'Broken' Letby now has new hope, claims her lawyer

Child killer Lucy Letby was a “broken person” but now has a “new hope”, her barrister has said.

- POL ALLINGHAM

Letby's parents contacted Mark McDonald almost a year ago and requested he take over from her previous lawyer and free her from prison, he said in an interview with The Sunday Times. A week later, he met the killer, who is serving 15 whole-life orders after murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016.

Mr McDonald said he is submitting “new evidence” to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, and has also spent the past year working to boost public criticism of her convictions.

He gathered a panel of 14 neonatal and paediatric experts, shared the babies’ medical notes with them, and held a press conference casting doubt on the prosecution’s case.

Lawyers for the families of Letby’s victims previously rubbished the panel’s findings as “full of analytical holes” and “a rehash” of the defence case heard at trial.

In July, Cheshire Police passed evidence of further allegations related to baby deaths and collapses at the hospitals where Letby, 35, worked.