Ep 64-Lucy Letby (Part 3) When Doubt Meets A Verdict and Introducing Mary Beth

A verdict can be final in court and still deserve careful re-testing in public life, especially when the case depends on complex medicine most jurors can only access through experts. We’re back for the third and final part of our Lucy Letby series, and we’re focusing on what happens after conviction: the questions that keep surfacing about expert evidence, hospital failures, and whether the legal story fully matches the scientific one. 

If you care about justice, patient safety, and how courts handle medical uncertainty, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who follows true crime, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What piece of evidence do you think juries tend to overweight in cases like this?

RESOURCES
https://www.amandaknox.com/doubt-lucy-letby

Amanda Knox | Italy, Murder, Foxy Knoxy, Meredith Kercher, & Biography | Britannica 

Knox v. Italy 

https://www.amandaknox.com/legalupdates.html

https://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c2100.full

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/nurse-tells-of-living-hell-after-saline-death-charges-are-dropped-2348400.html

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/r-v-chua-sentencing.pdf

https://ccrc.gov.uk/decision/norris-colin/

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Campbell-Final-Judgment.pdf

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/air-embolism

https://adc.bmj.com/content/64/4_Spec_No/507

R -v- Letby Final Judgment - 02.07.24 

RSS - RSS statement on the statistical aspects of the Lucy Letby case 

C-Peptide Test: MedlinePlus Medical Test 

Evidence used to convict Lucy Letby is flawed, leading experts say | UK news | The Guardian 

‘Impossible’ Insulin to C-Peptide Ratios are Common in Insulin-Free Pre-term NICU Infants: Antibodies Act as a Storage Medium - J. Geoffrey Chase, Helen D. Shannon, 2026 

Lucy Letby's barrister hands fresh evidence reports to CCRC - Maltin PR 

Lucy Letby: No medical evidence to suggest murder, experts conclude | The BMJ 

A British Nurse Was Found Guilty of Killing Seven Babies. Did She Do It? | The New Yorker 

https://www.bmj.com/content/393/bmj.s787?utm_source

https://news.sky.com/story/three-members-of-lucy-letby-hospitals-senior-leadership-team-arrested-13390882

Transcript

Daycare Germs And Mom Math

SPEAKER_04 0:54

Amanda. Hello, Jenna. Hello.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

How the heck are you? Hello. Good. Hi. How are you? I was like, can you hear my baby crying? But I didn't see it getting picked up. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Oh no. He just wanted to say hello. Hello, baby Ellie Cat.

SPEAKER_04 1:14

You're getting big and cute. I saw a little dimply Elvis Sneer photo today that just made me want to just crumble up. The cuteness is too much.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

We have survived our first daycare illness. Love that for us. So that was a really fun weekend. He was sick. And then, you know, I thought, hey, breast milk, he can get antibodies from me. So I'm like putting my face all in his, right? Like in theory, this sounds like a great idea. And I was just like up in his face, like, give me your sickness so I can help heal you, you know. And um You're trying to breathe in his germs to come out your breast milk. So I can build antibodies for him.

SPEAKER_04 2:01

Oh my god, you're so they're so sweet, man.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

Okay, so I was sicker than a freaking dog yesterday.

SPEAKER_04 2:10

Oh, you were sick yesterday. So you intentionally got your child's illness. And did you build those antibodies in a day? Well, you know, he's healed.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

I felt like okay. I don't know if it's because his just had been so many days past, because right, so like I got sick on a Tuesday, like Monday night into Tuesday, and he was sick Saturday, Sunday. It started feeling better Monday. So like when he started feeling better, I was so sick. So I don't know, but it was horrible. I was throwing up, chills, body, you know, like body aches where you crack like your back or your neck or something, and it feels like you broke a bone. That's where I was at. And I told you my colleagues, do you know what really adds insult to injury when you're sick is that you still have to get up and pump. Yeah, there's no day off for a new mama. So anyway, we're all fine here now, doing good, but so what's your final thought on whether or not that worked?

SPEAKER_04 3:18

Do you think it worked or did it run its course and you is you just got sick?

