A former cabinet minister has said he is more than 90 per cent sure baby killer Lucy Letby is innocent.
Sir David Davis said he spent months examining the evidence and called for the former neonatal nurse to be retried.
Letby, 34, was found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill seven others at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016.
He is serving a life sentence after the courts rejected a request to appeal the conviction.
But Davis believes the convictions are not safe and said he would be willing to visit Letby in jail to discuss the case with her.
Lucy Letby, 34, was found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill seven others at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016.
Sir David Davis (pictured) said he has spent months examining the evidence and has called for Letby to be retried.
Letby when she was arrested in 2018. The former neonatal nurse is serving a life sentence after the courts rejected an application to appeal her conviction.
Speaking on GB News, Mr Davis said: “I have spent three months reviewing the evidence.
“I think most likely, you can’t be sure, but most likely, like 90 percent, he’s not guilty.”
He added: “The most likely reason is one of two things: poor hospital management (the Royal College found that), or a superbug (research found that), or both together.” That’s much more likely.
‘I don’t want to declare her innocent. I want a new trial; do it correctly.’
John O’Quigley, professor of statistics in the department of statistical science at University College London, has also raised questions about Letby’s guilt.
Dr O’Quigley said the only conclusion from a diagram showing Letby was on duty when those seven babies died was that she was on duty.
One of the main prosecution witnesses, Dr Dewi Evans, also gave an about-face on how ‘Baby C’ died.
The baby died at the Countess of Chester Hospital around midnight on June 13-14, 2016. The method of death is described as “air through a nasogastric tube”, the injection of air into his stomach.
But Dr Evans now says that is not how the baby died after a Radio 4 programme, Lucy Letby: The Killer questions.
Davis believes the convictions are not safe and said he would be willing to visit Letby in jail to discuss the case with her.
Image of the hallway inside the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital (showing the entrances to nurseries 2, 3 and 4)
Photo issued by Cheshire Police/CPS of a handwritten note shown in court at Lucy Letby’s trial. He was found by police at Ms Letby’s home in Westbourne Road, Chester.
Photo issued by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) of a note found in Lucy Letby’s home, which was shown at her trial at Manchester Crown Court.
In it, several highly qualified experts cast doubt on this and much of the evidence accepted by the jury at Ms. Letby’s first trial.
During that trial, Dr. Evans said an X-ray of Baby C showed an unusual amount of air in the child’s stomach, which could have been caused by deliberately pumping air into his feeding tube.
But the Radio 4 program points out that Letby was not actually in hospital on June 12 when the x-ray was taken. I hadn’t even met Baby C at the time.
Dr Evans now says: “His death occurred the next day, about midnight (when Mrs Letby was on duty), and was due to the presence of air in the bloodstream.”
The victims’ families have criticized current speculation about Letby’s innocence, saying it is contributing to their pain and grief.
In September, at the start of a public inquiry into the deaths, presiding judge Judge Thirlwall said doubts about Letby’s guilt came “entirely from people who were not at the trial”.
Letby worked as a nurse at the Countess of Chester hospital in January 2012 after completing her training there.
Last week the inquest heard how Letby had told a colleague she couldn’t wait for her first death on her first day of work as a nurse.
She made the comment when she began working in the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital after graduating in children’s nursing from the city’s university in January 2012.
Nurse ZC, who started at the hospital at the same time as the convicted murderer, said she was “taken aback” by the comment.
But he assumed Letby was simply “trying to strike up a conversation with someone he didn’t know” and did not think it was “alarming” or that he had said it with “sinister intentions.”
“She made a comment, something like, ‘I can’t wait for my first death to figure it out,’ said Nurse ZC. ‘It took me by surprise because, even though I was a trained nurse, it’s not something I actively wanted to happen.
“She said it without thinking, it was part of a normal conversation and then she moved on.”
Nurse ZC, who cannot be named for legal reasons, also recounted an episode that occurred in early 2012 (just a few weeks after Letby started work and more than three years before he murdered his first victim) when a girl collapsed unexpectedly during a night shift while Letby was on duty.
“Lucy appeared very cheerful and told me everything that had happened with the baby and that she was involved in the resuscitation attempts,” added nurse ZC.
‘Once again, it was something that took me by surprise. I didn’t feel like I was as confident in that situation as Lucy.
‘Throughout the whole conversation she was animated, kind of excited to tell me about it. She didn’t seem upset or that it had traumatized her in any way.
The inquest later learned that Letby was identified among the ‘creme de la creme’ of students by a head nurse, who said she never saw any evidence of misconduct on the part of the convicted murderer.
Dr Stephen Brearey, a senior consultant, was “hesitant” to report his concerns because he was “influenced” by the insistence of Letby’s direct superior, Eirian Powell, that she could not have done anything wrong, the investigation heard.
The inquest heard Powell told police: “I wanted her in the unit, I really did.” When students go through the system, you can almost hand-pick the crème de la crème, and she was one of them.
Ms Powell met Dr Brearey after the unexpected deaths of three babies in June 2015, and it was noted that Letby had had a “common ground” in all three.
But Ms Powell told the inquest there was “no evidence of any crime”.
Following the death of another baby in October 2015, Powell put together a table of the babies who had died in that period and all the nursing staff on duty during those shifts.
Revisions to the table followed, including an additional column with doctors’ names and also a new table with Letby’s name highlighted in red, according to the investigation.
Rachel Langdale, counsel for the inquiry, asked Ms Powell: “Was there a time when you were doing that and you thought, ‘Actually, the police should do it, not me’?”
Mrs Powell replied: “In hindsight, yes, I did.”
He added: ‘Nothing changed as far as testing is concerned. Nobody saw anything.
“When we were busy, she worked overtime, so she was there more often.”
Mrs Langdale said: “When did you start to worry that your name kept coming up, if you started to worry about it?”
Mrs Powell said: “I was always asked that question. Nothing has changed since Dr. Brearey said he had concerns but wouldn’t define them, and nothing has changed since each time: “Has anyone seen anything?” or “There was no evidence there.”