June twenty sixteen, when in your
Speaker 3: mid twenties and employed as a neonatal nurse in the
Speaker 3: Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester specialist training in intensive care,
Speaker 3: you murdered seven babies and attempted to murder six others.
Speaker 1: In the UK, a life sentence can mean two different things.
Speaker 1: One offers a chance at parole after serving a minimum sentence.
Speaker 1: The other is life, what they call a whole life order.
Speaker 3: This was a cruel, calculated and cynical campaign of child
Speaker 3: murder involving the smallest and most vulnerable of children, Lucy Letby,
Speaker 3: on each of the seven offenses of murder and the
Speaker 3: seven offenses of attempted murder. I sentence you to imprisonment
Speaker 3: for life, because the seriousness of your offenses is exceptionally high.
Speaker 3: I direct that the early release provisions do not apply.
Speaker 3: The order of the court therefore is a whole life
Speaker 3: order on each and every offense, and you will spend
Speaker 3: the rest of your life in prison.
Speaker 1: Lucy was now one of only three women in Britain
Speaker 1: facing a whole life sentence.
Speaker 2: As soon as she was found guilty. It was I mean,
Speaker 2: there was just no voic scene of any skepticism or
Speaker 2: doubt about the verdict.
Speaker 1: Rachel Levive is a writer with the New Yorker magazine,
Speaker 1: and while there was daily reporting of the story of
Speaker 1: Lucy let Be in the UK, it hadn't really made
Speaker 1: much of a splash in the US.
Speaker 2: It was everywhere. It was in the Daily Mail, for sure,
Speaker 2: but it was also in the Guardian. There were I
Speaker 2: think I counted more than one hundred stories about the
Speaker 2: case in the Guardian. It was a course of national
Speaker 2: fixation of a level that felt like, you know, the
Speaker 2: equivalent of the O. J. Simpson trial. It was a
Speaker 2: huge media phenomenon.
Speaker 1: But Rachel had done some reporting on other cases of
Speaker 1: women wrongly convicted of killing children, and in those cases,
Speaker 1: much of the evidence against them relied on complicated and
Speaker 1: faulty statistics and ignored medical information. According to Rachel, the
Speaker 1: similarities to let Be were striking.
Speaker 2: I started following the case and just really looking at
Speaker 2: like the daily updates on the Chester the local newspapers website.
Speaker 2: I was just sort of following it with like an
Speaker 2: increasing sense of disbelief.
Speaker 1: Rachel was shocked at the lack of critical reporting in
Speaker 1: the UK.
Speaker 2: I was struck just by the deference that, like the
Speaker 2: journalistic community played toward the courts. Just the sort of
Speaker 2: deferential attitude towards authority in general was surprising to me.
Speaker 1: When Rachel first approached Lucy's story, she did it carefully
Speaker 1: and critically. She wasn't even convinced it would turn into
Speaker 1: a story for her magazine.
Speaker 2: Well, there were two things that happened. One, I think
Speaker 2: I told my editor all along, like if I start
Speaker 2: reporting this and then I think, oh, she's guilty, I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna stop, Like there's no point in doing a
Speaker 2: she's guilty story. So all along I had a high
Speaker 2: level of being critical of the conclusions I might be
Speaker 2: drawing or not. And then when it got to the
Speaker 2: stage of the fact checking, I think the fact checkers
Speaker 2: were explicitly told like, if you start thinking she's guilty,
Speaker 2: like yeah, then the whole story collapses. And I think
Speaker 2: hearing their sort of evolving experience of reading the records
Speaker 2: was very affirming, because their job is to basically doubt
Speaker 2: me and to doubt what I'm writing, and the fact
Speaker 2: that they came in ready to doubt, and then you know,
Speaker 2: one of the fact trickers said like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I think she might be innocent.
Speaker 1: On May thirteenth, twenty twenty four, Rachel Aviv's article a
Speaker 1: British nurse was found guilty of killing seven babies?