Returning To Lucy Letby Finale

SPEAKER_02 3:22

I don't know because I feel like mine was so many days after his. So I'm like thinking about incubation period and such. So I'm like, did I just coincidentally get sick around the same time and it wasn't even what he had? No, but what if what if it was what he had? Do you think it helped him get better? Or was it too delayed? Maybe. I mean, and like I know we have male listeners who probably and a female too who probably don't want to hear about my breast milk, but I'm just saying, you guys, I'll say it really quick. Like you guys, it looked watery. So, like, if people are sick, they're dehydrated, right? Yeah, yeah, anyway, enough about breast milk. I'm not sure what that means, but it had healing properties, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_04 4:05

Yes. Oh, okay, yes. Wow. Well, you know what I think you should do is a medical or a chart note and give us more information about that. Oh yeah. Yeah, I'll do that next week because it's finally gonna be my turn. I think curious minds would want to know. Finally, I know I've been hogging the airwaves. Anyhoosal, we're back with part three of Miss Lucy Letby. Part three and final three. Please make it the final three of Lucy Let Bee. So we were supposed to record when when Dr. House was super ill. And so I was like, are we ever gonna get done with Lucy? Because we've been talking about her, I feel like for way too long. So I'm so grateful that you're feeling better. And sorry that I was mourning the fact that I couldn't get this off my to-do list, but here we are. The majority of the information that we cover in these episodes will be listed in our show notes, which brings me to the correction section item. I forgot to post resources for the first two Lucy episodes. I was looking back to go, oh, I should probably include what I did for the first one and the second one. I was like, I didn't put them out there. So they're out there now. Nobody's been clamoring at my doorstep like, I need resources now, but give me the resources. I will say they are fascinating reads. So if you want more detail, I had to leave so much out. There are actual court documents, all kinds of things that you might find interesting, along with documentaries and podcasts. So, you know, if you want to go as deep a dive as I did and go a little bit nuts, go for it. You'll have those resources. So um, but before we start, I want to put out an important disclaimer. Lucy Lepbe remains legally convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others. Her convictions currently stand unless overturned by a court. So these episodes discuss both the prosecution case and the post-conviction questions that were raised by doctors, statisticians, journalists, legal commentators, and Lepbe's current legal team. The families of the babies remain at the center of this case. And the purpose of revisiting the evidence is not to minimize their loss in any way, but it's just to examine whether the convictions are safe. So today isn't about declaring Lucy Leppy innocent. The court's already declared her guilty. Today is about asking whether the conviction is safe.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

Which is a very different question.

SPEAKER_04 6:34

Very different. And in a case this emotional, we have to hold two things at once. The families deserve compassion, truth, and justice. And justice is not protected by refusing to question a conviction, it's protected by testing it. But first, let's talk about our first sponsor. This is our facial in a bottle. Amroutini Luminosity Dewdrops. Doesn't that sound amazing?

SPEAKER_02 6:57

I I I just I I hear this when I hear you say that.

SPEAKER_04 7:02

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SPEAKER_02 7:13

Um, you still have a driver's license.

Resources Disclaimer And First Sponsor

SPEAKER_04 7:18

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SPEAKER_02 9:05

Oh, I think it might be, oh, I don't know, stay suspicious.

SPEAKER_04 9:09

Suspicious.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

Stay suspicious.

SPEAKER_04 9:13

So previously on Lucy Leadby, before we dive into episode three, let's do a quick recap of where we left off. In part one, we talked about Lucy's background, her ordinary childhood, her path into nursing, her work on the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital, and the horrifying series of baby collapses and deaths that began in 2015 and continued into 2016. At first, the collapses were not automatically treated as crimes. This was a neonatal unit, after all. I mean, these were premature and medically fragile babies, but over time, some consultants began to feel that the pattern didn't fit normal, normal clinical deterioration. Lucy Lepbe's name kept appearing in the background. She was present for many of the events. Consultants raised concerns. Hospital leadership was slow to escalate those concerns outside the hospital. Letby was eventually removed from the neonatal unit in July 2016 and given administrative duties. But the police were not brought in until May of 2017, almost a year later. So part one ended with the case finally moving from an internal hospital crisis into a criminal investigation.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

And part two took us through the investigation, trial, verdicts, and her sentencing.

