Why Did They Ask Evans?
Did Dewi Evans declare in December 2017 that every single one of the 33 cases he was given by police in May 2017 to appraise was a crime? Two articles today suggest that may have been the case.
According to Sky News article How the Police Caught Lucy Letby, when Evans joined the police investigation in May 2017 he was given 17 deaths and 16 non-fatal collapses to appraise. In December 2017, according to the same article, he declared that the events “were not the result of natural causes”. However, it has never been clear how many of the 33 that pertained to. If he declared that all 17 deaths were crimes, and there is as you will see reason to suspect he did, and Lucy Letby was later only charged with 7, that casts further doubt on his judgment.
As for the non-fatal collapses, if Evans was given 16 to look at and there were 16 on the roster table (excluding the two insulin cases uncovered after December 2017) then that means he was given only those collapses that Lucy was on duty for (there would certainly have been more than 16 collapses over 13 months and it is simply not possible that Lucy Letby would have been on duty for all of them).
The two articles mentioned are Joshua Rozenberg’s Victims’ false expectations and the BBC’s Mum ‘sick’ after learning Letby cared for her baby.
According to the BBC article, the mother, Nicola Tarran, of a baby whose collapse she later found out had been investigated by police but not deemed suspicious was concerned no-one had contacted her to warn her that Emily’s case was being looked into. Cheshire Police responded by saying that, “During the course of the review if anything of concern medically is identified then the relevant family would be contacted by the investigation team as part of the process.”
Rozenberg’s article noted a statement yesterday by the chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to the effect that victims of crime and their families have been led to believe that their role in the criminal justice system is greater than it is in reality, supporting what the BBC article said about “victims” getting short shrift (if victims get short shift then “non-victims” must get no attention whatsoever).
In Cheshire Police’s documentary about Operation Hummingbird and “how they caught Letby”, DC Michelle Burkett, Family Liaison Officer, says, “We initially went out to speak to, I think, about 28 families then and we were all given a formal words to explain to the families that there will be an investigation: from this period of time your child was born there or sadly some of them passed away there and we would be looking into the circumstances around that.” However, it was not clear when the FLOs were sent out on these first visits.
We know that the collapse of Ms Tarran’s baby was investigated (and in due course deemed non-suspicious) but that she was never told of the investigation. So it appears that the 28 families that were told that an investigation was taking place would have been those of babies whose deaths/collapses Evans had declared were crimes. I had previously thought that these visits may have taken place before Evans had appraised the cases but the BBC article, supported by Rozenberg’s piece, makes it clear that that could not have been the case. Moreover, if Evans looked at 33 cases, some of which related to the same baby, then it can only be the case that Evans declared all 17 deaths and all 16 non-fatal collapses to be crimes.
We know that there were 17 neonatal deaths between June 2015 and June 2016 so it appears that these would have been the 17 that Evans was given by police to appraise. We also know that Lucy Letby was only charged in relation to 7 of the deaths. So, why was Lucy Letby not charged with ten deaths that Evans said were crimes? Were the ten deaths, when looked into further, found obviously not to be crimes? In which case, Evans was the proverbial man with a hammer to whom everything is a nail, and thus his judgment should surely have been brought into question. Or perhaps it was discovered that Lucy Letby was not on duty for those ten murders but police ceased investigating them (echoes of Colin Norris case in which a murder charge that was dropped because it was discovered he was not on duty was quietly forgotten about).
Similar questions must be raised about the 16 non-fatal collapses that Evans was given to appraise. Although Lucy Letby was charged with attempted murder in relation to 15 non-fatal collapses, there were 18 non-fatal collapses in the roster table shown to jurors (the difference may have been because it was deememd unnecessary to charge Lucy Letby in relation to three non-fatal collapses because they pertained to Baby I who was also the subject of a murder charge). If you add the two insulin non-fatal collapses uncovered in 2018 to the 16 Evans declared in December 2017 to be crimes, you get to the 18 in the roster table. In other words, Evans was only given collapes to appraise where Lucy Letby was present.
Is it possible these 16 collapses were the only ones to occur on the unit during the period in question? Theoretically, yes. Practically, no. In fact, there would have been many more than 16.
The Countess was a Level 2 High Dependency Unit/Local Neonatal Unit which could care for babies of gestational age over 27 weeks and birthweight over 800g. But it also had intensive care cots and could admit babies under 27 weeks who would then be transferred to a Level 3 unit (Babies G and K were born at The Countess at 23.9 and 25.0 weeks respectively).
In other words, the babies that were being cared for at The Countess’ neonatal unit were extremely vulnerable. On such a unit, collapses happen frequently and, fortunately, most are non-fatal.
