Lucy Letby's 'confession' notes
- Peter Elston
- Jul 17
- 8 min read
Updated: Aug 14
The Mail columnist Peter Hitchens last Sunday wrote about '''Lucy Letby’s ‘confession’ notes, and why they may not be worth the scraps of paper they’re written on". In this blog I take a closer look at the notes.
Lucy Letby was first arrested on 3 July 2018. The arrest allowed police to search her house in Chester and her parents' house in Hereford. Among the items seized were several pieces of paper on which Lucy Letby had written numerous haphazard words and phrases, including "I am evil I did this" and "I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough to care for them".
These notes were submitted as evidence by the prosecution and, understandably, it made the most of them. Jurors were shown them at the start of the trial and had access to them throughout. In his closing speech on 20 June 2023, prosecuting barrister Nick Johnson told jurors, "We suggest that the words "I am evil, I did this" should be read literally and taken as a confession".
And yet prosecuting authorities have never argued the notes constituted a confession as defined in law namely "any statement which is wholly or partly adverse to the person who made it". If it had, Johnson would have been able to tell jurors the notes were a confession. Instead, he could only tell them they should take them as a confession (at no other point in the trial were the notes referred to as a confession).
The CPS has never said why it did not consider the notes to be confessions, legally speaking. Why is this?
Perhaps because the statements did not pertain to specific accusations. They couldn't. They were written months if not years before Lucy Letby knew precisely what she was being accused of.
Perhaps because the notes were incoherent. "I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough to care for them" and "I am evil I did this" are at best confusing (under the presumption of guilt it could be argued they were not confusing but Lucy Letby had by law to be presumed innocent, the so-called golden thread of British justice).
Perhaps because the CPS knew that what it may have wanted to be seen as incriminating needed to be considered in the context of the other words and phrases that comprised the bulk of the notes and that were indicative of innocence, such as “Why/how has this happened – what process has led to this current situation", "I haven’t done anything wrong and they have no evidence so why have I had to hide away?", and "Help me".
Perhaps because it knew that Lucy Letby had been encouraged to write the notes by the hospital’s head of occupational health and wellbeing, Kathryn de Beger, whether as a therapeutic exercise or otherwise.
Perhaps because it knew Lucy Letby was under huge duress and possibly on medication for poor mental health.
All the CPS has said (in a statement after the trial) is that the notes "gave an insight into her mindset following her attacks”.
But whose insight? The insight that mattered was that of the jurors, and my guess is that none of them were professional psychologists trained in these matters.
The defence made a lame attempt to discredit the notes but it never called to the stand a journaling expert to opine on them. In fact, it should probably have sought to have the notes ruled inadmissible (if it did it failed).
By allowing the notes into evidence, Goss allowed jurors to view them as something akin to a confession as defined legally by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 which, as noted, they hadn't been.
And on the many occasions when it is likely jurors were not able to follow what the prosecution medical experts were saying, they would have been able to allow the words “I’m evil I did this”, “I’m evil I did this”, “I’m evil I did this” into their heads.
In his article, Peter Hitchens also cites criminologist Prof David Wilson in relation to the meaning of the notes, or rather lack thereof, and therefore their admissibility:
...David Wilson, a professor of criminology at Birmingham City University, who specialises in serial killers, has dismissed the notes as ‘meaningless’, saying they have no value as evidence, particularly if they had been written as part of counselling. ‘Many people will say things when they are under stress and feeling bereft that seem to imply one thing but mean nothing at all, other than reflecting the underlying stress,’ Wilson has said. ‘I always thought Letby’s notes were meaningless as evidence. If they were written as part of therapy, you can underline that point three times and write it in bold and capital letters.’
It is also not clear why the defence did not call the hospital’s head of occupational health and wellbeing, Kathryn de Beger, who it is believed encouraged Lucy Letby to write down, as Hitchens puts it, "her grimmest thoughts as part of what is now normal practice in cognitive behavioural therapy".
The only defence witnesses called to testify were Lucy Letby herself and a plumber who was called at short notice to verify what she had said on the stand just days earlier about sewage problems on the unit.
Indeed, why did Lucy Letby's defence not call various others to the stand, such as its three medical experts (a neonatologist, a paediatric endocrinologist, and a paediatric radiologist)? Nor the original pathologists who found no evidence of inflicted harm? The CCRC and (if it refers Lucy Letby's case) the Court of Appeal, will want to know.
On 18 August 2023, after a trial that had last ten months, it was announced that Lucy Letby had been found guilty on 14 counts of murder and attempted murder. On the same day, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) posted on its website its response to the verdicts, listing the "Key evidence in the prosecution case", as below.
Medical records – these were crucial to establish the condition of the babies when they were attacked. When some babies recovered, the speed of their recovery was too sudden to be seen as a natural occurrence. Several medical documents featured falsified notes made by Letby to hide her involvement. She amended timings on several documents in an attempt to distance herself from incidents where babies had suddenly become severely unwell.
