When jurors were deliberating in the first Lucy Letby trial, journalists watching and waiting will have prepared two versions of her story. The first branded Letby the “angel of death”, an evil child serial killer to rank alongside the likes of Myra Hindley and Rose West. In the second, she was a troubled — but innocent — nurse who had been wrongly accused and was cleared by the jury.
The second version was consigned to the bin as soon as the guilty verdicts started to arrive, and — so the narrative went — Letby’s place in hell was confirmed. There were lone voices at the time protesting that Letby had been wrongly convicted, but they were swiftly brushed aside.
