Hub · One-screen rebuttals
Myths vs facts
The shortest directly-sourced rebuttals of the most-repeated claims the public encounters in media coverage of the Letby case. Each rebuttal links to the full evidence entry with primary-source citations. The site presents facts; the convictions currently stand; the CCRC review is ongoing.
The claim
She was the only nurse on every shift.
What the evidence actually shows
The shift-rota chart shown at trial selected 25 events because Letby was there. Other unexplained neonatal deaths and collapses on the unit during the period — where she was not on shift — were not included in the chart the jury saw. This is selection bias, not probability. The Royal Statistical Society, Prof. Richard Gill, Prof. Peter Green and Prof. Norman Fenton have each set out the specific statistical error independently.
Evidence: shift statistics →The claim
The insulin proves it.
What the evidence actually shows
The insulin result for Baby F was produced by a Roche Cobas screening immunoassay at the Royal Liverpool clinical biochemistry laboratory. The Roche manufacturer's own guidance requires confirmatory mass-spectrometry testing before a result can be treated as forensic evidence of exogenous insulin. That confirmation was not performed. The UK forensic-standard laboratory is Guildford (Royal Surrey); Royal Liverpool does not operate under the Forensic Science Regulator's code of practice. No TPN bags were retained or tested. The May 2025 Joint Expert Witness Insulin Report sets all of this out in technical detail.
Evidence: core insulin issue →The claim
She wrote a confession.
What the evidence actually shows
The handwritten notes recovered from Ms Letby's home contain the phrases the Crown highlighted, but also, on the same page, the phrases 'I haven't done anything wrong,' 'I did my best and I love them all,' and 'I am evil' (a classic self-blame-under-accusation formulation). Clinical psychologists have documented this pattern in wrongful-conviction contexts. The Kathleen Folbigg exoneration (2023) establishes the international precedent for private-writings-read-as-confession reasoning that does not survive medical re-analysis.
Analysis: the so-called 'confessions' →The claim
She followed the families on Facebook.
What the evidence actually shows
The raw data shows 257 handover sheets recovered from her home; 21 relate to indicted babies, 236 do not. Facebook searches were similarly distributed across a population of families much larger than the indictment, many for babies who survived, not clustered around deaths. When the denominator is included, the 'trophy' framing does not sustain. Facebook curiosity about patients is documented baseline nursing behaviour, not itself probative of criminal intent.
Evidence: Facebook searches denominator →The claim
No other explanation was found.
What the evidence actually shows
No viral testing for enterovirus or parechovirus appears to have been performed on the indicted infants, despite published UK neonatal-sepsis outbreak literature in the same period (the 2016 Leicester cluster). TTTS and multiple-birth differentials were not systematically engaged. Neonatal thrombosis differentials were not systematically engaged. Necrotising enterocolitis differentials were not systematically engaged. Absence of explanation where the explanation was not tested for is not evidence of deliberate harm.
Evidence: viral-outbreak differential →The claim
Two juries convicted her.
What the evidence actually shows
Both juries heard the evidence that was available to the Crown in 2022-2023 and 2024. They did not hear: the February 2025 Shoo Lee Panel report; the May 2025 Joint Expert Witness Insulin Report; the October 2025 paediatric-pathology re-readings; the Fenton Bayesian analysis; the Heneghan/Goldacre EBM critique; the Lord Sumption intervention; the Bar Council letter; the David Davis MP adjournment debate; the January 2026 CPS decision not to extend the pattern to further candidate cases; the February 2026 CCRC public confirmation that the review is underway. The CCRC review is about evidence that post-dates both trials.
Analysis: the post-conviction evidence arc →The claim
The air-embolism skin mottling is diagnostic.
What the evidence actually shows
Dr Shoo Lee, lead author of the 1989 paper the Crown cited as the diagnostic reference for air embolism, has publicly stated that his paper was misapplied at trial. Independent neonatologists have confirmed that non-specific skin mottling is routine in any collapsing preterm infant regardless of cause (sepsis, shock, NEC, cardiac failure). The Panel's case-by-case review finds no case meets the diagnostic criteria of the 1989 paper.
Evidence: air embolism →The claim
The 2024 Court of Appeal refusal settles the question.
What the evidence actually shows
The 24 May 2024 Court of Appeal refusal decided only that the specific grounds then advanced did not meet the leave-to-appeal threshold on the evidence then available. It did not include the Shoo Lee Panel report (Feb 2025), the Joint Insulin Report (May 2025), or the paediatric-pathology re-readings (Oct 2025). The CCRC route under section 13 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 exists for exactly this — review where subsequent evidence has changed the picture. The Donna Anthony precedent (2005) is directly analogous: first appeal dismissed, CCRC referral on framework-shifting expert evidence, acquittal.
Analysis: appeal vs CCRC distinction →Why this page exists
Most readers encounter the Letby case through media coverage that compresses complex evidential questions into a handful of headline claims. This page’s function is to provide the shortest possible accurate rebuttal to each of those claims, with a link to the full evidence entry. The aim is not to persuade. The aim is to give readers access to the primary-source architecture on which independent commentators, the Shoo Lee Panel, the Bar Council, Lord Sumption, Sir David Davis MP, Prof. Carl Heneghan, Dr Ben Goldacre, and the CCRC now operate.