Speaker 4: Did she do?
Speaker 1: It? Was published?
Speaker 4: Well, the impact of the New York piece was huge,
Speaker 4: absolutely huge.
Speaker 1: It would have been impossible for Rachel Aviv to know
Speaker 1: that the mere act of publishing her article would send
Speaker 1: shock waves through an entire country, But the moment filmmaker
Speaker 1: and journalist Nikkurry heard about it, she knew the impression
Speaker 1: it would make.
Speaker 4: Just in terms of opening people's minds to the possibility
Speaker 4: that something else might have happened. In the case that
Speaker 4: everything might not be as it seemed.
Speaker 1: A Knook says the piece stood apart in a number
Speaker 1: of ways. That was.
Speaker 4: Quite an unusual piece of writing for a UK audience
Speaker 4: who's used to wait more used to sort of news reporting.
Speaker 1: The article was over thirteen thousand words. The average news
Speaker 1: article is a fraction of that.
Speaker 4: The political class and probably people working in medicine and
Speaker 4: people who had some expertise in different fields, I think
Speaker 4: it had a big impact on them, and it was
Speaker 4: just the first time that things were questioned really openly.
Speaker 1: Rachel's article looked closely at the entire Lucy let Be
Speaker 1: saga and asked questions about every step from the police investigation.
Speaker 2: The police department was actually relying on the doctors who
Speaker 2: thought that Lucy let Be was the murder as kind
Speaker 2: of translators to help them understand the medical evidence, and
Speaker 2: so then their perception of what was going on was
Speaker 2: really filtered through people who had who already had a
Speaker 2: belief that she was guilty.
Speaker 1: Was there consensus among the experts you talked to about
Speaker 1: the legitimacy or not of the evidence that was used
Speaker 1: to convict let Be.
Speaker 2: Almost everyone was quite flum mixed by the air embolism idea.
Speaker 2: There were claims being made that just like didn't cohere
Speaker 2: with people's understanding of basic physiology. As far as the
Speaker 2: insulent evidence. Everyone was very confused by those numbers. There
Speaker 2: was just a general sense of this doesn't read on
Speaker 2: paper at least as an intentional poisoning. And also the
Speaker 2: test that was used is just unreliable.
Speaker 1: Shockingly, for the first time, the public was asked to
Speaker 1: rethink the statistical information used to convict her. Specifically, that
Speaker 1: chart which showed Lucy let Be was on duty each
Speaker 1: time a baby died. It was powerful evidence. We tend
Speaker 1: to assume that irregular things happen because someone intentionally caused them,
Speaker 1: Rachel wrote. In her article, she quotes the Nobel Prize
Speaker 1: winning economist dmil Conneman, who says that our predilection for
Speaker 1: casual thinking exposes us to serious mistakes in evaluating the
Speaker 1: randomness of truly random events. Reading this article, for the
Speaker 1: first time, the British public was forced to question just
Speaker 1: how convincing this evidence really was. Was there anyone that
Speaker 1: you reached out to who was someone who questioned that narrative,
Speaker 1: but who was afraid to come forward?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a statistician who had consulted for the defense,
Speaker 2: who ultimately wasn't asked to testify, who had those concerns,
Speaker 2: like you know she I remember her telling me that
Speaker 2: she was really concerned that Lucy let Be was being bullied.
Speaker 2: And then the defense expert for the let Be team,
Speaker 2: who was never called, I mean, he said he was
Speaker 2: like staying up night worrying about this, Like I don't
Speaker 2: think he would have gone out and spoken about his
Speaker 2: concerns unless I don't think it was something he was
Speaker 2: going to do on his own. But once he saw
Speaker 2: that a journalist was also concerned about this, then he
Speaker 2: was willing to sort of like almost access some of
Speaker 2: those real doubts he had. But I think when I
Speaker 2: first talked to him, he wasn't in a place of
Speaker 2: this woman is definitely innocent, But he was in a
Speaker 2: place of real doubt about the quality of evidence that
Speaker 2: he had seen a trial.
