The Countess

0:00When segregation was a law, one mysterious black club owner, Charlie Fitzgerald, had his own rules. Segregation and the day integration at night. It was like stepping on another world. Was he a businessman, a criminal, a hero? Charlie was an example of power. They had to crush him. Charlie's place from Atlas Obscura and Visit Myrtle Beach. Listen to Charlie's Place on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Alec Baldwin. This season on my podcast, Here's the Thing. I talk to composer Mark Shaman. It's about the hang. It's the pleasure of hanging out with the people that you're with. You know, Rob and I was always a great hang. And journalist Chris Whipple. Every White House staffer, they work in a bubble called the West Wing. And it's exponentially more so in the Trump White House. Listen to the new season of Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:00Almost 30 years together, four kids and some of reality TV's most unforgettable moments. We're taking you behind the scenes in our podcast between us with me, Heather Dubrow and me Terry Dubrow, the unfiltered behind closed doors conversations you wish you could eavesdrop on. And plenty of did they just say that moments? But what's the latest rumor on gay, right? First of all, if I were gay, I would be gay. Open your free I Heart Radio app, search between us and listen now. I'm Anna Navarro and on my new podcast, Bleep with Anna Navarro. I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world. Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all cursing and asking what the bleep is going on. Every week I'm breaking down the biggest issues happening in our communities and around the world. I'm talking to people like Julie Kay Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018. The justice department through we counted for presidential administrations failed these victims.

2:05Listen to Bleep with Anna Navarro on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Before we begin, please be aware this series contains discussions around infant deaths and other difficult topics. Please take care while listening. The moment my daughter was born, the doctor's noticed strange markings on her skin. Within hours, someone gently explained she might have a rare genetic disorder. I remember sitting in the postpartum room, exhausted and terrified, while my fragile, beautiful baby girl had dozens of wires taped to her scalp. I couldn't help her. I couldn't hold her. Like all first-time parents, I had been expecting that cinematic moment, skin on skin, a warm little body settling into mine, the quiet breath of relief after months of waiting.

3:08Instead, I spent the next six months in limbo, fearing she might never walk or talk, that she might go blind, that a tiny hidden defect in her heart might stop it altogether. When I became a mother, I knew I would sacrifice everything to help my child, but this was not a problem I could fix, and I was left with no choice but to trust. Trust the nurses lifting her from my arms. Trust the doctors who did test after test. Trust the specialist who spoke in a calm voice about a possibility that parts of her brain might be missing. Because in the NICU, trust isn't optional. It's the air you breathe. You hand over the most precious thing in your life to people you barely know, believing they will protect what you can't.

4:08That vulnerability defines the experience. It's overwhelming, and it's necessary. And then, finally, mercifully, the doctors told us she had tested negative. That her brain, her heart, her eyes, they were just fine. I'll never forget that feeling. The world opening up again. The gratitude so heavy it almost knocked me off my feet. Most parents with a child in the NICU get that moment. But in 2015, at the Countess of Chester Hospital, some never did. The historic heart of Chester is like a time capsule. Filled with everything you expect from a very old, very storied British city.

5:11Cobbled streets, pubs stating back to medieval times, an imposing stone cathedral, and an honest-to-goodness castle tucked in one corner, all surrounded by a great, big, fortified wall. Right at the edge of Chester is the local hospital, named after Princess Diana. It's called the Countess of Chester, which was one of the titles she got when she married King Charles. But the history of the site where the hospital was built isn't, shall we say, quite as illustrious as the stuff in the old city center. The Countess of Chester, originally, was built on the site of a Victorian mental asylum. That's Michelle Warden. She used to work at the Countess of Chester as a neonatal nurse. She started a few years after Charles and Diana's royal visit. Speaking of which, the hospital building itself doesn't exactly live up to its regal name.

