A drama about the Lucy Letby case by the creator of Line of Duty has been paused because of growing doubts about the nurse’s convictions.
Jed Mercurio, producer of the BBC’s acclaimed series about ‘bent coppers’, was reported to be working on the project with Dr Ravi Jayaram – the only medical witness at Letby’s two trials who was able to point to behaviour directly linking her to baby deaths.
Last week, this newspaper reported that a newly-unearthed email appeared to contradict prosecution claims that Letby had been caught ‘red-handed’ by Dr Jayaram with a baby who subsequently died.
Now a source at Mr Mercurio’s production company has said the project is being put on the back burner as ‘the situation is more complicated than it first appeared’.
Letby, 35, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders for killing seven babies and attempting to murder seven others at Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016. The bombshell email, which was not disclosed to Letby’s defence team before her two trials, appears to undermine the claims made by Dr Jayaram in court that the nurse was standing over Baby K’s cot as the girl was deteriorating, and that she did not call for help.
The email, originally reported by UnHerd website, was sent to his colleagues at the hospital on May 4, 2017 – before she was investigated by police. It it, Dr Jayaram wrote: ‘At time of deterioration… staff nurse Letby at incubator and called Dr Jayaram to inform of low saturations.’
Dr Jayaram also suggested Baby K’s frailty was the cause of death, saying: ‘Baby subsequently deteriorated and eventually died, but events around this would fit with explainable events associated with extreme prematurity.’
At the 2024 trial, he portrayed Letby’s behaviour as suspicious, saying: ‘Lucy Letby was stood next to the incubator. She wasn’t looking at me. She didn’t have her hands in the incubator.’ After he was asked by prosecuting counsel Nick Johnson KC whether he had ‘any call for help from Lucy Letby’ he responded: ‘No, not at all.’
Lucy Letby, 35, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders for killing seven babies and attempting to murder seven others at Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016.
Jed Mercurio , producer of the BBC ’s acclaimed series about ‘bent coppers’, was reported to be working on the project with Dr Ravi Jayaram (pictured)
Last week, this newspaper revealed that a newly-unearthed email appeared to contradict prosecution claims that Letby had been caught ‘red-handed’ by Dr Jayaram with a baby who subsequently died
Letby’s defence team say that, contrary to reports last week, Appeal Court judges were not aware of the email when they ruled on a challenge to her conviction last October.
The Mercurio drama is not Dr Jayaram’s first brush with the limelight. He performed on the BBC’s Big Night of Musicals with comedian Jason Manford and singer Beverley Knight on January 27, 2024, dressed as a clown – five months after Letby’s convictions at the first trial and five months before the retrial over Baby K’s death. He has also been on The Weakest Link. Baby K had been born at 25 weeks. She struggled to breathe and was put on a ventilator before she died.
The Appeal Court, which in October rejected a plea by Letby’s defence team that media coverage prejudiced her trial, questioned Dr Jayaram’s evidence in which he said – without having witnessed it – that Letby had dislodged Baby K’s endotracheal tube. The Appeal Court said: ‘Legitimate criticism could be made of his [Dr Jayaram’s] evidence. Though he believed Letby had deliberately dislodged the endotracheal tube, he said nothing at the time nor for many months thereafter.
‘There was an inconsistency between his evidence and contemporaneous records.’
The consultant paediatrician, who has also appeared on the BBC’s The One Show and ITV’s Good Morning Britain, was the lead clinician on the neonatal unit where Letby worked from 2009 until December 2018. After her convictions, he tearfully told ITV News last year: ‘I’m not a hero. I was just doing my job.’ Neither Dr Jayaram’s claim that Letby called him for help, nor that he thought the baby’s death was explained by issues associated with extreme prematurity, made it into the final version of the document that hospital consultants sent to the police.
Citing Dr Jayaram’s evidence in court, the prosecution alleged Letby deliberately dislodged the breathing tube and Dr Jayaram caught her ‘virtually red-handed’.
Dr Jayaram gave evidence about Baby K at both her first trial, in 2023, and – when the first jury failed to agree – her second trial last July, when she was convicted.
Ten months before Dr Jayaram sent the 2017 email, Letby had been moved to clerical work as a result of concerns raised by Dr Jayaram and other doctors about her care of babies. She lodged a grievance for bullying and harassment, which was upheld.
The consultant paediatrician, who has appearedon The Weakest Link in 2012, was the lead clinician on the neonatal unit where Letby worked from 2009 until December 2018
Dr Jayaram has also enjoyed rather glitzier appearances – last year he was seen in a live performance on the BBC’s Big Night Of Musicals By The National Lottery
He has made regular TV appearances while working at the Countess of Chester Hospital including presenting the Born Naughty?
By the time of the 2017 email, Dr Jayaram and other doctors were hoping to involve the police and had drafted a report to send to them asking them to investigate.He said the purpose was ‘for the police to have their interest piqued’, and to do this he suggested the doctors should ‘highlight explicitly for these cases that LL was in attendance and in close proximity to the incubators’.
Since her conviction, dozens of doctors, nurses, statisticians, law experts and scientists have come forward to criticise the way evidence was presented to the jury.
They include Lord Sumption, a former Supreme Court judge, who believes Letby is ‘probably innocent’. He said those questioning her convictions ‘are too numerous and well qualified to be dismissed as troublemakers’. A source at production company Hat Trick Mercurio said of the Letby drama: ‘It’s on our slate but we have not done much on it recently. It is more complicated than it first appeared. The situation’s evolving.’
Dr Jayaram did not respond to a request for comment.
Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said: ‘Due to the Thirlwall inquiry and police investigations, it would not be appropriate to comment further.’
