SPECIAL REPORT: Lucy Letby could be freed after bombshell email casts doubt on court claim that nurse was caught ‘red-handed’ with a baby who later died

An explosive email appears to contradict prosecution claims that Lucy Letby was caught ‘red-handed’ with a baby who subsequently died.

The memo, revealed yesterday, is a significant boost to the nurse’s legal fight to overturn her convictions.

Dr Ravi Jayaram was the only medical witness at Letby’s two trials who was able to point to behaviour directly linking her to babies’ deaths, testifying that she was standing over Baby K’s cot as the girl was deteriorating – and that she did not call for help.

But, extraordinarly, in an email sent to his colleagues at the Countess of Chester Hospital on May 4, 2017 – before she was investigated by police – Dr Jayaram wrote: ‘At time of deterioration … Staff nurse Letby at incubator and called Dr Jayaram to inform of low saturations.’

In the newly revealed email Dr Jayaram also suggested Baby K’s frailty was the cause of death, saying: ‘Baby subsequently deteriorated and eventually died, but events around this would fit with explainable events associated with extreme prematurity.’

Neither Dr Jayaram’s claim that Letby called him for help, nor that he thought the baby’s death was explained by issues associated with extreme prematurity, made it into the final version of the document that the consultants sent to the police.

An explosive email appears to contradict prosecution claims that Lucy Letby (pictured) was caught ‘red-handed’ with a baby who subsequently died. The memo, revealed yesterday, is a significant boost to the nurse’s legal fight to overturn her convictions

Dr Ravi Jayaram (pictured) was the only medical witness at Letby’s two trials who was able to point to behaviour directly linking her to babies’ deaths, testifying that she was standing over Baby K’s cot as the girl was deteriorating – and that she did not call for help

Citing Dr Jayaram’s evidence in court, the prosecution alleged that Letby had deliberately dislodged the breathing tube and that Jayaram had caught her ‘virtually red-handed’.

The 2017 email, which has been obtained by the UnHerd website, was disclosed to Letby’s defence team only after she had received her sentence.

Letby was convicted of killing seven babies and attempting to murder seven more over two trials. 

Earlier this month, Letby’s barrister Mark McDonald presented a 698-page report from 14 world-leading experts to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which deals with potential miscarriages of justice. The report concluded that the babies died from poor care, prematurity and natural causes.

Dr Jayaram gave evidence about Baby K at both her first trial, in 2023, and – when the first jury failed to agree – her second trial last July, when she was convicted and sentenced to a whole life order. Both trials were held at Manchester Crown Court.

Baby K had been born at just 25 weeks. She struggled to breathe and was placed on a ventilator before she died.

Letby (pictured) was convicted of killing seven babies and attempting to murder seven more over two trials

Protestors claiming Lucy Letby was innocent gather outside the Thirlwall Inquiry in Liverpool 

But, extraordinarly, in an email sent to his colleagues at the Countess of Chester Hospital on May 4, 2017 – before she was investigated by police – Dr Jayaram wrote: ‘At time of deterioration … Staff nurse Letby at incubator and called Dr Jayaram to inform of low saturations’. Pictured: The Countess of Chester Hospital

In contradiction of his 2017 email, Dr Jayaram told the police in a witness statement on April 17, 2018: ‘It is also the case that Lucy had not called me in to nursery 1 at the point that desaturation had taken place. Quite often a nurse will come looking for a doctor to assist when a baby begins to deteriorate, Lucy didn’t.’

And, at the 2024 trial, he portrayed her behaviour as suspicious, saying: ‘Lucy Letby was stood next to the incubator. She wasn’t looking at me. She didn’t have her hands in the incubator.’

After he was asked by prosecuting counsel Nick Johnson KC whether he had ‘any call for help from Lucy Letby?’, he responded: ‘No, not at all.

‘I was surprised that the alarm was not going off, although my priority was (Baby K) and I didn’t question it at the time.

‘In retrospect, I was surprised that help was not called, given (Baby K) was a 25-week gestation baby and her saturations were dropping.’

Appearing at the Thirlwall Inquiry, which is investigating the events at the hospital – but on the presumption of Letby’s guilt – Dr Jayaram said he wished he had reported Letby’s supposedly supsicious behaviour, saying: ‘I lie awake thinking about this … I should have been braver.’

Yet in his 2017 email, Dr Jayaram apparently wrote that he went to investigate Baby K because Letby herself had raised the alarm and asked him for help – not because he had suspicions about the nurse.

Letby, 35, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders for killing seven babies and attempting to murder seven others at the hospital between 2015 and 2016.

Letby was convicted of killing seven babies and attempting to murder seven more over two trials

Members of the media work near a large screen showing a picture of convicted hospital nurse Lucy Letby, ahead of her sentencing, outside the Manchester Crown Court in 2023

Since her conviction, dozens of doctors, nurses, statisticians, law experts and scientists have come forward to criticise the way in which evidence was presented to the jury.

They include Lord Sumption, a former judge at the Supreme Court, who said he believes Letby is ‘probably innocent’.

He added that those questioning her convictions ‘are too numerous and too well qualified to be dismissed as troublemakers’ and there were ‘serious anomalies’ in the case which cast ‘doubt’ on the safety of the jury verdicts.

Ten months before Dr Jayaram sent the 2017 email, Letby had been moved to clerical work as a result of concerns raised by Dr Jayaram and other doctors about her care of the babies.

She had then lodged a grievance for bullying and harassment, which was upheld.

By the time of the 2017 email, Dr Jayaram and other doctors were hoping to involve the police, and had drafted a report to send to them asking them to investigate.

He stated that the purpose was ‘for the police to have their interest piqued’, and to do this he suggested that the doctors should ‘highlight explicitly for these cases that LL was in attendance and in close proximity to the incubators (in those situations we know for a fact she was)’.

In other documents seen by UnHerd, Cheshire Police and the Crown Prosecution Service state that they did not become aware of Dr Jayaram’s email until August 2024 – one month after Letby had been convicted of attempting to murder Baby K – as part of evidence obtained by the Thirlwall Inquiry. 

Former British nurse and convicted child serial killer Lucy Letby appears by video link during an appeal against her conviction for trying to murder a newborn baby, at the Court of Appeal in London on October 24

It has not been discussed by the inquiry nor published on its website.

A source close to Letby’s defence team said last night: ‘This case is falling apart.’

Dr Jayaram did not respond to a request for comment about the apparent change in his stance.

A spokesman for the Thirlwall Inquiry refused to comment.

A Countess of Chester Hospital spokesman said: ‘Due to the Thirlwall Inquiry and ongoing police investigations, it would not be appropriate to comment further at this time.’

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