6:14It's, you know, a hospital. It looks like a hospital, built in the 70s. You can probably picture it, unfussy, functional, lots of concrete. But this run of the mill building, and what happened inside, has, for the past decade, been at the center of the latest big chapter in the history of Chester. In fact, many believe that what happened here is one of the biggest things to have happened in the history of modern Britain. The country just hasn't settled on what that thing is. History is still being written. They clearly found that she's one of Britain's most notorious killers. What to do about a trial, which, in my view, is a clear miscarriage of justice by a judicial system that could not manage. I'm Amanda Knox, and from Bespucci and IHARP podcasts, this is Doubt, the case of Lucy Leppie.

7:18Episode two, the Countess. Back in 2015, when you arrive at the Countess, that's how a lot of people refer to it, by the way, the Countess. One of the first things you'll see is a short, stocky building to your left. That was the women and children's building. The women and children's department hospital was designed for, as it says, women and children. So you've got a pediatric ward, you have a neonatal ward, you have all the maternity. Michelle again. She spent so many years in this building, she could probably recite the layout in her sleep. You've got fetal medicine, neonate, antinatal, postnatal, gynecology. You've got operating theatres, infertility. Anything to do with women and children is within that building. But a lot has changed since Michelle first started working there, in many important ways.

8:23Some for the better, and some for the worse. It wasn't until the mid-1990s with the development of a drug which helps to develop premature babies' lungs. That really revolutionized the care of these sick and premature babies. Though new drugs helped the infants breathe easier, the same couldn't be said for the facilities. By the time Michelle retired in 2007, the women and children's building itself was coughing and spluttering. It was a lovely unit, but it was old. And with any old building, it had its problems, which were always going on. I went to work on the unit in 1988, and where and tear was beginning to show even back then. Problems with the plumbing, the sinks and the taps, sometimes not working properly.

9:24The plumbing system had recycled the Victorian pipes in the foundation from the ground's mental asylum days. Sewage would back up into the sinks. It would also leak from the pipes overhead, onto the incubators. This was a chronically underfunded unit, and often the maintenance crew was forced to improvise. One maintenance worker described to the telegraph newspaper a time he and his colleagues had to pad the ceiling tiles with diaper lining, a last-ditch effort to stem the flow of literal shit from the pipes overhead. There was never enough time or money to put out all the fires. By the summer of 2015, the hospital had been begging the public for help, pleading for donations. Everyone threw themselves into the effort, racing rubber duckies on the River D,

10:33charging down the streets of Chester in Santa Costumes, and gamely taking part in goofy dance videos, like the one with the pediatrician in charge of the unit, Dr. Steven Breary, shaking his hips to the tune of twist and shout, taking heart shapes with his hands, all for the cause. That's him, Dr. Breary. Soft-spoken, self-effacing, Dr. Breary had that pillar of the community vibe to him. But the real poster boy of the pediatric team was Dr. Breary's close friend, Dr. Ravi Jerem. He was thin and sprightly with a shock of curly black hair. The local papers called him, the TV, Dr. And Dr. Ravi Jerem is with us now because we're going to talk about this a little bit more. I'm Dr. Ravi Jerem. If I'm a consult pediatrician and I've worked with the NHS all my career.

11:35Consultant is the most senior rank of doctor in the UK. You'll be hearing that word a lot in this series. Dr. Jerem was a consultant. And just over on the same page, NHS stands for National Health Service. It's the UK's system of free healthcare for all. Making it to consultant level took a long time and a ton of work. But through all those sleep-deprived years, Dr. Jerem never forgot to nurture his first love. Showbiz. He busked on the streets of Chester as a teen, shot his shot at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in college, and became a mainstay of British game shows, all while coming up the ranks in medicine. This is your third appearance. It is, yes. That's him on the weakest link. He actually won at one point. Anything else? I indulge in the occasional karaoke. Put your board down.