Speaker 1: Beyond the complicated evidence and the investigation's tunnel vision. Rachel's
Speaker 1: article also forced readers to confront more basic problems with
Speaker 1: the case against let Be.
Speaker 2: I think status and gender also really came into play.
Speaker 2: This belief originated with a group of mal doctors who
Speaker 2: had a lot of status.
Speaker 4: In that environment.
Speaker 2: And so even though the nurses really did support Lucy
Speaker 2: let Be for a very long long time, you could
Speaker 2: see that over the years, with each sort of legal
Speaker 2: step that you could just see them sort of doubting themselves.
Speaker 2: So there was this one very painful interview with Lucy
Speaker 2: Letbe's direct manager, sort of like the nursing supervisor, And
Speaker 2: even after the verdict, you could tell she'd like come
Speaker 2: in there to say that she'd been fooled by Lucy Letbe,
Speaker 2: but like she couldn't quite say that. She was still
Speaker 2: kind of asking, like, how can this be? Like can
Speaker 2: someone be such a good actor?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: I just I spent so much time with her crying
Speaker 2: about this. It seems so sincere. It was almost like
Speaker 2: she was asking, help me believe that she's guilty, because
Speaker 2: I still fundamentally don't.
Speaker 1: What do you think about why the evil nurse version
Speaker 1: of the story took hold so quickly?
Speaker 2: There are few events as sort of destabilizing and terrifying
Speaker 2: as a young child dying, And I do think that
Speaker 2: it kind of like breaks our brains a bit to
Speaker 2: think that this is a random act that can happen
Speaker 2: to anyone that you combine a vulnerable child with some
Speaker 2: health problems, and you combine that with an overworked hospital
Speaker 2: and busy doctors and a couple of mistakes, and your
Speaker 2: child can die. So I think like on an intellectual level,
Speaker 2: it is easier to believe that there's one evil agent
Speaker 2: creating harm than to sort of sit with the fact
Speaker 2: that we are all susceptible to these random acts of
Speaker 2: horrific luck horrific bad luck.
Speaker 1: This is especially so in the UK because in the
Speaker 1: UK all public health care is provided through the NHS,
Speaker 1: the National Health Service. It's worth taking a moment to
Speaker 1: explain a little about the law of the NHS.
Speaker 6: An enormous welcome to the City of London and to
Speaker 6: the Olympic Stadium for the Olympic Games of twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, the London Olympic Opening Ceremony set out
Speaker 1: to tell the world who Britain believed itself to be.
Speaker 5: Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 4: The Union flag is raised by representatives from the Royal Navy,
Speaker 4: Army and Royal Air Force.
Speaker 1: There were tributes to the monarchy, to the armed forces,
Speaker 1: to British music. Bowie the Beatles, the sex pistols, there
Speaker 1: were even dozens of Mary Poppins floating down onto the
Speaker 1: stadium floor. But the moment that lingered most for me
Speaker 1: was something else entirely a meticulously choreographed celebration of the
Speaker 1: National Health Service.
Speaker 6: Now we move on to celebrates an institution which was
Speaker 6: founded the year of the last London Olympics in nineteen
Speaker 6: forty eight, and they're going to see a very special example.
Speaker 4: Please welcome and the staff of the United Kingdom National
Speaker 4: Health Service.
Speaker 1: And our hospital beds rolled onto the stage. Nurses and
Speaker 1: doctors stood at the center of the spectacle. The NHS
Speaker 1: wasn't presented as a public service. It was presented as
Speaker 1: a national virtue.
Speaker 7: No, our Enbarns famous principle more societic than the thistlement.
Speaker 7: They called itself civilized with the same person is divided
Speaker 7: medical aid because of that of means.