Text messages and social media activity – these were an important part of the case as they coincided with the attacks happening on the neonatal Unit. They were dated and timed, sometimes they were similar to a live blogging of events. They also explained how Letby deceived her colleagues into believing that these inexplicable collapses were simply a natural worsening of children’s underlying conditions. They also revealed an intrusive curiosity about the parents of babies she had harmed.
Staff rotas – we were able to show the jury that Letby was the one common denominator in the series of deaths and sudden collapses on the neonatal unit. We were also able to show the jury that many of the earlier incidents occurred overnight, but when Letby was put onto day shifts, the collapses and deaths began occurring in the day. We were able to corroborate this further using Letby’s personal diary in which she had noted her shift patterns.
Handwritten notes and diaries – many handwritten notes were discovered by police during their investigation. They included phrases such as: “I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them”; “I am evil I did this”; and “today is your birthday and you are not here and I am so sorry for that”. These notes gave an insight into her mindset following her attacks.
In other words, two of the four types of evidence that convicted Lucy Letby pertained to what she wrote at various times and in various ways. And there is little doubt jurors would have thought her notes and other writings incriminating, particularly since prosecuting barrister Johnson suggested to them they should be taken as a confession which, as noted, they weren’t.
Combine the evidence of the written notes with,
a) the roster chart that jurors were told showed that Lucy Letby was present at all the suspicious incidents (they were not told that this was not true and that there were incidents that had been deemed suspicious by police medical investigator Dr Dewi Evans at which Lucy Letby had not been not present) and,
b) the blood tests that jurors were told could only be explained by the two babies in question having received exogenous insulin (they were not told that this was not true and that there were natural causes that could explain the results),
and there would have been little need for them to understand the prosecution's medical arguments around air, milk, smothering, and punching.
In fact, they probably didn't understand them. Nor have the many highly qualified doctors who have spoken up since the trial understood them. Two dozen or so of them have been instructed by Lucy Letby’s legal team, have appraised the babies medical records, and put forward far more likely explanations (natural causes, iatrogenic harm, clinical negligence) for the 17 babies’ deaths and non-fatal collapses.
So, yes, the notes were important. Very important.
Caregivers' handwritten notes have often been used in their criminal prosecutions. One example is the case of Kathleen Folbigg, the Australian mother who was convicted in 2003 of murdering her four children.
There was no direct evidence against Ms Folbigg, but the prosecution argued, successfully, that the likelihood of her four children dying of natural causes was vanishingly small. Also that her diary entries in which she expressed feelings of remorse were evidence of guilt. Ms Folbigg was sentenced to 40 years with a non-parole period of 30 years.
In 2018, Ms Folbigg's legal team approached immunologist Dr Carola Vinuesa to examine DNA samples of her and her deceased children. Dr Vinuesa and her colleague, geneticist Todor Arsov, first examined Ms Folbigg's DNA, and both found a mutation in her CALM2 gene, one of three genes in the calmodulin family which, among other things, help regulate the heart's expansions and contractions. Ms Folbigg had endured cardiac issues throughout her life but in her case, unlike her children's, they had not proved fatal. The two scientists also found mutations in the DNA samples from the children.
Vinuesa and Arsov's report was rejected by Reginald Blanch, a former chief judge of the District Court, who found he did not have "any reasonable doubt as to the guilt of Kathleen Megan Folbigg for the offences of which she was convicted".
It appeared that Blanch had been persuaded by Ms Folbigg's diary entries, so her legal team gathered a dozen or so journaling experts to appraise them. The experts argued that the diary entries were not evidence that Ms Folbigg had killed her children but instead reflected the remorse she as a mother naturally would have felt about not having been able to protect them.
Indeed, Ms Folbigg wondered, back when her children died, whether there was anything genetic at play, which must have rendered the feelings of remorse all the more extreme. It was only after the discovery of the CALM2 mutation that she made the link.
Following a second inquiry, which accepted both the new medical and journaling experts' findings, Ms Folbigg was released from prison on 5 June 2023, and in November 2023 had her convictions quashed.
In Lucy Letby's case, it seems that all the prosecution evidence (medical arguments, the blood test results, the roster chart, Lucy Letby's writings, her having taken home and kept babies' handover notes, etc) can be robustly challenged.
It is now up to Lucy Letby's lawyer, Mark McDonald, to ensure his client's Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) application is watertight such that the CCRC has no option but to refer it to the Court of Appeal. And the Court of Appeal no option but to grant an appeal, order a retrial, or quash the conviction.
See also:
https://www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/23046781.revealed-i-evil-handwritten-note-lucy-letby-found-chester-home/ (13 Oct 2022)
https://www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/23734315.lucy-letby-police-found-chester-home-2018-arrest/ (19 Aug 2023)