12:36What can you sing? Well, I doubt whether you can, but you can try. If you started it. In his downtime, Dr. Jerem played local gigs with his band, The Deluded. Here they are at the cavern, a live music spot in London. It's a great song. It's a great song. It's a great song. It's a great song. It's a great song. It's a great song. It's a great song. It's a great song. It's a great song. It's a great song. Here they are at the cavern, a live music spot in Liverpool, where the Deluded were a regular attraction. He's actually got a good singing voice in the East, very theatrical. I actually asked him why he didn't pursue a career in drama, and he said, well, that's not what nice Indian boys do. I mean, his father was a consultant. His brother is a very eminent consultant ophthalmologist in London. But Dr. Jerem found a way to make his medical career

13:38and his rock star ambitions work for him. In the summer of 2015, he was co-starring in a reality TV show called Born Naughty, where he and a fellow doctor met parents of badly behaved children, and decided if a medical diagnosis was the answer to their problems. As a pediatrician and a GP, Dr. Ravi and Dr. Dawn often meet badly-behaved kids, but now they must crack some real hard nuts. He spent the early part of that summer criss-crossing the country, doing promo for his reality show as well as other media work. He seemed to be everywhere, except perhaps the understaffed neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital. But just as the future is looking bright, something terrible starts unfolding in the neonatal unit. It won't be long before the unit is demanding all of Dr. Jerem's attention. There will be little time left for show business.

14:50Segregation and the day integration at night. When segregation was the law, one mysterious black club owner had his own rules. We didn't worry about what went on outside. It was like sipping at another world. Inside Charlie's place, black and white people danced together, but not everyone was happy about it. You saw the KKK? Yeah, they was dressed up in that uniform. The KKK set out to raid Charlie, take him away from here. Charlie was an example of power. They had to crush him. From Atlas Obscura, Rococo Punch, and visit Myrtle Beach, comes Charlie's place. A story that was nearly lost to time. Until now, listen to Charlie's Place on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

15:50It's the new me, and it's the old them. Everybody's on edge, and your journey's different to this. This woman's history month, the podcast, if you knew better with Amber Grimes, spotlights women who turned missteps into momentum and lessons into power. I think coming out of where I came from, I'm from the Bronx, I think I grew up really poor. I didn't know that then, because I very much used my creativity to romanticize life. And I'm like, my mom did a really good job of like, you step back and you're like, whoa, we, I don't know how we made it. So a lot of my life was like, built out of like, survival to get to the next place. Like my drive, my like tunnel vision of like, I got to be better, I got to achieve this, was off the strings of like, I want to make a better life for us. If you knew better, brings real talk from women who've lived it, unpacking career pivots, relationship lessons, and the mindset shifts that changed everything. Listen to if you knew better with Amber Grimes, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

16:50Almost 30 years together, four kids, and some of reality TV's most unforgettable moments, we now with thinker to about living life out loud. We're taking you behind the scenes in our new podcast between us, with me, Heather DeBro. And me, Terry DeBro. But Tween Us isn't about perfect lighting or curated Instagram grids. It's the unfiltered behind closed doors conversations you wish you could eavesdrop on. Equal parts, smart, funny, and a little bit scandalous. Every week, Heather will bring you an unapologetic take on the headlines, the trends, and the cultural moments everyone's texting about. And Terry will deliver insider beauty, health, and wellness insights you won't find on TikTok. Together, we'll tell the stories, spill the secrets, and share the hacks that keep life, marriage, and everything in between feeling fresh and fun. We may live in a gated community, but there's zero gatekeeping here. And plenty of, did they just say that moments? Listen to, between us, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

