Canadian doctors lead a group of international medical experts who believe that the most prolific children’s killer in Modern Britain may have been wrongly sentenced.
Lucy Ledby, the former neonatal nurse, was found guilty in two trials in 2023 and 2024, of murder seven premature infants and attempted assassionions in assassinating seven others. Deaths all took place between 2015 and 2016 at the Comtesse de Chester hospital in the northwest of England, where she worked.
The accusation argued that LEDBY had deliberately injected vulnerable infants – just a few days – with air, poisoned with insulin or overwhelmed them with milk.
Ledby, then at the start of the thirties, was sentenced to 15 whole mandates, which means that it will never be conditional. Calls against his conviction have been rejected.
The titles of the British newspapers described him as “the worst children’s serial killer of Great Britain” and “a cold and calculating killer”. The case was closed.
But Dr. Shoo Lee, the retired chief of the Néonatology Department of the University of Toronto, believes that Leby may be convicted and presented these conclusions at a press conference in London on Tuesday.
Lee, who is president of the Canadian Neonatal Foundation, has developed a panel to examine the medical evidence presented in the case, after wider doubts were raised about the accusation.
“As a panel, we came to the conclusion that there was no murder,” he told CBC News in an interview shortly after the press conference.
‘I generally do not make medical cases’
Lee was approached for the first time by the case by Leby’s defense team in October 2023, when he was part of his family farm near Edmonton.
“I received this email from some lawyers in the United Kingdom to ask me if I would look at a matter,” said Lee. “I was busy harvesting, so I just ignored it.”
The accusation in the LEDBY case had argued that the nurse had injected air into the baby’s veins and was based strongly on medical evidence after the hospital staff reported discoloration of the skin On some of the deceased babies.
They asserted their case using a 1989 research document on the air embolism that Lee had co-written.
“I generally do not make medical legal cases,” he said. “I don’t appreciate them, so I don’t do them.”
But in this particular case, “because they used my paper to condemn it, I was curious to know what they said and what they did.”
What he found, said Lee, was false. “What they said and interpreted as being used to condemn it was not what I said in the newspaper.”
The accusation highlighted various skin discolorations found in dead babies. Lee told the press conference that he had recently updated his article and had found no cases of skin discoloration linked to air embolism by the venous system, adding: “So let’s delete this theory.”
He tried to prove his proofs during the hearing of the Leby court of appeal in April 2024, but this was prohibited.
“The judge said the defense had the opportunity to call me during the initial trial, and they did not do it,” he said.
Why was not only called Leby’s legal team.
The panel arrived in unanimous
Lee was a team of 14 people – which he called “an international expert panel of the best people in the world in neonatology” – to examine evidence.
The panel was made up of six Canadians, while the others came from the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany and Sweden.
Working for free, Lee said they were aimed at “giving an opinion on whether, in fact, the evidence used to condemn or not [Letby] was correct. And what were the causes of death or injuries. “”
Their conclusion was unanimous.
“These babies have died either natural causes or poor medical care. This is what happened,” Lee told CBC News.
Sitting alongside a British MP, Leby’s lawyer and a former British Royal College of Pediatrics chief at the London press conference Lee underwent the conclusions. (None of the babies involved can be identified under British law.)
For example: Baby 1, he said, died of a blood clot, no air. The baby 4 was sepsis and pneumonia, not murder. The baby 9 suffered from poor care and death was avoidable.
“If it happened in a hospital in Canada, we are closing it,” Lee told CBC News.
Jurors have also heard non -medical evidence
The Letby affair has fueled a multitude of conspiracy and alternative theories, especially on social networks.
But Lee is not anxious to put his name to the conclusions of the panel.
“I already have a good reputation,” he said. “Everyone knows my work, and I am confident of my own work. In addition to that, there are 14 experts – 13 others with me – who say the same thing.”
The jurors of the two LEDBY trials have received more than medical evidence to consider.
During the first 10 -month trial, the accusation relied on the accounts of doctors and nurses. The jury also had access to tens of thousands of pages of medical notes, text and messages on social networks with colleagues and data from the hospital’s scanning cards.
The accusation also presented handwritten notes found at Leby’s home. They understood sentences such as “I killed them” and “I am bad”, but also words like “despair”, “hate my life” and “why me?”
The notes were presented as a confession – something that Ledby has never done. Post-conviction, Some criminology experts said that the notes were meaningless and possibly written in the context of therapy.
Critics of the accusation do not maintain any apparent reason or psychological background corresponding to that of a serial killer never presented. But the accusation said LEDBY was in the quarter of work when deaths took place, even when it spent from day to day at work.
Police are currently examining the care of some 4,000 other babies admitted to hospitals where Leby worked as a neonatal nurse.
A public inquiry is also underwayExamining the deaths at the Comtesse de Chester hospital near Manchester, in particular by hearing the experiences of bereaved families.
“What is she doing in prison?”
The mother of a baby Letby was found guilty of having tried to murder said the British media“We have had the truth. We believe in the British judicial system. We think the jury made the right decision.”
But Dr. Lee is confident of the conclusions of his panel.
“I know that Canadians have a feeling of fair play, and Canadians have a feeling of good and bad,” he said. “If there was no murder, there can be no murderer. So what does she do in prison?”
He said “this case must be examined and they must have a new trial.”
The only chance of LEDBY remaining to avoid a life behind bars now lies in the Commission for the revision of independent criminal cases. He has the power to investigate the cases where people think they were convicted or wrongly condemned and send him back to court as a potential miscarriage of justice.
LEDBY lawyer urges the committee to examine the case, on the basis of Lee’s conclusions.
The commission confirmed this week that she had received a request from her lawyers, who will be assessed.