Speaker 1: In Britain, the NHS is more than an institution. It's
Speaker 1: a point of pride, a moral achievement, something people grow
Speaker 1: up being taught to protect. So when allegations emerged that
Speaker 1: babies had died on a neonatal unit, the question many
Speaker 1: were primed to ask was not whether the NHS had failed,
Speaker 1: whether the hospital had failed, but who within it was responsible.
Speaker 1: By the time Lucy let Be took the stand, her
Speaker 1: task was not simply to defend herself against accusations of murder,
Speaker 1: a daunting enough challenge. Implicitly, she was being asked to
Speaker 1: do something far harder, to convince a jury and in
Speaker 1: turn the public, that something had gone catastrophically wrong inside
Speaker 1: one of Britain's most trusted institutions. All this was something
Speaker 1: that did not go unnoticed by Rachel.
Speaker 8: I mean, the.
Speaker 2: NHS is, you know, this sort of wonderful thing that
Speaker 2: that is a huge part of a national identity, and
Speaker 2: yet like it's been defunded over the years. So there's
Speaker 2: these very difficult conversations to be had about the level
Speaker 2: of healthcare, particularly for women and babies. And I think
Speaker 2: at trial you could even see the defense lawyer saying, like,
Speaker 2: we love the NHS, this isn't about the NHS, Like
Speaker 2: he was very almost afraid to make the jury think
Speaker 2: that they were being asked to say the NHS was bad.
Speaker 2: There was almost a sort of like this is our nationality,
Speaker 2: we will not ruin the symbol. It's like easier to
Speaker 2: say that there's one evil creature doing these malevolent, crazy
Speaker 2: things that have no explanation than to say, like every
Speaker 2: time I go to this hospital that's extremely important to
Speaker 2: my national identity. There are these risks that are not
Speaker 2: being properly managed.
Speaker 1: But there was one thing that pushed Rachel's article into
Speaker 1: the stratosphere above all others, good old fashioned censorship.
Speaker 4: What was the surprise was that somebody published when reporting
Speaker 4: restrictions were still in place in the UK. That was
Speaker 4: a really bold thing to do and heightened the impact
Speaker 4: in many ways because there was this element of people
Speaker 4: not being able to read it in the UK, and
Speaker 4: people want to read what they don't have access to.
Speaker 1: The restrictions that NUK Curry is talking about are pretty
Speaker 1: hard for North Americans to get their heads around. In
Speaker 1: the UK. As soon as a criminal matter becomes active,
Speaker 1: meaning a person gets arrested or a trial is announced,
Speaker 1: strict restrictions are placed on any media coverage. Anyone publishing
Speaker 1: anything that could be seen as a substantial risk to
Speaker 1: the course of justice can face contempt of court charges.
Speaker 4: Crap Prosecution Service decided that there would be a retrial
Speaker 4: on one count, and that was a baby k and
Speaker 4: I was at the court when it was just discussed
Speaker 4: announced that there would be a retrial and therefore there
Speaker 4: were reporting restrictions in place. That meant that nobody could
Speaker 4: write or talk about the Lucy let Be case for
Speaker 4: nine months, and that was absolutely extraordinary.
Speaker 1: You see, after Lucy let Be's first trial there was
Speaker 1: one count of attempted murder that the jury could not
Speaker 1: come to agreement on the death of baby K. One
Speaker 1: month and four days after Lucy was sentenced to spend
Speaker 1: the rest of her life in prison, the prosecution announced
Speaker 1: it would be retrying her for the death of Baby K. Immediately,
Speaker 1: a media blackout was put in place.
Speaker 2: Additional reporting is seen as breaking the reporting rules, so
Speaker 2: it felt like there was just no counter voices.
Speaker 1: But those restrictions are only enforceable in the UK. The
Speaker 1: New Yorker is well American. Rachel's piece came out in
Speaker 1: the spring of twenty twenty four, although some hard copies
Speaker 1: did end up making it to UK shelves. There were
Speaker 1: attempts in the UK to block access online, but clearly
Speaker 1: there are ways around geofencing and there's human instinct. People
Speaker 1: in the UK found a way to read it.
