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A doctor whose evidence was instrumental in convicting Britain’s most prolific child killer Lucy Letby has revealed he is being targeted by her supporters.
Neonatal expert Dewi Evans said he has been compared to the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele and that vexatious complaints have been made about him to the General Medical Council (GMC) since he appeared in court to give evidence for prosecutors. He is now urging police to investigate 25 more incidents potentially link to Letby.
The 34-year-old nurse was last week handed her fifteenth whole life order for killing seven babies and trying to murder seven more while she was working on a specialist unit at Countess of Chester Hospital.
Despite her numerous convictions following a year-long trial at Manchester Crown Court in 2023, her case has attracted worldwide attention as the public struggled to fathom how an outwardly friendly and well-liked nurse could commit such unspeakable crimes.
All of the evidence in the trial - including crucial reports and testimony from Mr Evans - has been closely scrutinised by online sleuths many of whom are convinced of Letby’s innocence.
The publication of a 12,000-word New Yorker article examining his evidence had to be temporarily blocked for UK readers as it threatened to prejudice a retrial for one count of attempted murder after jurors could not reach a verdict in the first trial. Last week, a second jury found her guilty on that count.
Now the consultant paediatrician has revealed how his reputation has been picked apart in online chat rooms as he claims supporters have chosen to ‘shoot the messenger’.
Speaking to The Sunday Times, Mr Evans said: “My generation of consultant paediatricians have had this our whole careers, where we have to put our heads above the parapet to say this child or that child is the victim of inflicted injury, and the reaction is, ‘Oh no it’s not, we can’t believe it’.
“Because you have to accept this has happened in the care of parents, or in this case a nurse. So therefore denial is the natural response to these shocking disclosures.
“In this case, Letby is a young, white, English nurse from a reputable, normal background. So it’s not surprising that some people respond to the fact that she has been found guilty of killing babies by saying it hasn’t happened. It becomes about shooting the messenger — which, in this case, is me.”
He also revealed he has written to police urging them to investigate 25 more incidents linked to Letby while she was nursing.
“I believe we need to be absolutely sure they were not placed in harm’s way at any time during their stay at the neonatal unit in Chester,” Evans wrote in a letter sent in September to Paul Hughes, the detective superintendent in charge of the continuing inquiry into Letby.
Cheshire Constabulary is still investigating Letby’s career and reviewing all her contacts with patients.
A separate corporate manslaughter investigation at the hospital also remains ongoing.
A public inquiry, which starts in September, will examine the wider fallout, interrogating hospital managers about the way they handled doctors’ concerns.
In his letter urging the police to investigate further incidents, Mr Evans highlighted the case of a three-day-old child who died after a breathing tube was found dislodged and another case involving suspected insulin poisoning.
“You have a baby that is nice and stable and that suddenly changed out of the blue when she was on duty,” Mr Evans said.
“As Jack Frost [the fictional television detective in A Touch of Frost] once said: ‘I don’t believe in coincidences.’”
