Re: “The very intimate friendship between Lucy Letby and her married doctor ‘boyfriend’ “
“Special report by Liz Hull”
Note by Richard Gill: This is a guest post by a correspondent. More information about the author below. First, the text of her actual letter of complaint, sent a few days ago to the Daily Mail and to IPSO (the UK’s independent press regulator).
Dear Daily Mail Complaints Editor,
I am writing to make a formal complaint about Liz Hull’s article https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16050281/intimate-friendship-Lucy-Letby-married-doctor-boyfriend.html concerning Dr A, Lucy Letby and the circumstances surrounding Dr A’s death.
I found this article profoundly disturbing because it is not simply reporting a new disciplinary development. It takes a deeply contested criminal case, in which serious questions have been raised about the safety of Lucy Letby’s convictions, and presents the prosecution’s interpretation of the evidence as though it were established fact.
That is a very serious problem.
The article repeatedly refers to Dr A as Lucy Letby’s “boyfriend”, describes Baby N as “a baby she tried to kill”, and states that Dr A was “another victim of Lucy Letby”.
Yet the article itself acknowledges that the cause of Dr A’s death is currently unknown.
There is therefore no evidential basis presented for suggesting that Dr A was a “victim” of Lucy Letby, let alone that she had anything to do with his death. This is sensationalist speculation masquerading as reporting.
More importantly, the article fails to engage properly with the significance of Dr A’s own evidence.
At the Thirlwall Inquiry, Dr A acknowledged that he had shared too much information with Lucy and that some of his conduct had been inappropriate. But he also explained that he believed he was supporting a colleague whom he understood to be distressed and worried.
The crucial issue is not simply whether Dr A breached confidentiality.
[BTW, in my opinion, this was no breach of confidentiality. The information did not get out of the hospital. Dr A and Lucy Letby were colleagues, both involved in the treatment of this patient – RDG]
It is what his evidence tells us about the reliability of the prosecution narrative concerning Lucy’s relationship with him and the interpretation placed upon their communications.
The prosecution relied heavily upon the proposition that Lucy was infatuated with Dr A and that she deliberately created crises involving babies in order to attract his attention.
That proposition was not an established fact. It was an interpretation of circumstantial evidence.
And the subsequent evidence deserves serious scrutiny.
Dr A himself was actively communicating with Lucy, providing her with information and reassurance, forwarding confidential material and maintaining a close friendship with her. He later acknowledged that he had “shared too much” and that he had been “misled and maybe manipulated”.
That raises an obvious question which today’s Mail article largely avoids:
If Dr A was himself supplying Lucy with information and interpreting her behaviour incorrectly at the time, how reliable are the retrospective interpretations of those communications that were used to support the prosecution’s case?
The article also reproduces a contemporaneous WhatsApp exchange in which Lucy, immediately after Dr A first contacted her, told a friend:
“Shut up! I don’t flirt with him! Certainly, don’t fancy him ha ha just nice guy.”
That does not settle the nature of their relationship, but it is contemporaneous evidence which potentially conflicts with the prosecution’s portrayal of Lucy as being deeply infatuated with him.
Instead of examining that conflict, the article selectively emphasises the love hearts, searches for his wife, late-night messages and trips together, thereby reinforcing the prosecution narrative.
This is particularly troubling because there are now substantial and continuing questions about the safety of Lucy Letby’s convictions.
The Thirlwall Inquiry has heard evidence challenging aspects of the original prosecution narrative. Independent experts have questioned whether some of the babies’ collapses and deaths were necessarily caused by deliberate harm. The CCRC is examining the case and expert evidence. The point is not that every challenge to the convictions is necessarily correct; the point is that this is not a case in which every currently disputed proposition should simply be presented as settled fact.
Today’s article does precisely that.
It takes a disciplinary investigation into Dr A’s own conduct and uses it to reinforce the proposition that Lucy attacked Baby N and that Dr A was somehow a victim of her.