17:50Welcome to Dirty Rush, the truth about sorority life, the good, the bad, and the sisterhood. With your hosts, me, Gia Judeis, Daisy Kent, and Jennifer Kessler. Rush, the recruitment, the ritual, the reality of Greek life, has been a mystery for those outside the sorority circles, until now. Is it really a supportive sisterhood that's simply misunderstood, or is there something more scandalous happening on campuses across the country? In this podcast, we pledged to peel back the tears and fell at the truth, one Greek letter at a time. Pledges, and active, rush chairs, and ritual keepers, some call it the best time of their life, while others say it's a nightmare. From a perfect rush to recruitment scandals, what is really going on behind the doors of those sorority houses from Alpha to Omega? We're taking you inside sorority row, including the chapter room, as we explore the fellowship in the frontamies. Let's get dirty. Listen to Dirty Rush on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

18:54In the UK, not every NICU is the same. Neonatal units are graded, level 1 through 3, depending on what level of care they are equipped to provide. Jenny Harris, who spent years as a neonatal nurse in the NHS, helped me understand what those levels actually mean. If your hospital has a level 1 neonatal unit, that means that you can just care for babies that just need feeding and growing. Maybe a little help with respiratory support, but only, like, minor respiratory support, like oxygen. Then you have your level 2 unit. They can also take high dependency babies. So these are babies that need, say, CPAP, may need fluids, premature babies up to a certain gestation. And then your level 3 unit is the unit that does everything, so special care, high dependency, all-intensive care babies, whatever they may need. And what they do is,

19:54say there is a baby in a level 1 unit that needs to go to a level 3, then in the transport team, would go to that baby, stabilize the baby, and take it to the hospital that's more equipped to care for that baby. Jenny worked on the transport team. She spent years moving tiny patients from one hospital to another, from one level of care to the next. The Countess of Chester was a level 2 unit. My favorite was going to the level 1s, and the level 2s, because they were so cosy, quiet, they're all, like, decorated nice, and, you know, got pictures on the walls, and selling knitted stuff in a little trolley, like, it's just so lovely, you just go in, and it's just, yeah, it just seems more homely. For the parents, the NICU is both terrifying and miraculous.

20:54It's where the smallest lives fight their biggest battles, a place of constant fear, yes, but also of hope. The unit at the Countess in summer 2015, like many across the UK, is warm and cosy. It cares for premature babies, babies who struggle to breathe, to feed, to grow, and it isn't known for high death rates. From 2011 to 2014, two or three babies died there each year. On paper, it was unremarkable. It's early June, and a set of twins has just been born. They're premature, tiny, but breathing. Their mother has a rare autoimmune condition, which made her pregnancy risky. At seven months,

21:54her twins are born by C-section, and whisked away to the neonatal unit. Here's Michelle again, the nurse that worked at the Countess. They were supposed to be born in London, and the mum had antifosophilipid syndrome, so they delivered her in Chester. The twins are placed in adjoining cuts, tubes for feeding, wires for monitoring. In place of their mother's heartbeat, they now hear something else, monitors, footsteps, hushed voices. The unfamiliar rhythms of the neonatal unit take over. Unlike many American hospitals, where parents can stay around the clock, UK neonatal units are often more nurse-led. Parents come and go. Care continues through the night. And like so many parents in a neonatal ward, the twins' parents were most likely

22:54offered gentle reassurance. The kind meant to steady you when everything feels uncertain. They just need a little more time. They're in the best place. I remember hearing a version of that myself when my daughter was in hospital. We have our best people on it. You're doing great. No promises. No guarantees. Just something soft enough to hold on to. But when nothing feels certain, you hold onto hope and trust. So for the parents of these twins, that trust became heavy, the moment the alarm sounded. Something is wrong. Their baby boy's condition has deteriorated suddenly.

23:59Hours later, they're holding him. Not in the way they had hoped. In a later victim-impact statement, his parents would describe how, quote, we never got to hold our little boy while he was alive. Dr. Jerem was there that night. There was no clear answer he could give the parents. Years later, during his testimony during Lucy Letby's trial, Dr. Jerem would recall the awful conversation he had to have with the parents that night. It was a difficult situation, he'd say. When the first thing you have to tell a family is that, number one, I'm not sure what's going on. And number two, I don't think we're going to be able to bring him back. With their daughters still in intensive care, the parents were forced to do the impossible. To grieve one child, while hoping for the other.