Speaker 4: So that probably heightened interest.
Speaker 1: One of the people who ended up reading the piece
Speaker 1: was a member of the British Parliament, a man named
Speaker 1: David Davis.
Speaker 5: Yesterday, The New Yorker magazine published a thirteen thousand word
Speaker 5: inquiry into the Lucy Letbee trial, which raised enormous concerns
Speaker 5: about both the logic and competence of the statistical evidence
Speaker 5: that was a central part of that trial.
Speaker 1: With the Lord Chancell Luca standing up in the House
Speaker 1: of Commons speaking about the possibility of miscarriage of justice,
Speaker 1: David Davis forced a different conversation.
Speaker 5: That article was blocked from publication on the UK Internet.
Speaker 5: I understand because of court order. I'm sure that court
Speaker 5: order was well intended, but it seems to me in
Speaker 5: defiance of open justice.
Speaker 1: Am I just naive? I mean, I've I've learned a
Speaker 1: lot about journalism, but I've never gone to a school
Speaker 1: of journalism, Like that's not my background. Am I naive
Speaker 1: to think that it's the job of journalism to question
Speaker 1: authority and not just be the mouthpiece of authority.
Speaker 4: You know what?
Speaker 2: That's a good characterization, But I think like the laws
Speaker 2: in England, I mean, I was really shocked. You're not
Speaker 2: supposed to interview people who are involved in the case,
Speaker 2: So how then are you going to get a sort
Speaker 2: of counter narrative to what the prosecution is putting out.
Speaker 2: That was the real problem, and that's why my story.
Speaker 2: I think there was just this like sense of like,
Speaker 2: how is no one else sort of articulating this? It
Speaker 2: was I mean, I think it was the reporting restrictions,
Speaker 2: but I also think it was just sort of a
Speaker 2: general sense of deference to the doctors and experts who
Speaker 2: had made these judgments. When I asked for interviews from
Speaker 2: some of the doctors involved in the case and the experts,
Speaker 2: I just don't think it occurred to them that I
Speaker 2: wouldn't just be sort of helping them do a little
Speaker 2: victory lap about the conviction.
Speaker 1: What did these doctors have at stake if Lucy wasn't
Speaker 1: found guilty.
Speaker 2: At the beginning, not much. But then I think, like anyone,
Speaker 2: they sort of developed identities that were around being these
Speaker 2: heroic whistleblowers, and they were treated like that in the media,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, it is humiliating, like if they are
Speaker 2: not these heroic whistleblowers, what have they done? They've ruined
Speaker 2: a woman's life. I can understand even on like a
Speaker 2: psychological level, why it would be heard for these doctors
Speaker 2: now to consider the evidence in a sort of neutral
Speaker 2: objective way.
Speaker 1: Were you aware of how big of a splash your
Speaker 1: peace made when it came out.
Speaker 2: I mean, something I noticed that I found really interesting
Speaker 2: was that people who read it from America and from
Speaker 2: other countries outside of England kind of read it in
Speaker 2: a pretty consistent way. They were like, I'm so horrified,
Speaker 2: I cannot believe this woman was convicted of these crimes.
Speaker 2: People who read it in England, like absolutely did not
Speaker 2: have that response, and I think that's because they were
Speaker 2: looking at it through this framework of having been exposed
Speaker 2: to so much media coverage about this case.
Speaker 1: Mike Check, Hi, nice to meet you. Would you mind
Speaker 1: introducing yourself for our audience?
Speaker 6: Sure?
Speaker 9: And my name is Polly I why can a shop
Speaker 9: actually at the moment in a small village in the
Speaker 9: English countryside sounds idyllic.
