The conviction of Lucy Letby for the murder of seven infants and the attempted murder of seven others at the Countess of Chester Hospital (COCH) has been hailed as a triumph of justice. But an exhaustive review of "Operation Hummingbird"—the Cheshire Constabulary’s investigation into the case—reveals a terrifying counter-narrative.
Evidence suggests this was not a neutral search for the truth. It appears to have been a predetermined pursuit of a target, driven by institutional tunnel vision, forensic malpractice, and an illicit financial relationship with the very media reporting on the trial.
This is the story of how a "beige" nurse was transformed into a monster to cover up NHS incompetence, and how a police force with a legacy of failure spent millions to ensure the conviction stuck.
The Smoking Gun: Police Paying the Media to "Set the Narrative"
Perhaps the most shocking revelation in this investigation is the existence of a "Media-Police Industrial Complex". Freedom of Information requests have unearthed a scandal that strikes at the heart of the British justice system: The Cheshire Constabulary paid the journalists covering the trial.
Financial records confirm that between 2022 and 2024, the police force made a series of payments totalling £23,850 to Media Factory Limited. This company is owned by Caroline Cheetham, a broadcast journalist who, along with Liz Hull, hosted the Daily Mail’s "The Trial of Lucy Letby" podcast.
The timing of these payments is damning:
- March 2022: £3,950 paid for "External Training Courses"—just before the trial began.
- October 2022: £4,100 paid for "Publicity"—days after the trial started.
- April 2023: £3,950 paid for "Publicity"—while the defence was presenting its case.
The police claim these payments were for "media training". However, paying the creators of the dominant media narrative—a podcast that consistently framed the prosecution’s case as overwhelming and the defence as weak—creates a grotesque conflict of interest. It suggests a state-sponsored campaign to "set the narrative" of guilt long before the jury returned a verdict.
The "Golden Thread" of Bias
Operation Hummingbird did not begin with the discovery of a crime. It began with a lobbying effort.
The investigation was initiated after persistent pressure from a "Gang of Four" consultants at the hospital, principally Dr Stephen Brearey and Dr Ravi Jayaram, who had failed to identify medical causes for a spike in unit mortality. Rather than accepting the findings of independent reviews—which cited leadership and staffing failures—they concocted the theory of a "malevolent actor".
Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes, the Senior Investigating Officer, later admitted that the information provided by these consultants was the "golden thread" of the inquiry. In a shocking deviation from standard procedure, the police adopted the consultants’ confirmation bias as their forensic framework. They didn’t test witness testimony against evidence; they used the testimony to create the evidence.
The Silenced Whistleblower: Stephanie Davies
The police were warned early on that there was no case. Stephanie Davies, a former Senior Coroner’s Officer for Cheshire, was tasked in May 2017 with reviewing the medical records to see if a police investigation was warranted.
Her review was unequivocal: the deaths appeared to be due to natural causes, with prematurity being the common factor. While she noted "gaps" in post-mortems, she explicitly found no evidence of murder.
In a move that defines noble cause corruption Noble Cause Corruption: A police mindset where officers believe that "bending the rules" or fabricating evidence is justified to secure the conviction of someone they believe is guilty. , DSI Paul Hughes later informed Davies that her report—which found natural causes—was used to justify launching the murder inquiry. When Davies later raised concerns about the "red flags" in the conviction, the force turned on her. She was subjected to disciplinary proceedings for "gross misconduct" regarding data handling and forced to resign.
Manufacturing Forensics: The "Texas Sharpshooter"
Once the police had their suspect, they needed to make the evidence fit. This led to the fabrication of forensic narratives that have been condemned by leading statisticians.
1. The Manipulated Shift Chart
The prosecution’s most powerful visual aid was a chart placing Letby at every "suspicious" collapse. This was a classic Texas Sharpshooter fallacy Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy: A logical error where data is cherry-picked to fit a presumption. Like a gunman shooting at a barn and then painting a target around the bullet holes to claim he is a sharpshooter. .
The investigation initially looked at over 30 incidents. They simply excluded the six to ten deaths that occurred when Letby was not on duty. Had the full data been shown, the jury would have seen a generalised spike in mortality across the unit, unrelated to any single nurse.
2. The Insulin Lie
The convictions for the attempted murder of Child F and Child L rested on blood tests showing high insulin. The police presented these as irrefutable proof of poisoning. However, this relied on a fundamental suppression of scientific reality.
The tests used were immunoassays Immunoassay: A biochemical test used in clinical settings for screening. It is known to be prone to "interference" and false positives and is NOT considered definitive proof of poisoning in forensic science without Mass Spectrometry confirmation. , designed only for clinical guidance. Laboratory guidelines state explicitly that these results are not definitive for forensic purposes unless confirmed by mass spectrometry—a test the police never performed.
3. The "Hired Gun" Expert
To validate their theories, the police relied on Dr Dewi Evans. Dr Evans approached the police proactively, offering his services to "help"—a highly irregular move for an independent expert.
More disturbingly, the police used him despite knowing his credibility had been destroyed in a previous Court of Appeal judgment. In that separate case, Lord Justice Jackson described a report by Dr Evans as "worthless," "partisan," and an exercise in "working out an explanation" to help his clients. In the Letby case, Evans consistently worked backwards from guilt, shifting theories from "air embolism" to "NG tube assault" whenever his initial guesses were challenged.
4. The "Air Embolism" Myth
The police relied on a 1989 paper by Dr Shoo Lee to diagnose air embolism Air Embolism: A blockage of blood supply caused by air bubbles in a blood vessel or the heart. In this case, it was diagnosed retrospectively based on "skin rashes" that the original researcher (Dr. Shoo Lee) testified were misidentified. based on skin discoloration. Post-trial, Dr Shoo Lee himself stated that his research had been misinterpreted by the prosecution and that the symptoms in the Letby case did not match his clinical description.
Ignoring the Environment: Sewage and Sepsis
A competent police investigation considers all variables. Operation Hummingbird, however, exhibited a wilful blindness to environmental factors.
The neonatal unit at COCH suffered from repeated sewage leaks and plumbing failures during the period of the deaths. Pathogens associated with sewage can cause sepsis and sudden collapse in neonates. By focusing entirely on the "person," the police ignored the "place". They failed to vigorously investigate corporate manslaughter or gross negligence by the hospital trust initially, allowing the hospital management to deflect blame onto Letby.
A Legacy of Failure
To understand why this happened, one must look at the history of the Cheshire Constabulary. This is a force with a documented legacy of "confirmation bias" and miscarriages of justice.
- The Wilmslow Murders: Where police wrongly concluded a double murder was a suicide pact, ignoring forensic inconsistencies identified by Stephanie Davies.
- The Paul Blackburn Case: A teenager wrongly convicted based on a coerced confession, who served 25 years before exoneration. The police refused to apologise.
In the Letby case, the force became victims of the "sunk cost fallacy". Having arrested a nurse and committed vast resources, officers were "too deep" to turn back. Admitting the deaths were natural would have been an admission of a massive waste of public funds. Instead, they prosecuted a nurse to save face.
Conclusion
Operation Hummingbird was not a search for justice; it was the construction of a conviction. They fabricated statistical patterns, weaponised junk science, corrupted the media with secret payments, and silenced internal whistleblowers.
Lucy Letby was convicted not because the evidence was overwhelming, but because the narrative was set, paid for, and polished long before she stepped into the dock. The true killers—systemic NHS failure, sewage-filled units, and gross negligence—remain at large.
For more in-depth analysis on the Lucy Letby case and other potential miscarriages of justice, visit our Home Page or explore our research dossier archives.
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