25:01Baby A's nurse, Lucy Letby, makes them a memory box, a lock of hair, a footprint, a tiny knitted hat. Years later, in a court of law, these mementos would take on a very different meaning. One day later, the alarm sounds again. This time, their daughter, the surviving twin, has collapsed. Thankfully, the doctor's intervene in time. Neonatal medicine is a world built on watchfulness. Doctors and nurses are used to things changing suddenly, to alarms, to emergencies, to living in a constant state of readiness. Because these babies are fragile, unbelievably fragile. Here's Jenny again. There's so many things

26:01that can go wrong with preterm babies. They're so sensitive. Even changing their nappy can cause them to have a bleed in their brain. People just don't realize how sensitive these babies are. Like, there's very rare, but it can happen. Most days, they manage to pull babies back from the edge. And then, they're the days that stay with them forever. What happened during those 48 hours, left the nurses and doctors on the unit in shock. Of course, these twins had names, but because the courts ruled that none of the names of the babies in this case could ever be made public, they came to be known as baby A and baby B. One day, the UK justice system would officially recognize baby A as the first known victim of a serial killer nurse.

27:07Now, I want to be careful here, as it's hard for me to truly grasp what these parents lived through. Although I myself have experienced what it's like to have a newborn in the hospital, to then be told that the person you trusted with your baby's life may have been the one who took it. It's unimaginable. And yet, regardless of where the truth ultimately lies, this is the reality these parents have been living inside. When I spoke to Dr. Phil Hammond, who you may remember from Episode 1, we discussed the power of grief, how it forces one to search for answers, and for the parents in this case. The parents supported by the laws are still absolutely convinced of her guilt, because they've spent so much of their life invested in this. Imagine the emotion of the verdict

28:08and all that stuff. Tragically, four days after baby bee collapses, baby C dies, a boy, and eight days after that, a baby girl, baby D. Three deaths and one unexplained collapse in two weeks. Even on a unit where the babies are compromised, this was unusual. The staff tended to see three baby deaths a year. Three in two weeks was a crisis. By the end of that summer, the NICU at the Countess would be forever changed. There were more collapses, more funerals. Parents brought in balloons for milestones only to leave with condolences. And quietly, a question began to swirl amongst the staff.

29:10Why is this happening? So, I remember within the hospital, within our team at handover, it was a regular topic of conversation. These are the words of Dr. Rachel Lamby, read by an actor. They are from transcripts of her testifying at a public inquiry, which was set up right after Lucy Leppie's conviction. This inquiry had a very specific mandate to figure out if Leppie the serial killer could have been stopped sooner. Back in 2015, Dr. Lamby was still a doctor in training. In England, doctors in training are referred to as registrars or junior doctors. Dr. Lamby was one of the first people on the scene when baby A's alarm went off. She was there the next night, too, when his twin sister, baby B, collapsed. By the time baby C and D die, everyone is on high alert.

30:11Here's an actor again reading a section of testimony from Dr. Lamby during the inquiry. I remember on more than one occasion, almost a hot sink feeling of, oh gosh, what's going to happen today? In this moment of crisis, a Fisher begins to form amongst the staff. On one side are the registrars and the nurses. They're looking to the senior doctors in charge, the consultants for answers. On the other side are the consultants. There are seven of them. Together, they're responsible for all of the children who passed through the building, from the most premature of babies to the 17-year-old with a broken leg. Dr. Jerem leads the pediatric department and Dr. Breary, the neonatal unit. The consultants don't have any answers for the sudden spate of baby deaths, but they also don't want the rest of the staff to think they don't have this under control.

