Oversight of Doctor Alerts and Delayed Police Involvement in the Lucy Letby Case
Hospital bosses totally dropped the ball on looking into the serious claims against Lucy Letby and even tried to hush up the doctors. The main doctor in charge of the baby unit spilled the beans to the BBC.
To make things even worse, the hospital dragged its feet and didn’t even call the cops, even though they had been getting warnings for months that this nurse might be doing something really bad to the babies.
Alarming Trends and Disregarded Warnings
The big shot doctor in charge, Dr. Stephen Brearey, was the first to get worried about Letby back in October 2015. But guess what? Nobody did anything about it, and she went on to hurt five more babies, with two of them losing their lives.
Now Letby’s been found guilty of killing seven babies and trying to kill six others in a baby unit at Countess of Chester Hospital in Cheshire. The first five awful deeds all went down between June and October 2015, and even though there were alarm bells ringing for months, the last two were in June 2016.
The folks over at BBC Panorama and BBC News have been digging deep to figure out just how in the world Letby got away with causing so much harm and pain to all those little babies for such a darn long time.
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Summer of 2015: ‘Not So Nice Lucy’
Back before June 2015, the neonatal unit at Countess of Chester Hospital usually saw about two or three baby deaths each year. But when summer rolled around in 2015, things got pretty weird.
Just in June, three babies passed away in just two weeks. It was a total shocker, so Dr. Stephen Brearey, the head honcho of the baby unit, set up a meeting with the unit boss, Eirian Powell, and Alison Kelly, the nursing boss at the hospital.
“We really dug deep,” Dr. Brearey spills. They checked out the schedules and guess what? Lucy Letby was on duty when all three babies kicked the bucket. “I can still remember saying, ‘Nah, it can’t be Lucy. Sweet Lucy?'” he spills.
It didn’t look like these three deaths had any connection. Nobody, not even Dr. Brearey, thought something sketchy was going on.
But when we hit October 2015, things took a turn. Two more little ones didn’t make it, and Letby was on duty for both of those heartbreaks.
At this point, Dr. Brearey started getting worried that Letby might be causing harm. He reached out to the boss of the unit, Eirian Powell, but it seemed like she wasn’t on the same page.
In an email from that October, she brushed off the connection between Letby and the unexpected baby deaths as just “unlucky.” She said each baby died for different reasons, and it was all just a coincidence that Letby was there.
The big bosses didn’t seem fazed either. In that same month, Dr. Brearey told Alison Kelly, the head nurse, about his worries with Letby. But he didn’t get a peep back.
Even Dr. Brearey’s fellow doctors were starting to get concerned about Letby. And it wasn’t just the deaths that raised red flags. Other babies were collapsing but not dying, needing quick help to breathe or be revived, and Letby always seemed to be on duty.
Then, in February 2016, another doctor, Dr. Ravi Jayaram spotted Letby just standing around while a baby, Baby K, seemed to have stopped breathing.
Dr. Brearey was all over it. He reached out to Alison Kelly and the big medical boss, Ian Harvey, begging for a meeting ASAP. Early in March, he dropped a note to Eirian Powell too, saying, “We still need to talk about Lucy.”
Uncovering Hidden Dangers: Startling Evidence Emerges
Fast forward three months, and two more little ones came close to losing their lives. Then, finally, in May of that same year, Dr. Brearey scored the meeting he’d been pushing for with the big-shot managers. He’s pretty clear on how worried he was during that sit-down: “My concerns were as clear as day at that meeting,” he spills.
But the vibe in that room was off. Dr. Brearey spilled the beans to Mr. Harvey and Ms. Kelly, but it was like they were tuned out. He tried his best to get through to them about his worries over Letby, but guess what? She got the green light to keep on working.
June 2016: The tipping point
By early June, yet another baby had collapsed. Then, towards the end of the month, two of three premature triplets died unexpectedly within 24 hours of each other. Letby was on shift for both deaths.
After the death of the second triplet, Dr Brearey attended a meeting for traumatised staff.
He says while others seemed to be “crumbling before your eyes almost”, Letby brushed off his suggestion that she must be tired or upset. “No, I’m back on shift tomorrow,” she told him. “She was quite happy and confident to come into work,” he says.
For Dr Brearey and his fellow consultants, the deaths of the two triplets were a tipping point. That evening, Dr Brearey says he called duty executive Karen Rees and demanded Letby be taken off duty. She refused.
Dr Brearey says he challenged her about whether she was making this decision against the wishes of seven consultant pediatricians – and asked if she would take responsibility for anything that might happen to other babies the next day. He says Ms Rees replied “yes”.
The following day, another baby – known as Baby Q – almost died, again while Letby was on duty. The nurse still worked another three shifts before she was finally removed from the neonatal unit – more than a year after the first incident.
The suspicious deaths and collapses then stopped.
But guess what? They didn’t put Letby on ice.
Instead, they shuffled her over to some place called the hospital’s risk and safety spot. Rumor has it she got her hands on some super-secret papers about the baby unit. Plus, she got cozy with the big shots who were supposed to be checking her out.
On June 29, 2016, one of the doctors sent an email with the subject line: “Should we get outside help?”
“I think we need to call in the experts,” he wrote. “And I’m pretty sure the only ones who can sort this mess out are the cops.”
But the folks in charge at the hospital had a different take. In his reply, the big boss doc, Ian Harvey, wrote, “We’re on it, don’t worry. No more emails about this.”
Just two days after that, the doctors met up with the higher-ups. They’re saying this dude named Stephen Cross, who’s all about business and legal stuff, dropped a bomb. He warned that getting the police involved would be a total mess for the hospital, turning the baby unit into some kind of crime scene.