Speaker 1: I first connected with Polly way back in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: She was just one of many people who reached out
Speaker 1: to me about the Lucy let Beee case. In her
Speaker 1: initial email to me, she wrote, but hey, Amanda, I
Speaker 1: wanted to get in touch to ask you to consider
Speaker 1: looking into a recent case that is extremely troubling. She
Speaker 1: told me that she believed the Lucy was a victim
Speaker 1: of a troubled system, writing quote, I wholly believe it
Speaker 1: is a gross miscarriage of justice. I do not believe
Speaker 1: there were any murders or attacks. I believe those babies
Speaker 1: died due to poor care in a seriously failing hospital. Polly,
Speaker 1: like the majority of people in the UK, followed the
Speaker 1: Lucy let Me story as it unfolded day by day.
Speaker 9: The media in the UK, as you probably know, sort
Speaker 9: of got hold of this story and really went with
Speaker 9: it like a I don't know, like a terrier after
Speaker 9: a rat or something, as they do quite often. The
Speaker 9: headlines that were coming out were fairly strong, shall we say.
Speaker 9: I don't think I even questioned whether she was guilt,
Speaker 9: You're not. I think that was for me at the beginning.
Speaker 9: It was a sure thing, you know, And that was
Speaker 9: because of the media, I believe.
Speaker 1: But as time went on, as the coverage piled on,
Speaker 1: many of the quiet questions Polly had been asking herself
Speaker 1: during the whole saga grew louder.
Speaker 9: I just had this huge, thinking feeling that something was
Speaker 9: incredibly wrong with it. And when you sort of you're
Speaker 9: listening to the drama of the prosecutions, and there's a
Speaker 9: lot of drama associated with it. It's theater, you know,
Speaker 9: and when you look beyond all the sort of incredibly
Speaker 9: dramatic emotive language, I just thought, they just don't really
Speaker 9: have anything, or what they do have is sort of
Speaker 9: been cobbled together. And then there's this narrative spun and
Speaker 9: it just it just didn't sit right to me. It
Speaker 9: wasn't believable. There's huge holes in the story that they
Speaker 9: were telling and what they had to back it up with.
Speaker 1: Reading Rachel's New Yorker story had a lot of people
Speaker 1: seeing the holes Polly saw, and that is exactly what
Speaker 1: Rachel had hoped would happen.
Speaker 2: I mean, I hope that it would cause people to
Speaker 2: really question their assumptions and think about the case in
Speaker 2: a very different way.
Speaker 4: Did it I think it did.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it kind of really like unleashed this.
Speaker 2: It felt like it opened space. I think having the
Speaker 2: New Yorker could sort of come out and establish this
Speaker 2: real possibility of or innocence like opened up more maybe
Speaker 2: confidence because there has been great reporting since my piece
Speaker 2: came out from British journalists about new aspects of the case.
Speaker 2: So I think it like the momentum shifted. It's been
Speaker 2: nice to watch momentum growing, like there have been more
Speaker 2: and more people feeling empowered to express their concerns, and
Speaker 2: there's there's more sense of like alarm and concern by
Speaker 2: journalists and people in government.
Speaker 1: But not everyone was jumping to join Polly's innocence campaign,
Speaker 1: including some in the media, especially the newspapers that spent
Speaker 1: thousands of pages writing about Lucy's guilt. The following is
Speaker 1: an actor reading from an opinion piece by journalist Liz Hull.
Speaker 1: Hull covered the let Bee trial for The Daily Mail.
Speaker 10: I wrote in these pages soon afterwards about the strange
Speaker 10: band of misfits and ghoules convinced let Be is innocent
Speaker 10: and emboldened by conspiracy theorists online traveled daily to Manchester
Speaker 10: Crown Court to see the woman in the dock, who
Speaker 10: they insist is the real victim in this case.
Speaker 1: This is how many of Letbey's supporters were painted as
Speaker 1: just misfits and ghouls out to free a child murderer.