31:13Dear Orr, Rachel Lamby came to see me this morning. This is how one of the consultants, Dr. John Gibbs, begins an email to the six others, the day after baby D's death. Here's an actor reading what he wrote. The registrars are very concerned about the recent neonatal deaths and collapses. Rachel also said that all the neonatal nurses are very worried. They feel we ought to be doing something. Although I've mentioned we are looking into this, I'm not sure exactly how this is being done. I think a meeting would be useful, even if we have no answers. In an effort to put the others at ease, Dr. Breary says that he and the head of the neonatal nursing team have carefully gone over the details of the three recent deaths to see if there's anything connecting them. But as he would tell the BBC years later, There was nothing in common that we could pin this three deaths on.

32:20Well, maybe there is one thing. Dr. Breary has gone through the work schedule for the nurses and notices one nurse who has been on duty when all three babies died. The staffing analysis did identify that Lucy Letby was on shift for those three episodes. A pattern starts to emerge. In August, a fourth baby dies. Lucy Letby was his nurse. In September, Lucy Letby is on duty when one of two babies died. In October, another baby, Lucy Letby is on duty again. In December, another. And again, Lucy Letby was there. Eight deaths by the end of the year. Lucy Letby is present for seven. For Dr. Breary, what could be dismissed at first as mere correlation is hardening into a strong basis for suspicion.

33:21A segregation in the day, integration at night. When segregation was the law, one mysterious black club owner had his own rules. We didn't worry about what went on outside. It was like stepping on another world. Inside Charlie's place, black and white people danced together. But not everyone was happy about it. You saw the KKK? Yeah, they was dressed up in that uniform. The KKK set out to raid Charlie, take him away from here. Charlie was an example of power. They had to crush him. From Atlas Obscura, Rococo Punch, and visit Myrtle Beach, comes Charlie's place. A story that was nearly lost to time. Until now, listen to Charlie's Place on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts.

34:22It's the new me, and it's the old them. Everybody's on edge, and your journey's different to this. This woman's history month, the podcast, if you knew better with Amber Grimes, spotlights women who turned missteps into momentum and lessons into power. I think coming out of where I came from, I'm from the Bronx, I think I grew up really poor. I didn't know that then, because I very much used my creativity to romanticize life. My mom did a really good job of like, you step back and you're like, whoa, we, I don't know how we made it. So, a lot of my life was like, built out of like, survival to get to the next place. Like, my drive, my like tunnel vision of like, I gotta be better, I gotta achieve this, was off the strings of like, I wanna make a better life for us. If you knew better, brings real talk from women who've lived it. Unpacking career pivots, relationship lessons, and the mindset shifts that changed everything. Listen to if you knew better with Amber Grimes on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Almost 30 years together,

35:23four kids and some of reality TV's most unforgettable moments, we now with thinker to about living life out loud. We're taking you behind the scenes in our new podcast, Between Us, with me, Heather DeBro. And me, Terry DeBro. Between Us, isn't about perfect lighting or curated Instagram grids. It's the unfiltered behind closed doors conversations you wish you could eavesdrop on. Equal parts smart, funny, and a little bit scandalous. Every week, Heather will bring you an unapologetic take on the headlines, the trends, and the cultural moments everyone's texting about. And Terry will deliver insider beauty, health, and wellness insights you won't find on TikTok. Together, we'll tell the stories, spill the secrets, and share the hacks that keep life, marriage, and everything in between feeling fresh and fun. We may live in a gated community, but there's zero gatekeeping here. And plenty of, did they just say that moments? Listen to, between us, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Dirty Rush, the truth about sorority life,

36:24the good, the bad, and the sisterhood. With your host, me, Gia Judeis, Daisy Kent, and Jennifer Kessler. Rush, the recruitment, the ritual, the reality of Greek life, has been a mystery for those outside the sorority circles, until now. Is it really a supportive sisterhood? Is it a supportive sisterhood that's simply misunderstood? Or is there something more scandalous happening on campuses across the country? In this podcast, we pledged to peel back the layers and spelled the truth, one Greek letter at a time. Pledges, and actives, rush chairs, and ritual keepers. Some call it the best time of their life, while others say it's a nightmare. From a perfect rush to recruitment scandals, what is really going on behind the doors of those sorority houses from Alpha to Omega? We're taking you inside sorority row, including the chapter room, as we explore the fellowship in the frontamies. Let's get dirty. Listen to dirty rush on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'd like to speak to the families.

