Unnatural causes? Latest update from the Lucy Letby trial | The Trial of Lucy Letby | Podcast
Episode 26 - Part two
This week, Caroline is joined by Kim Pilling from the Press Association. He’s been at Manchester Crown Court every day covering the trail and is standing in for Liz while she’s away. The court has heard from an expert pathologist who told the jury that six of the babies in the case did not die from natural causes. He told the court one of the babies had “huge” bruising to his liver, the like of which he might expect to see in children involved in road traffic accidents, accidents with bicycles and non-accidental assaults. We also hear from Ex Daily Mirror Journalist, Feature Writer and Media Law Lecturer Carole Watson on how to cover important stories while working within the law.
Lucy Letby is accused of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of ten others, while she was working on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital. She denies all charges.
Welcome to episode 26: Unnatural Causes===PART TWO
Today we’ll hear how a doctor who reexamined medical and post-mortem records told the court how he concluded 6 of the babies died.
The last few days have been focused on an expert pathologist who was asked to review medical and post-mortem evidence from some of the babies in the case.
Yes, so evidence was given by Dr Andreas Marnerides and he’s a consultant paediatric pathologist best at Saint Thomas Hospital in London and that’s one of the biggest in the country.
He was in the witness box for two days answering questions from prosecutor Nick Johnson and the defense representing Lucy Letby
So Dr Marnerides evidence has been focused on Babies A, C, D , E , I, O and P. That’s because these were the babies who were allegedly murdered by Lucy Letby…
PART TWO BEGINS:
Dr. Marneredes was also asked about the other babies who died and the court was told he was sent hundreds of pages of medical evidence as well as tissue slides and photographs to review.
In every case,but one, he said there was evidence that air had been injected into the babies, either through their feeding tubes or into their tummies.
So let’s start with Baby A, who we talked about in the podcast back in episode 3.
Baby A was a baby boy born at just over 31 weeks by cesarean section in June 2015, weighing 1.6 kilos. Now he needed help with his breathing initially but he was said to be stable.
He collapsed and died the following day and a post-mortem was carried out —at the time the cause of his death was deemed to be unasertained.
But Dr Marneredes said he made an unusual finding of air in some of the veins in the lungs of Baby A . He also found a similar thing in Baby A’s brain.
And the doctor told the court that after taking all the medical reports into account, as well as his findings of air, he said he took the view that death was explicable on the basis of air embolism because air had been injected into Baby A’s blood stream.
Baby C was the next case the doctor examined.
We learned back in episode 5, that Baby C was tiny. He weighed less than two pounds when he was born by caesarean 10 weeks early, in June 2015. The nurse looking after Baby C described him as the smallest baby she’d ever seen.
There’d been problems with his mother’s pregnancy which meant blood flow to the placenta was abnormal and this had restricted his growth in the womb so he was only half the size he should have been for his gestation. He was delivered early at 30 weeks.
He was immediately placed in nursery one, the intensive care room. Even from birth he was described by the nurse looking after him as a feisty little baby because he was active, wiggling around and pulling out his tubes so doctors
started reducing his breathing support so they could start feeding him. [thick accent so I couldn’t be sure if I translated bolded correctly.]
But on the evening of June 13, 2015 he suddenly collapsed and he died. A post-mortem carried out at the time concluded that Baby C died from pneumonia and in fact when Dr M initially reviewed the case in 2019 he agreed with this but later he changed his mind after reading more medical reports.
Yes, he told the court that Baby C did have pneumonia but he was stable and responding to treatment and his collapse was therefore unexpected. He also said Baby C’s tummy had ballooned —h
e concluded that Baby C died as a result of having an excessive quantity of air injected into his stomach and that air led him to being unable to breathe and suffering cardiac arrest .
His final view was that Baby C died with pneumonia not from pneumonia.
Baby D’s records were also re-examined by Dr M. She was a Baby girl and we outlined her case in episode 6. She’s the only baby in this case who was not born prematurely. She actually weighed 6lbs14 oz when she was born.
The court heard she was only at the Countess because the hospital made a mistake by not giving her mother antibiotics when her water broke which meant she was born with a suspected infection. She was responding to treatment initially and appeared to be stable but overnight on June22nd she collapsed 3x and she died @ 5 am.
The prosecution said LL murdered her. The initial post-mortem found her death to be pneumonia—
but Dr M told the jury that the presence of air around the tip of the catheter indicated what he called the intentional injection of air into her bloodstream.
So Baby E was the 5th alleged victim of Lucy Letby and we outlined his case back in episode 7.
He was a baby boy and he and his identical twin brother were born 10 weeks early in August 2015. Baby E weighed just under 3 pounds when he was born a minute before his brother and he was considered to be the stronger of the two.
Both boys were doing well and about to be moved to a hospital closer to their parents home.
But before this could happen, court was told, the defendant allegedly murdered him. T
he allegation is that she shoved a tube or a medical instrument down his throat, causing an internal bleed before injecting him with air.
Now at the time doctor treating Baby E didn’t think a post-mortem was necessary and she didn’t push for one and you might remember that in court during the examination of evidence in Baby E’s case the doctor turned to the parents in the public gallery and apologised to them for this.
And of course we know without autopsy, Dr M could not review Baby E’s case.
S
o the final Baby Dr M gave evidence about was Baby I. She was a very premature baby girl, born @ 27 weeks when her mother’s waters broke 13 weeks early. Baby I’s mother went to the campus and was later transferred to Liverpool Women’s Hospital which is more specialist at caring for very premature babies and her daughter was born naturally a few days later at the beginning of August, 2015.
But she was tiny. She weighed just two pounds and two ounces which is about the same as a bag of sugar and doctors warned her parents that she’d be in hospital for awhile. But despite her size Baby I did well and when she was about 6 weeks the doctors at Liverpool Women’s decided she could be transferred to Countess to be closer to her parent’s home.
But the prosecution said that once there, over the course of three weeks Lucy Letby attacked her three separate occasions, either by overfeeding milk, injecting air into the stomach or into the bloodstream. She finally succeeded in allegedly murdering her on the 4th attempt on October 23rd 2015.
A post mortem examination was carried out and her cause of death was due to prematurity which caused damage of the brain and lungs.
But Dr Maneredes said his examinations of the record showed that her bowel was expanded like a partially inflated balloon.
Dr Maneredes concluded that the consolidation of findings would strongly indicate that Baby I died due to unnatural causes having been injected with air into her stomach and intestines.
[part 3 coming soon]
