This is a horrible programme, and unless you are very callous, I would urge you not to watch it. Especially not the opening scene which sets its tone.
The desperate crying of Lucy Letby‘s mother as her daughter is arrested, handcuffed and carted off to custody by impassive police bureaucrats, would be quite beyond any actress. What you are hearing, but thank God not seeing, is the sound of a woman having her heart snapped clean in two and then stamped on.
During another arrest the sight of Lucy Letby, sunk in helpless woe, her face collapsed, moaning wordlessly with her hands over her eyes, is not much better. There are some things in life which should be kept private.
Oh well yes, some will say, even if her mother is entitled to her grief, why bother feeling sorry for a mass murderess of tiny babies? Well, maybe she isn’t any such thing. Can you be sure she is? I can’t think how, given what we now know.
And then what? Can these events be forgotten by those who went through them? If she is what she is accused of being, a civilised justice system is entitled to punish those who transgress, to the full extent of the law. But it is not licensed to insult them or their families. It is also supposed to presume the innocence of the suspect.
I especially object to the creepy chaining of Ms Letby in handcuffs, on the pathetic excuse that it is ‘for her safety in the car’ when its certain result will be to humiliate and frighten her. Even if you take the official pretext seriously, can you see any moral purpose in showing it now, on TV?
I have sat through this programme twice, out of duty. I have since advised members of my family not to watch it. This is not because its first, plodding hour is, with a few brief exceptions, a propaganda vehicle for Cheshire Police and the throbbing, dark melodrama of alleged evil they produced for the public and the courts. Though it is.
Nor is it because it is spiced with lots of sinister music, to help viewers work out what they ought to be feeling. This didn’t work on me, especially not when one of Ms Letby’s police questioners solemnly informed her that ‘we are not here to judge you’. Really?
The Investigation of Lucy Letby released on February 4 on Netflix – and Peter Hitchens has sat through it twice
‘The desperate crying of Lucy Letby’s mother as her daughter is arrested, handcuffed and carted off to custody by impassive police bureaucrats, would be quite beyond any actress,’ writes Peter Hitchens
The police version has, in these pages and elsewhere, been shown to be a slithering, disordered heap of problems, inconsistencies and dubious claims.
People have also begun to grasp the vital truth – that the Cheshire Constabulary never found any actual evidence that Ms Letby had harmed anybody. They still haven’t. It is not for lack of trying.
In a huge development a couple of weeks ago, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), presented by Cheshire Police with more ‘evidence’ of the same sort, declined to act on it.
Cheshire Police did not hide their displeasure. Apparently unlike Cheshire’s finest, the CPS have been paying close attention to the multitude of experts now pointing out the many flaws and weaknesses in the original trials.
What critics of the verdict want now is for the case to be heard again, without all the drama of dug-up gardens, the rubbishy statistics, misinterpreted ‘confessions’, dubious claims of insulin poisoning which police still seem to think are conclusive, and sneers from the Prosecution that Ms Letby never cried about the dead babies.
I’d personally like to see one or two of the prosecution witnesses re-examined a bit, just to check.
I’m glad to say that this rather long programme is not wholly Cheshire Police TV. After many viewers will probably have switched off, it gets round to presenting quite a bit of the case for reopening the trial. It also movingly interviews the mother of one of the babies who died at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
And it speaks at length to a student friend and former colleague of Ms Letby, who stands by her, as so many of her friends rather persuasively do.
Both are made unrecognisable by digital magic. Both are refreshingly human and clear.
Letby has been in custody since 2020 after being found guilty of murdered seven babies and attempted to kill seven more
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Is true-crime TV informing the public or exploiting real grief?
Strikingly, the bereaved mother appears to recognise that the hospital failed her and her lost daughter.
We also find out that she was telephoned at six in the morning, presumably by Cheshire Police, to be told that someone had been arrested on suspicion of killing her baby. Why was this necessary?
Why could such a call not wait until a normal hour? Critics of the verdict are told all the time that our efforts will distress the parents of the babies who died or were harmed. Alas, it is true, and I wish it could be avoided.
But if there was no crime, as many now believe, who is most responsible for their grief?
