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April 2026: Thirlwall Inquiry final report due after Easter · CCRC still reviewing 31+ independent expert reports · Shoo Lee Panel (Feb 2025): no medical evidence of deliberate harm.

Lucy Letby Facts
Image framing

The mugshot: a comparison of two versions of the same photograph

An independent YouTube commentator overlays the widely-published mugshot of Lucy Letby against an earlier-printed version of the same photograph — and notices that the emotional content has been retouched out.

Last updated
4 min read

The mugshot — visual comparison

An independent YouTube commentator overlays the widely-published mugshot against an earlier-printed version from the Chester Standard. Same photograph, different emotional register.

In plain English

The video compares two versions of the same police-custody photograph of Lucy Letby. The version that has become the default press image — used by most UK newspapers and online articles — shows a flat, affect-less expression that fits the culturally-encoded shorthand for “psychopath”: eyes that read as empty, mouth neutral, no visible distress.

The commentator then brings up an earlier-printed version of the same photograph — as published by the Chester Standard at the time of arrest. In that version the eyes are red and puffy, the nose is swollen, and tears are visible in the eyes. The subject looks, as the commentator puts it, “terrified” — which is what one might expect of a young person being told by police that they are being accused of murdering babies.

The two images are then overlaid. Mouth position, the angle of the eyes, the exact fall of every strand of hair — all align perfectly. They are the same photograph. What differs is only the emotional content. In the widely-published version, the emotional content has been retouched out.

Why this matters

We make no claim here about who retouched the image, or why, or whether it was editorial judgement or deliberate bias. What we can say is that the image a reader encounters first shapes how they process everything else. The original, un-retouched image is consistent with a young person being accused of the most serious possible crimes, reacting as most people would. The widely-circulated retouched image is consistent with a pre-formed conclusion about the sort of person this must be.

This is not the most important issue in the case — that is the medical and statistical evidence covered on the rest of this site. But it illustrates a pattern of framing worth noticing alongside the framing of the handwritten notes (selected self-blame lines presented, contradictory lines on the same pages not) and the Facebook searches (the specific instances highlighted, the broader base-rate pattern not).

The video is a short first-person commentary. If it is taken down from YouTube in future, this page remains as our summary of the argument it made.

Full transcript

The transcript below is reproduced verbatim from the YouTube video (ID B8FzzDlVAAo). Light punctuation has been adjusted for readability; wording is unchanged. Speaker labels follow the transcript as supplied. Attributed to the video’s uncredited independent commentator.

Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the channel. This is my first video so thank you for being here. It will be a short one unfortunately but this is something that I did really want to talk about, so let’s get into it.

So today I want to talk about Lucy Letby. Everyone by now knows who she is and is aware of the case, but just in case some people aren’t, she was a nurse who is now serving 14 whole life sentences for the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six more whilst she was working at the Countess of Chester Hospital. She’ll never be free.

Whole life sentences in the UK basically mean you’ll die behind bars, and she was given 14 of them, so there’s no chance of parole or anything like that. But in this video I wanted to take a look at a mugshot and talk about what we see in it. This is a mugshot — the one that we have pretty much all seen by now. It’s the one that all the newspapers use and, you know, online articles whenever they are doing a piece on her.

So when we look at this, what do we see? I mean, first off, you know, it’s just coldness. She just looks dead behind the eyes, no remorse, lack of shame, lack of empathy. You know, pretty much what you’d expect from a psychopath that’s killed seven incredibly young babies, right? But what if I told you this isn’t her mugshot? Well, not how it originally looked, anyway. This is her mugshot in original form. Now this is from the Chester Standard. I’m not sure when it was printed. I got this from one of the Lucy Letby Facebook groups, so that’s why I thought I’d do a video on it.

But as we can see, there is a considerable difference in her appearance and in her emotion. So what do we see? Her eyes look puffy and red, there are tears in her eyes, she has a slightly swollen red nose, she looks in distress, she looks terrified to be honest. She knows the world’s just collapsed — which it has. She’s just been accused of murder in probably the worst possible form that you could be accused of it. You know, this is young babies, babies that are incredibly ill that you are supposed to be caring for.

This is the same image but it’s just unedited, and just in case there’s any doubt about that, I’ll put them on top of each other. As you can see they fit perfectly over one another — her mouth is in the exact same expression, as are her eyes and nose, and her strands of hair fall in exactly the same place.

So why would they airbrush the image to hide her emotion and clear distress? Well, perception’s everything, really. So if you saw that original image, would you look at it and think, “could she have done this?” Because she doesn’t look what you would expect from a psychopath. Like I said, perception’s everything. I’m not saying that she’s definitely innocent, but when you put these two images together, one looks like what you would expect from a psychopath, from an evil person — no emotion, no remorse. But in comparison to the other image it looks the opposite. She’s full of emotion.

The contrast between these two images is amazing because they are the exact same image. How you can just basically brush someone’s emotion out is incredible, you know, but you have to ask why this has been done. Why have they hidden her emotion? Why have they basically given her this cold, blank, emotionless stare? And, you know, I think this is just how our media works nowadays to be honest. If you show her like that, show her exactly how a serial killer should look, people are probably going to read it more.

You know, we were all used to the images before the mugshot — they used to show pictures of her at parties and with friends and stuff like that, smiling, in a nurse’s uniform. And ever since we had this mugshot that’s pretty much all we’ve seen, and it shows this different contrast. It shows her in a different light, and it’s probably for clicks. It really is probably just for clicks. I think that’s probably the reason — people feel more compelled to read an article about somebody who is this dead-behind-the-eyes serial killer. I don’t know, it’s a strange one, but I just wanted to talk about it because I think it’s important.

I think editing pictures for media purposes is wrong anyway, because it’s essentially a lie. And I’m not saying that the case against her was a lie or that the verdict was wrong, or anything like that. But what I am saying is, if you publish a false image of someone — which is what they’ve essentially done — I think that’s wrong. I think it’s a way that the newspapers shape public perception on a lot of things, not just this. But anyway, I’ve sort of gone into rambling mode now, so I’m going to leave this video here.

Thank you for watching. Please like, leave a comment, subscribe — because it does help the algorithm, and I want as many people to see this as I can reach. Thank you.

Author / source

Independent YouTube commentator (channel unnamed)

Attribution as given. If the creator would like a named credit or a different attribution style, please get in touch via /contact.

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Related framing concerns

Other places where selection or framing has shaped how the case is perceived.