The Investigation of Lucy Letby, Netflix, now, three stars
There can be few people who have not seen the footage of Lucy Letby being led out of her home, handcuffed, to a police car. The same clip opens this new documentary from Netflix, one of several to be made about the former nurse convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more.
The Netflix film has made headlines even before its release today. Why? Because the footage it contains goes far beyond that familiar clip.
Three separate arrests are shown. On one occasion, the police body cameras capture Letby waking, stunned, to find officers in her room. There is footage of her “saying goodbye” to one of her cats. During one arrest, an unidentified woman, presumably her mother, can be heard crying and shouting, “Oh no, not again.”
The footage does not stop there. We see Letby in the squad car and, crucially, watch excerpts from her police interviews. The scenes will be familiar from any “true crime” documentary, except this one concerns a case that has sparked intense interest here and across the globe.
Most documentaries claim to have previously unseen footage. In this case, the makers, ITN Productions, are as good as their word.
There is also new material, including an email from Letby to the police, and an interview on screen, billed as another first, with the mother of one of the victims.
Letby’s parents have called the footage in their home “a complete invasion of privacy” and condemned its release by Cheshire police.
Over 90 minutes, the film sets out the case for and against Letby. It does so with commendable balance - at first sight, anyway - but anyone looking for straightforward answers will not find them here. This is not that kind of case, or that kind of documentary. Those who already believe Letby has been made a scapegoat will have their view confirmed, and the same goes for the opposite camp. But what of viewers in the middle?
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Watching the film, one is reminded of the strengths and weaknesses of documentaries that deal in controversial, highly complex cases such as Letby’s. There is no doubting the journalistic skills at work and the “scoops” achieved. You have to ask, however, who benefits most from such a film, and the answer here seems to be the police.
Several detectives have their say at length about the investigation and their perceptions of Letby. We hear, too, from a friend of Letby’s from university, and a bereaved mother, both of whom are “digitally anonymised” (which, try as the software might, still looks disconcertingly odd). There is a perceptive court reporter, an expert witness, a consultant paediatrician who worked at the Countess of Chester Hospital, and others, including Mark McDonald, a barrister acting on behalf of Letby.
Quite a crowd, but look at who is missing. Letby’s defence team, which called no medical experts at the trial, declined to appear. Nor do we hear from other parents convinced of Letby’s guilt, all those mums and dads who see documentaries like this as another painful intrusion into their still raw grief.
That’s the difficulty with retrying a case on television - no one can be compelled to take part. Another problem is that assertions go unchallenged. One detective, for instance, said Letby was generally cooperative in interviews but became evasive about specifics. Yet what Letby said was “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember”. Could it be that she simply did not know or remember?
Yet there are other moments, particularly when she is questioned about material found in her bedroom, that draw the viewer up sharp and make you question her behaviour anew.
The real test of The Investigation of Lucy Letby is not whether it changes the minds of those already convinced one way or another, but whether it shifts the dial for those in the middle. By the end, I was convinced that questions remain which must be answered, and that the application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission was necessary.
The film ends, as it should, with the words of a grieving parent.
“There's no getting over any of this,” she says.
No documentary, however well made, can change that.
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