37:25Sorry. Sorry for my part in not being able to protect your babies. I tried my best, and I acknowledged that at times, my best was not good enough. That's an actor reading from transcripts of Dr. Breary, testifying at the inquiry about a year and a half ago. He looks much older now. Older perhaps than you might expect the rosy-cheaked doctor in the light-hearted fundraising videos to be. The toll of the last ten years is clearly visible in his appearance. Dr. Breary was the first of the consultants to notice a correlation between Lucy Letby's work shifts and the deaths of babies. The way he says he remembers it, it had actually been the head of the neonatal nurses, Arian Powell, who had pointed the correlation out to him, and that his instinctive reaction had been to say, oh no, not Lucy, not nice Lucy.

38:26He was asked about this at the inquiry. Well, your mind jumped to something to say, oh no, didn't it? Yes. What did it jump to? The concern that there might be somebody harming babies. Yeah. As the number of deaths kept climbing, and Lucy Letby kept being there when they happened, the association, as he would take to calling it, would come to dominate Dr. Breary's mind. It would also put him at loggerheads with the nursing leader, who he had said, had originally pointed out the association to him, and who was Lucy Letby's boss. To the nursing leader, Arian Powell, the correlation with Letby's shifts told them nothing about why these babies had died. And in email to Dr. Breary after yet another death, she wrote, it is unfortunate that she was on. However, each cause of death was different, some were poorly prior to their arrival on the unit.

39:26There was no evidence there. Your evidence was dead children. Well, dead children. Yes. As more and more babies die, there are more meetings and more reviews by Breary and Powell. These discussions grow to include others, the nursing manager for the whole hospital, a neonatologist from a top hospital in Liverpool, who is friends with Dr. Breary, but always with Breary and Powell arguing from opposite ends, which Powell was grilled about at the inquiry. Letby was protected because she occupied an intersection between two things. She was a nurse who was being criticised by the doctors, and she was a nurse who you liked. And that's why she was protected, isn't it? I think you're mistaken, liking with actually supporting your staff. Powell points to other factors. Several of the babies had unsurvivable birth defects.

40:27Many others had serious worsening infections by the time they died. All but one of the babies had autopsies, none of which flagged anything suspicious. In those meeting rooms, two stories kept colliding, and for a long time, the discussions continued. But then, in June 2016, just over a year since the death of baby A, a set of triplet brothers are born at the Countess. They've been naturally conceived and are identical, sharing the same placenta, an incredibly rare thing, the kind of thing that only happens once every 200 million births. The triplets are born at 33 weeks by C-section, and sent straight to the neonatal unit. Their parents are told not to worry.

41:29The babies just need some time to grow. But on the brothers' second day of life, their parents are confronted with a scene of total chaos. One of the triplets is having a very serious medical crisis. His stomach is swollen. His dad would later say during his testimony in court E.T. stomach like a pot belly. The doctors tell the parents they don't know what's going on, but they are trying their best to save him. At one point, the dad would recall it was like they were trying anything. The doctors aren't able to save him, and the baby boy dies. The next day, the second of the triplets die. In a scene so similar and chaotic to the day before, that the mother during the trial

42:30would later describe it as deja vu. She would remember a young doctor, quote, googling what to do. In two days, two of their babies have died. The parents plead to have their surviving son transferred to a different hospital. For Dr. Breary, it was obvious what had happened. Lucy Letby had murdered both boys. She'd been on duty both days and been put in charge of both babies. Dr. Breary would later tell the police about the way Lucy Letby had smiled and said hello to him the morning before the first triplet had died. He would wonder out loud if she'd been taunting him. After these two deaths, the management knew they had to make changes. There was no more discussion to be had.

