When Dr. Shoo Lee, one of the most famous Canadian neonatologists, wrote academic work In 1989, he never imagined that one day he would help to condemn the British nurse for the murder.
But more than three decades after his work was published, it happened.
Lucy Letby, a former nurse in a neonatal unit in northern England, was found guilty in Two trials 2023 and 2024 murders or attempts to kill 14 babies in her care and sentenced to a life prison, where he still remains today.
The case was swinging Britain, it seems that he discovered the relentless serial killer who, prosecutors said, used a bizarre range of techniques to kill her tiny, often very premature victims: injection by air, prevailing them with milk or pollution of insulin.
For seven accusations of murder or attempted murder, a leading prosecution witness relied on the work of Dr. Lee from 1989 about a rare complication in a newborn baby – pulmonary vascular air embolism – to claim that Mrs. Letby injected the air into her veins.
The only problem? The expert misinterpreted his work, says Dr. Lee.
“What they claimed was that this child collapsed and had a change in skin color, so it is equal to the air embolism,” said Dr. Lee, 68, in an interview in London last month. But, he said, “This is not what the research shows.”
That realization was placed by Dr. Lee on a moral mission to review Mrs. Letby’s case. Working Pro Bono, he collected 14 experts from all over the world to evaluate clinical evidence. Last month, Discovered their explosive discoveries – If there was no medical evidence to support the abuse that causes death or injury “in any of the babies for whom Mrs. Letby was accused of harm.
“If there is no abuse, no murder. If there is no murder, no killer,” Dr. Lee said, adding, “And if there is no killer, what does she do in prison?”
Mrs. Letby exhausted her paths to complain in the courts. Her only hope is now lying on a small, independent body, a criminal audit committee, which is responsible for investigating possible abortions of justice.
‘I didn’t know if she was innocent or wrong’
Dr. Lee, who retreated to the farm in the rural alberta in 2021, knew almost nothing about Mrs. Letby’s case, until E -mail landed in an inbox in October 2023.
Mrs. Letby always maintained her innocence, and her lawyer wanted Dr. Lee reconsidering medical evidence. “I thought it was at the beginning of an unwanted post, because how often do you get such e -hast?” Said Dr. Lee. After the second e -he realized that the request was real.
Dr. Lee spent his entire career focused on the youngest patients. After graduating from the Medical School in his native Singapore, he moved to Canada and educated himself in pediatrics before taking a neonatal scholarship at a children’s hospital in Boston and later a doctorate. in health policy at Harvard.
1995 created Canadian neonatal network, which connects experts from all over the country to improve the results of newborns. He became Chief pediatrician at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, and in 2019 received Canadian order to introduce the best practices that have reduced infants mortality.
While studying trial transcripts Lucy Letby, Dr. Lee immediately knew his research was misinterpreted. “I didn’t know if she was innocent or guilty,” he remembers. “But whether you are innocent or guilty, you cannot be convicted of the wrong evidence. It is only wrong.”
He agreed to help Mrs. Letby’s request for appeal, writing to the English appellant’s court and later providing video testimony. But the court eventually rejected her request, saying that Dr. Lee’s testimony had to be introduced to the trial.
Then Dr. Lee decided to put together a team of newborns experts to look at the case.
“This panel, you will not find a better group of people,” he said, separating a list involved in neonatology chief at Philadelphia Children’s Hospital, former British Royal College of Pediatrics and former director of the Boston Children’s Neonatal Unit.
The key warning of Dr. Lee insisted that the panel review was published regardless of their findings – even if they strengthened the case that Mrs. Letby was guilty.
‘You will get a disaster’
Experts, who all worked on a voluntary basis, forensically evaluated the cause of death or exacerbation for each of the 17 babies who was initially accused of murder or attempted murder.
Two experts examined the medical notes of each baby separately. If their assessments were different, a third expert was brought. The process was painstaking and lasted for four months. But the final results were clear, said Dr. Lee. “In all cases, death or injury arose due to natural causes or just bad medical care,” he said at a press conference last month.
For example, in the case of one baby, the prosecution was claimed at the trial that it was stable and died of air injecting into its IV line, causing the embolism. However, an independent examination determined, based on her medical documentation, that she had died of sepsis and pneumonia, and that she had not received antibiotics to prevent her mother to prevent infection.
In the second case, the child born at 25 weeks is intubated using the wrong size of the endotraheal tube. While the prosecution claimed that Mrs. Letby tried to kill newborns by rejection of the pipes, experts found that the baby’s condition had worsened due to injury caused by the intabble pipe that was too big and because the doctor did not understand “the basics of revival, the missing of air, mechanical ventilation and working in the unit.”
Some of the hospital staff, Panel concluded, took care of the most critical or premature baby in a unit that was supposed to treat babies with smaller needs.
“Ask your doctor in places without expertise, without infrastructure, to watch babies who are not ready to do,” said Dr. Lee. “And if you do, then you’ll get a disaster.”
No one ever saw Mrs. Letby harm the baby, and first the main questions about her guilt ua were asked New Yorker article in May 2024. In the months of dozens Experts in medicine and statistics They expressed concern about the evidence.
Dr. Dewi Evans, a leading prosecution witness, did not respond to the commenting requests, but he publicly criticized operation of the board and He said he was standing on his testimony.
Countess from Chester Hospital, where death occurred, said she was focused on a permanent police investigation and a public investigation that the Government set last year to investigate that a serial killer can escape with such crimes for so long. Earlier this week was requested by former hospital managers stopping To the investigation, after an audit of Dr. Lee, but the judge refused, saying that the investigation was never focused on the test of Mrs. Letby’s fault.
Mark McDonald, current lawyer, Mrs. Letby, plans to include a complete report by Dr. Lee in his request to the Criminal Criminal Audit Commission, which can return cases to the appellant. The Commission said ua statement Last month “he received a preliminary application regarding Mrs. Letby’s case, and the work began to evaluate the application.”
The mother of the child Whom Mrs. Letby was convicted of trying to kill the denied assessment of the expert council, and a spokesman for CCCC asked “that everyone remembers the affected families.”
Dr. Lee insisted that these families were one of his central concerns while analyzing cases after spending four decades for babies.
“I can tell you one thing: families want to know the truth,” he said. “They want to know the truth, whether it’s painful or not painful. They want to know what really happened.”