But a disciplinary finding against Dr A does not independently establish Lucy’s guilt.
Indeed, if anything, the fact that Dr A was subsequently investigated over his own handling of confidential information makes it more important, not less important, to scrutinise the prosecution’s interpretation of the communications between them.
The Mail also needs to be transparent about what it actually knows concerning the disciplinary proceedings.
If the newspaper has obtained the disciplinary findings, then publish or accurately describe the findings themselves. Tell readers precisely what was proved, what was alleged, and what the dismissal was actually based upon.
Do not simply present anonymous descriptions of the proceedings alongside the established fact of Lucy Letby’s conviction and allow readers to assume that the two independently corroborate one another.
Finally, I strongly object to the statement that Dr A was “another victim of Lucy Letby”.
That is not an established fact.
His cause of death is not yet known.
The coroner is investigating.
A newspaper can report the tragic chronology without turning it into a narrative of causation for which there is currently no evidence.
I appreciate that the Daily Mail has a right to express a view about Lucy Letby’s guilt. However, there is a profound difference between reporting a conviction and presenting every disputed element of the prosecution case as though it has subsequently been independently validated.
There is a very real and continuing public debate about whether Lucy Letby’s convictions are safe. If this is a miscarriage of justice, then reporting of this kind risks reinforcing the very narrative that needs to be examined.
At the very least, readers deserve to know where established evidence ends and the newspaper’s interpretation begins.
I therefore ask the Daily Mail to provide a substantive response addressing the evidential basis for the following:
The description of Dr A as Lucy Letby’s “boyfriend”.
The assertion that Dr A was “another victim of Lucy Letby”.
The implication that his death may be connected to Lucy Letby.
The precise findings of the disciplinary proceedings.
The extent to which those findings actually concern the evidence relied upon at Lucy Letby’s criminal trial.
And why the article gives such prominence to the prosecution’s interpretation of the relationship while failing to acknowledge the legitimate questions now being raised about that interpretation.
This is not about asking the Daily Mail to support Lucy Letby.
It is about asking a national newspaper to report a highly contentious case fairly, particularly when a potential miscarriage of justice is precisely what is now being investigated.
Yours faithfully,
Karen Montanaro
From here on, the text is by Richard Gill.
My guest Karen is an assistant and language tutor from Lancashire who has followed the Lucy Letby case closely and has become increasingly concerned about the way disputed evidence and allegations are presented as established fact in the media. Like me, she is simply a member of the public who believes the case deserves careful and fair scrutiny.
Her letter was sent to the Daily Mail soon after the publication (Saturday, 15 August 2026) of Liz Hull’s article in the Daily Mail in reaction to the death of Dr. A. It has also been sent to IPSO, the independent regulator for the UK digital and print news industry.
It has taken me a bit too long to publish here – I was somewhat overwhelmed by the suicide of Jason Arday—another person persecuted by the press.
Liz Hull’s article begins in her own inimitable style as follows:
June 24 is a date of morbid significance in the timeline of baby killer Lucy Letby’s crimes. It was on that day, in 2016, that the former neonatal nurse murdered the last of her victims. The second brother of premature triplets – she killed two of the siblings by injecting air into their tiny bodies – the child, known as Baby P in court, was the seventh infant to die at her hands. Exactly ten years on, that anniversary has become even more loaded for Letby. For it will now also mark the day that her ‘boyfriend’ – a married doctor with whom, her trial heard, she was so infatuated that she deliberately killed and harmed babies to get his attention – was found mysteriously collapsed in his car by police officers.
By the way, it is now seems clear that the complaint against Dr A was actually raised by – wait for it – the mother of Baby N. And I suspect that Cheshire Constabulary and/or the local branch of the CPS had a hand in this, too. [May God forgive her, for she knows not what she is doing, and has just been another pawn in the game of Doctors Brearey and Jayaram.]