So there would have been many more non-fatal collapses at The Countess’ neonatal unit than the 16 Lucy Letby was charged with and it is practically impossible that she was present for all of them. And if she had been they would have been given to Evans to appraise.
In other words, why wasn’t Evans given the many collapses where Lucy Letby was not present?
Furthermore, according to the 18 May 2017 Guardian article, Police investigating baby deaths at Countess of Chester hospital, DCS Nigel Wenham told reporters that, “Cheshire constabulary has launched an investigation, which will focus on the deaths of eight babies that occurred between that period where medical practitioners have expressed concern. In addition, the investigation will also conduct a review of a further seven baby deaths and six non-fatal collapses during the same period.”
This contradicts the information in the Sky News article about Evans being given 17 deaths to look at but that is far from being the only discrepancy in data cited in the media; indeed, the Guardian article also states there were 13 deaths in 2015 and 2016 which contradicts information (in the same article!) that 15 deaths were being investigated.
My question however is not about discrepancies but why the police told the press that there were eight deaths where the doctors had concerns and, by implication, seven where they didn’t. Surely that was information they would have wanted to keep from Evans to stop him from wondering which were the 8. More to the point, why did the police divulge information they did not need to? And why would they convey that their investigation was being guided by the doctors, who at that stage the police should have been treating as suspects? It all struck me as decidedly odd.
Addendum about reporting restrictions
There are reporting restrictions in place to prevent juror bias at the upcoming retrial in relation to Baby K. Why on earth does BBC think that publishing the mother’s statements “My heart came out of my mouth. [I felt] physically sick thinking my daughter was in her hands”, “I just think of the parents who have lost their babies that she’s killed”, “It’s really heart-breaking to think that could have been Emily” and “I feel bad knowing that she’s cared for her, but being a parent of a child that was killed – I just can’t comprehend it” would not induce bias in a potential juror? The BBC’s use of term “serial killer Lucy Letby” is also prejudicial. The term “serial killer” is highly emotive and at the very least should have been prefaced with “convicted”. The BBC knows Lucy Letby was convicted of the crimes of murder and attempted murder. It does not know she actually committed them. I have tried hard to ensure that the article above is measured. Or at least much more so than that of our national broadcaster.
© Mephitis
Hello, Peter. In relation to the 17 deaths (according to FOI) that were recorded over 2015/2016, my understanding is that one of these deaths, the death of a late neonate baby in August 2016, fell outside of the time peramaters requested by Evans – ie all deaths up to July 2016 (clearly to co-incide with the month Lucy was moved to admin duties) – ie there was no ‘need’ to even consider this August death!
Now whether these perameters were set wholly by Evans, or by Evans in conjunction with the consultants, and possibly also the police, is unknown – but according to Evans in some of his post-trial interviews, he specifies asking (ie he was doing the asking) for all the deaths from the beginning of 2015 up to July 2016. This is suspicious for many reasons, not least when he made this request, he is not supposed to know who is ‘in the frame’ so to speak. He states that he had not heard the name Lucy Letby before the rota document was ‘created’ (again by virtue of his instruction, according to him). And yet he did not want to see medical notes for the baby who passed away in August 2016. This sort of red flag goes, in my view, to prior knowledge, and to knowledge of who both the consultants and the police had suspected – certainly before Evans undertook his assessment of the medical notes. He had no concern, clearly, neither did the police nor the consultants – that the 17th death of that period, the late neonatal death in August 2016 could be a ‘crime’. It was simply deemed irrelevant, in respect of the ‘investigation’, for the reasons mentioned above.
V good points, Mark. As was your point about whether Evans wrote his email before or after 18th May. It is certainly suspicious that they did not reveal the precise date.
On the subject of the BBCs article you referee to, I share those concerns. I have actually put a complaint into the BBC with the exact same arguments that you have made. I also pointed out that this was a tabloid style non story as the Lady’s baby was not harmed in any way so the article was full of baseless and useless speculation
Thank you, Richard. I agree and would like to put a complaint too. Could you possibly share the link to do that? I have never in my life complained to the BBC but feel entirely justified to do so on this occasion.
I’ll put a link on the WhatsApp
From BBC website – “A panel of three judges at the Court of Appeal in London is due to consider the former nurse’s case later.” AND “Separately to the appeal, Letby is due to be re-tried on one charge of attempted murder, which the jury at her trial was unable to decide on.
That re-trial is due to commence in June.
As a result, to avoid prejudice, the media will not be allowed to report the full detail of the appeal hearing at this stage.”
Questions, 1/ Does “later” mean this very day? 2/ Whilst the media will not be allowed to report the “full detail”, are they able to report the verdict – appeal allowed or not allowed?