So, instead of calling the cops, Mr. Harvey had this other idea. He invited the smarty-pants crew at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) to take a look at how things were going in the baby unit.
In the early days of September 2016, a crew from the Royal College swung by the hospital and had a chat with the kids’ doctors.
Skipping ahead to November 2016, the RCPCH finished its report. They threw out a suggestion like, “Hey, maybe we should have some outside folks look into each surprise neonatal death.”
Around October 2016, Ian Harvey got in touch with Dr. Jane Hawdon, a pro when it comes to little preemie babies in London. He asked her to take a peek at the notes for those babies who didn’t make it to the neonatal unit.
The outcome? Well, it was a pretty cautious report. Dr. Hawdon basically said her findings were meant to spark some discussions and learning, but they might not hold up in court if you know what I mean.
Turns out, it wasn’t the thorough review the doctors were hoping for – and definitely not the big independent review that the RCPCH had in mind. But even in this limited case-note report, Dr. Hawdon put it out there that four of those baby passings should be looked at really closely.
Sad to say, that close look didn’t end up happening.
Around the beginning of 2017, things were still quiet on the police front. Picture this: early January, the hospital board got together, and Mr. Harvey stood up and spilled the beans about what those two reviews found. Both reports suggested they needed to dig deeper into a few of those baby passings – but guess what? Somehow, that message didn’t quite make its way to the board members.
If you peeked at the meeting notes, you’d see Mr. Harvey pointing out that the reviews wrapped up by pointing fingers at the neonatal unit’s leadership and their not-so-timely actions.
Now, jump forward a few weeks to late January. The seven hotshot consultants working in the neonatal unit got a summons to meet up with the bigwigs in the hospital, including Mr. Harvey and the head honcho, CEO Tony Chambers.
According to Dr. Brearey, the CEO gave them an earful. He said he spent a bunch of time hanging out with Letby and her pops and even said sorry to them. Apparently, he told them Letby didn’t do anything wrong. But hold on a sec, Mr. Chambers is saying he was just putting her dad’s words in his own way.
Here’s the kicker: The doctor’s version of the story says the CEO wanted the consultants to say sorry to Letby, and he laid out that a line had been drawn. If they dared to cross it, he warned of some “consequences” coming their way.
Fast forward to spring 2018, and things were getting real. Letby was still doing her thing at the hospital’s risk and patient safety office, no handcuffs in sight. But listen up, Operation Hummingbird was buzzing around, and Dr. Brearey was right there in the mix, giving a hand to the police investigation.
One late night, he was knee-deep in old medical files, and boom, he stumbled upon a blood test from way back in 2015 for a little one under his care. Get this: the test was screaming about sky-high insulin levels in the baby’s blood.
But here’s the kicker: back then, nobody caught how big a deal this was.
Now, when your body pumps out insulin, it also kicks out something called C-Peptide. And that’s where the trouble lay in the insulin reading Dr. Brearey was eyeballing. The C-Peptide levels were almost zilch. Translation? That insulin wasn’t coming from the baby’s natural factory. Someone had given it a helping hand.
Dr. Brearey remembers feeling downright queasy. He knew what he was looking at: a clear sign that this tiny tot had been hit with an insulin poison.
Jump ahead a few months, and guess what? Letby finally got nabbed and got the boot from the hospital. But check this out, it had been a whopping three years since Dr. Brearey first yelled, “Hey, something’s not right!”
When a fresh face named Dr. Susan Gilby stepped in as the new medical director and deputy chief honcho, she was floored by what she found. She says the guy before her, Mr. Harvey, gave her a heads-up that she should take on the General Medical Council, you know, the doc regulators, against the neonatal team – the very folks who raised the red flag. But hold the phone, Mr. Harvey’s saying, “Nope, never said that.”
Now here’s where it gets interesting. In a dusty box of files sitting in Dr. Gilby’s office, she dug up some real dirt. Slapped with the label “neonates,” these files let the cat out of the bag. Turns out, back in 2015, the big shots in charge had a sit-down and agreed to have an outside crew look into the first three baby deaths. Wanna know the kicker? That plan got the cold shoulder.
And that’s not all. The management crew dropped the ball on reporting those deaths like they should’ve. And you know what that means? The bigger NHS system missed the memo on those high death rates. Even the bigwigs running the hospital trust didn’t catch wind of the problem until July 2016.
Lessons Learned and Moving Forward: Seeking Closure and Change for Lucy Letby
Dr. Gilby isn’t mincing words. She says the trust’s decision to keep the cops out of it seemed to be all about looks. “Yeah, they were really into saving face and all,” she says.
Later on in 2018, after Tony Chambers threw in the towel, Dr. Gilby stepped up as the big boss and hung around until 2022. Now get this – she’s throwing down a lawsuit against the trust, saying they gave her the boot unfairly.
Dr. Brearey spilled the beans, saying the folks running the hospital were being all sneaky and judgy during the whole time leading up to the nurse’s arrest.
“They totally brushed off what we had to say. And starting from January 2017, things got pretty scary, even a bit like bullying,” he tells BBC News. “It’s like the complete opposite of what you’d expect from a hospital, you know, where people should feel safe to speak up.”
So, guess what? Letby got hit with some serious charges – seven murder charges and fifteen times she tried to do the same, all between June 2015 and June 2016. And here’s the scoop: she got slapped with guilty verdicts for all seven murders and seven of those attempted murders.
Now, hold onto your hats. She didn’t get in trouble for two counts of attempted murder. And guess what? The jury couldn’t agree on six more counts of attempted murder, which included stuff tied to Baby K and Baby Q.