Karen and I are deeply sorry for the family of Dr A. We hope that they too – like the parents of the babies Lucy Letby is alleged to have harmed or even killed – will at some time be able to accept the truth of Lucy Letby’s innocence and the shocking truth about the state of the Maternity Unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Here is the complete text to the Daily Mail article, it is no longer behind a paywall, so I suppose this is allowed.
Lucy Letby’s ‘boyfriend’ died after being sacked for exchanging messages with the convicted serial killer about a baby she tried to murder, the Daily Mail can reveal.
The 53-year-old consultant doctor – who cannot be named for legal reasons – was found collapsed in his car the day after he was dismissed from the NHS hospital where he worked.
He was admitted to intensive care but died nine days later, on July 3. An inquest is due to open into his death at a date to be fixed.
The doctor was hauled before a disciplinary hearing in June over a series of inappropriate texts he sent the former neo-natal nurse while they worked together at the Countess of Chester Hospital, the Daily Mail has learned.
The messages, understood to have breached patient confidentiality, involved details of the care of a premature baby boy with haemophilia, known only as Baby N, who Letby, 36, was convicted of trying to kill the day after he was born in June 2016.
It is understood that the doctor also faced other serious allegations, including that he inappropriately accessed medical records and risked patient safety, which cannot be revealed for legal reasons.
At her trial, Letby was forced to deny she and the medic, referred to as ‘Dr A’, were having a romantic affair and claimed they were just ‘best friends’.
But she broke down in tears and tried to leave the dock when he entered the courtroom at Manchester Crown Court to give evidence.
She called him ‘sweetie’ in texts and referred to him as ‘love’ in notes scrawled with his name and love hearts that police discovered during searches at her home.
Letby is serving a record 15 whole-life terms after being found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more – one of whom she attacked twice – at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.
Sources told the Daily Mail that Dr A attended a three-day disciplinary hearing in early June this year and was fired for gross misconduct a fortnight later, on June 23.
The following day relatives reported him missing and he was later found collapsed in his car at a retail park, around 20 miles from his Cheshire home.
He was admitted to intensive care but never regained consciousness, and died on July 3 at Whiston Hospital, Merseyside.
The cause of his death is not yet known but has been referred to the Cheshire Coroner, who confirmed ‘preliminary inquiries’ had begun.
His NHS bosses would have been duty bound to report his dismissal to the doctors’ regulatory body, the General Medical Council, potentially threatening his professional registration and ability to work as a medic again.
Dr A told the Thirlwall Inquiry – the public inquiry investigating Letby’s crimes – in October 2024 that the Band 5 nurse ‘misled and maybe manipulated’ him into giving her information about babies she had attacked.
The then-junior doctor swapped 1,355 Facebook messages with Letby, discussing babies who collapsed when they were on shift together, over a three-month period, between June 2016 and September 2016.
The pair also exchanged more flirty messages about their private lives, sometimes late at night, met up for walks and meals and went on day trips to London together in their free time away from work.
In one message Letby asked Dr A about the condition of Baby N and queried whether she had done anything wrong concerning his care.
Dr A messaged back: ‘Oh Lucy, poor little thing. I am sure he has had the best care possible and you will have done everything you could for him.’
Asked by counsel for the inquiry, Rachel Langdale KC, whether such a message was appropriate, Dr A replied: ‘In hindsight, no. Looking at the content of the messages here, I’ve shared too much.’
In her evidence to the inquiry, which was overseen by High Court judge Lady Justice Thirlwall and is set to report later this year, Baby N’s mother accused Dr A of ‘blatantly’ breaching her son’s patient confidentiality.
She also revealed she had lodged a formal complaint with the hospital where he went on to work about his conduct.
Letby, formerly of Hereford, was convicted at Manchester Crown Court in August 2023 after the longest running murder trial in British history.
She has always maintained she did not kill or harm any babies in her care.
Letby has twice applied and been denied the right to appeal, but has lodged documents with the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the body which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, in a bid to secure her freedom.