43:30After this incident, after the deaths of Owen P. Yes, murders we now know. They agreed to get Letby off the unit. She shipped off to a back office in another department at the hospital and given an excuse to cover up the real reason for the move. That all the neonatal nurses would be moved out for a period of time and she was just the first one up. So the consultants get what they want. Lucy Letby off the unit. But the hospital executives aren't finished. They too are concerned about the spike in baby deaths but think the explanation lies elsewhere. They see an overburdened unit and believe they should hit the pause button on taking in so many babies, especially ones that are so vulnerable. The managers agreed to remove Letby on the condition that the unit also be downgraded. They downgraded the unit to a level one,

44:33which was in June 2016. A level one unit is basically just special care. So you're not taking any sick babies at all. You do, of course, always still get sick babies because you can't predict what's coming into the maternity doors. But the sickest babies and the ones who are especially premature would now be transferred to bigger, more specialized hospitals straight after birth. It's really frustrating for me when I hear people saying, well, after they took Lucy off, there was no more deaths. Well, that's true, but there was no more sick babies either. On top of this, management invites the medical body responsible for all pediatric care in the United Kingdom to come in and investigate. These are not easy compromises for the doctors.

45:34Downgrading the unit would be a hit to their reputation and they worry they will lose skills. They also feel they already had an answer for why so many babies are dying in their unit. Lucy Letby was murdering them. This didn't need more medical reviews. It needed the police. Despite the consultant's allegations that Lucy Letby was on shift for each death, the review finds those beliefs to be based on gut feelings. The report states that, quote, there was no other evidence or history to link Nurse L to the deaths, and her colleagues had expressed no concerns about her practice. This was a subjective view with no other evidence or reports of clinical concerns about the nurse beyond the simple correlation, end, quote. Rather than supporting the doctor's suspicions, the final report points out other issues

46:34that needed to be dealt with on the understaffed, underfunded, overwhelmed unit. For the consultants, things seem to go from bad to worse. Lucy Letby eventually finds out why she's been suddenly removed from the unit because the consultants thought she was murdering babies. She files a grievance saying the hospital has not been honest about the reason for her redeployment and that the doctors had bullied and harassed her. She wins that grievance. The doctors are forced to apologize to her. They are told that she will be coming back. That is more than they can accept. The same month that Lucy Letby is set to return, Dr. Jerem asks for a meeting with the head of HR. And in that meeting, he tells her a hair-raising tale that changed everything.

47:34That is a night that is etched on my memory and will be in my nightmares forever. This is Dr. Jerem on ITV News, describing how he had once walked in on Lucy Letby, trying to murder a baby. Part of me was saying, you better go in and just check everything's okay because you know what's happened before when Lucy's been on duty. It had happened a year earlier, but Dr. Jerem hadn't told anybody in management until now. Lucy Letby was standing over a baby and the baby was struggling to breathe. As the baby was gasping for air, Lucy Letby was doing nothing to help. What was she doing? What was she just standing there? This scene right out of a horror movie is finally enough to get the police involved. How Lucy is it? I don't mind.

48:34Just please. What was clear at that point was that Lucy Letby was the consistent in all this. She was the thread running through them all. That's next time on Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby. Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, is brought to you by Vespucci, I Heart Podcasts, and Nox Robinson Productions. I've been your host, Amanda Nox. This episode was written by Joe Meek, Lucy De Oliveira, and Natalia Rodriguez. The co-producers were Lucy De Oliveira and Lucy Ditchman. Senior producer is Natalia Rodriguez. Audio mix by Tom Biddle. The theme music was written by Tom Biddle. Story editing by Kathleen Goldhar. Legal advice was provided by Jack Browning.

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