Speaker 1: Asking questions about the Letbe case came with a great risk,
Speaker 1: not just risk of being ostracized, but risk of coming
Speaker 1: across as a conspiracy theorist nut one that was not
Speaker 1: to be believed. The mere suggestion that something could have
Speaker 1: gone wrong in the system was unthinkable.
Speaker 4: I do wonder whether we should be more mindful when
Speaker 4: somebody's convicted that sometimes the system does get things wrong
Speaker 4: and sometimes things aren't absolute. And it feels that in
Speaker 4: this case there was no room for.
Speaker 1: That journalist and nuck Curry was also hearing from people
Speaker 1: like Polly, people who were uncomfortable with the conviction. But
Speaker 1: these people they were afraid to stick their necks out
Speaker 1: in fear they too would be labeled a misfit or
Speaker 1: a ghoul. And that included professionals who were questioning the
Speaker 1: medical and statistical evidence.
Speaker 4: Initially, people would really terrify that the fact that they
Speaker 4: had concerns might become public. They felt that it could
Speaker 4: be it could destroy their careers because it was very taboo.
Speaker 4: The narrative was set Lucy let Be had unquestionably murdered
Speaker 4: seven babies and harmed a number of others, and to
Speaker 4: question that really was to boo.
Speaker 1: And this stranglehold on criticism discussion questioning it's harmful. I
Speaker 1: know this personally, and I'm grateful to the many misfits
Speaker 1: and ghouls who backed my innocence when it was extremely
Speaker 1: unpopular to do so.
Speaker 4: It just seems like it's black and white, doesn't it.
Speaker 4: We told one thing or the other, and what is
Speaker 4: needed sometimes is exploration in the middle of it to
Speaker 4: try and try and find out what the truth really is.
Speaker 1: There is no way. The Crown's Office wasn't aware of
Speaker 1: the slow and steady beat of growing concern over Lucy's conviction,
Speaker 1: but their focus was now on the retrial of Lucy
Speaker 1: Leppie for a charge they couldn't stick during her first trial.
Speaker 4: The Crap Prosecution Service decided that there would be a
Speaker 4: retrial on one count, and that was a Baby K.
Speaker 1: Baby K was a premature infant born at twenty five
Speaker 1: weeks at the Countess of Chester Hospital on February seventeenth,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. She died in her parents' arms three days
Speaker 1: after her birth on February twentieth. Prosecutors were alleging that
Speaker 1: Lucy tampered with the baby's breathing tube. This trial would
Speaker 1: face a more educated and more critical public, but the
Speaker 1: court of public opinion is very different from the court
Speaker 1: of justice.
Speaker 8: Now, if you look into the evidence for Baby K
Speaker 8: it's one of the ones where there's the least possible
Speaker 8: evidence against against Lucy, and where the whole case is
Speaker 8: basically the word of Lucy against the word of Revi Jayara.
Speaker 8: I think the prosecution is meant to lose that trial.
Speaker 1: That's the next time on Doubt, the Case of Lucy
Speaker 1: Let Be. Doubt. The Case of Lucy Let Be is
Speaker 1: brought to you by Vespucci, iHeart Podcasts and Knox Robinson Productions.
Speaker 1: I've been your host Amanda Knox. This episode was written
Speaker 1: by Kathleen Goldhar. The co producer was Lucy Ditchmont. The
Speaker 1: senior producer was Natalia Rodriguez. The assistant producer was Amy Gill.
Speaker 1: The sound designer is Tom Biddle. The theme music was
Speaker 1: also written by Tom Biddle. Story editing by Kathleen Goldhar,
Speaker 1: fact checking by Amy Gill, voice acting by Sarah Starling
Speaker 1: and David Charles. Legal advice was provided by Jack Browning.
Speaker 1: The executive producers were Joe Meek, Amanda Knox, Christopher Robinson,
Speaker 1: Daniel Turkin, and Johnny Galvin. Thank you for listening,