The 1 big question the £19m Lucy Letby inquiry will never answer

It has cost almost £19m, heard six months of evidence and sifted through thousands of documents, yet it will fail to end the toxic debate still raging and dividing a nation. The Thirlwall Inquiry was not tasked to examine killer nurse Lucy Letby’s guilt, yet for many that is still the question that lawyers, commentators and even MPs are asking.

While the inquiry will prove Letby’s killing spree could have been stopped sooner, some will not be happy until she is granted an appeal hearing to end the question of her guilt once and for all. Having sat in Manchester Crown Court for her trial, and spoken to detectives, victims’ relatives, Letby friends and legal and medical experts I have yet to find a general consensus on the two burning key questions: ‘Do you think she did it – and what motivated her to kill?’

At the age of 36, Letby is the most prolific child killer in British legal history.

She is serving 15 whole-life prison terms for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others, including one baby whom she tried to murder twice.

Her trial revealed she lived an unremarkable life before her arrest in July 2018. Her three-bedroom home in Chester was full of teddy bears, Disney ornaments and a framed slogan reading ‘Leave Sparkles Wherever You Go’.

Unusually for a serial, cold-blooded child murderer her bed was covered by a duvet bearing the motif ‘Sweet Dreams’, and arranged at the pillow end of the bed were four cuddly toys – Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, a rabbit and a light brown teddy bear. There were heart motifs on the place settings on her dining table.

Her kitchen boasted photographs of her cousins and two god-children, work photos of her in her scrubs and a thank you card written to “Auntie Lucy” from her godchildren after Christmas.

At one stage during her trial Letby wept when the jury saw images of her ornaments, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, as well as pictures of her cats Tigger and Smudge.

Ever since her 2018 arrest, her parents Susan and John Letby have loyally stood by her, never believing her capable of such horrors.

Since her convictions, not only has the question of her guilt been widely debated in media and in homes across the nation but medical and legal experts and MPs have flocked to her banner to deny a woman dubbed by detectives as a “beige” dull personality could ever be a sinister, calculating angel of death.

Letby denied deliberately injecting babies with air, force-feeding others milk and poisoning two of the infants with insulin but two different juries did not believe her.

In 2023 she was convicted of seven murders and six attempted murders, with not guilty verdicts on two counts of attempted murder.

The jury was deadlocked on another six counts and so after a retrial in July 2024 she was convicted of a further count of attempted murder.

Many hoped Lady Justice Thirlwall’s public inquiry would probe the question of Letby’s guilt but she ruled that out from the onset as she said from the start: “It is not the actions of Lucy Letby that I am scrutinising.”

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is the only organisation with the power to send Letby’s case back to the Court of Appeal, and they are still reviewing material.

MP Sir David Davis had asked for a delay in the Thirlwall Inquiry until after the CCRC had made a decision over a possible appeal, arguing an inquiry “predicated on the presumption that Lucy Letby’s conviction is safe, when there is now a wealth of authoritative voices questioning that conviction, will only undermine the (inquiry’s) conclusions.”

Richard Scorer, representing three of the victim’s families, said the fact Letby’s convictions still stand is crucial, adding: “That’s the legal reality and the noise about her convictions doesn’t change that.”

But despite this inquiry’s findings into how Letby was allowed to kill at the Countess of Chester Hospital, the question over whether she actually did will still not go away.