Senior doctors at the Countess of Chester Hospital were instructed to write a letter of apology to Lucy Letby after they repeatedly raised concerns that she may have been responsible for unexplained baby deaths, a Guardian investigation has found.
Tony Chambers, then chief executive, ordered the apology on 26 January 2017, nearly a year after Letby was removed from the neonatal unit. At that point she had already murdered seven babies and attempted to kill six others, a court later ruled.
According to two consultant paediatricians, a hospital executive had earlier said that contacting the police would damage the hospital’s reputation and turn the unit into a crime scene. The police were not informed for almost another year after Letby’s removal in July 2016.
The apology was based on two external reviews that executives believed exonerated Letby. However, neither review was designed to examine individual culpability, and both recommended further investigation into several deaths.
Doctors were also told that Letby’s parents had threatened to refer them to the General Medical Council. Meanwhile, bereaved parents were informed in February 2017 that the reviews had found no suspicious circumstances in their babies’ deaths.