SPEAKER_04 10:30

Right. The prosecution argued that Lepbee deliberately harmed babies in several ways by injecting air, forcing air or milk into babies, physical trauma, and insulin poisoning. They relied on medical evidence, shift patterns, nursing notes, Facebook searches, handover sheets, and Lepbe's own handwritten notes. The defense argued that the prosecution was turning a failing neonatal unit and medically fragile babies into a murder narrative. They pointed to natural illness, poor care, staffing issues, hospital failures, and the danger of building suspicion backwards around one nurse. In 2023, Lepbe was convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting attempting to murder others. She received whole life orders. Then, after a retrial involving baby Kay, she was convicted of another attempted murder and received a whole nother whole life order. The CPS later described her, and that's CPS's Crown Prosecuting Service or Crown Prosecution Service. Later described her as serving 15 whole life prison terms with no possibility of release.

SPEAKER_02 11:34

So at this point, then the public story seems pretty settled.

Amanda Knox And Public Certainty

SPEAKER_04 11:38

Yeah, I mean the court spoke, the sentence was final, and the headlines were horrifying. But after the verdict, new questions began to build around the medical evidence, the stats, and the hospital's conduct, the investigation, and whether or not the jury actually heard enough competing expert testimony to fully test the prosecution's case. So by the end of part two, we were left with two truths sitting side by side. One, Lucy Leppy is legally convicted. And two, serious questions are now being arrayed, now being raised about whether that conviction is safe.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

And that must bring us to where episode three begins.

SPEAKER_04 12:14

Yep. So today we're moving beyond the trial narrative and into the doubt. We're going to talk about Amanda Knox's podcast and why she sees warning signs in the Lepbe case. We're going to look at other medical murder cases involving nurses, including Lucia De Burke, Rebecca Leighton, and Colin Norris. And then we're going to get into the newer developments: air embolism, insulin evidence, the hospital leadership investigation, the CCRC review, and the third wall inquiry status. Because the question isn't just did something terrible happen on the neonatal unit? Because absolutely something terrible happened. But the question now is whether the legal explanation for that tragedy is the right one.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

Okay. So before we get into Amanda Knox's podcast about Lucy Leppy, I think maybe can we remind people who Amanda Knox is? Because depending on your age, you may either remember this case vividly or you may only know her name as like a true crime headline. So I think chat about it.

SPEAKER_04 13:12

Yeah. And we should be clear about why I'm including her in this conversation about Lucy. So Amanda Knox is not weighing in on Lucy Leppy as a neonatal expert. She's she's not a British criminal lawyer. She's not someone who can look at insulin, C peptide, air embolism, or neonatal charts and solve the medical side of the case, but she is relevant because Amanda Knox knows what it feels like to become the villain in a story before the facts are fully understood. In 2007, Knox was a 20-year-old American exchange student living in Perugia, Italy. Her roommate, Meredith Kircher, was murdered in the apartment that they shared. Knox and her then boyfriend, Raffaele Soyecito, were accused of the murder, and the case became an international media obsession almost immediately. Knox was twice convicted and twice acquitted. In 2015, Italy's highest court declared that Knox and Soyecito had nothing to do with Meredith Kircher's murder. Rudy Guede was separately convicted in the case. Knox spent almost four years in prison before that final exoneration.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

And her name became bigger than facts for a while.

SPEAKER_04 14:27

Yeah, absolutely. The media didn't just cover Amanda Knox, it turned her into a character, like her facial expressions, her sexuality, her emotional reactions, her nickname, her behavior after Meredith's death. All of it became part of a public story about what kind of woman she supposedly was. So the question stopped being, what does the evidence show? And it became, does she seem guilty? And that's where the connection to Lucy Leppy starts, because in both cases, the public was asked to interpret a young woman's behavior under impossible pressure. Did she cry enough? Did she cry too much? Was she calm because she was innocent, or was she calm because she was cold? Was she strange because she was guilty, or strange because trauma makes people strange? So she couldn't win for losing. Amanda Knox knows what it's like for ordinary human behavior to be turned into evidence of evil.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

First and foremost, can I just say I absolutely hate that about the social media access, right? Like that everyone can just down to the smallest minutiae.

SPEAKER_04 15:27

Mm-hmm. Overanalyze everything.

SPEAKER_02 15:29

Yeah. Criticize everything, yep.

SPEAKER_04 15:33

Micro expressions is even a thing now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

Yes. Ah, yeah. So anyway, that aside, um, so Amanda Knox was not cleared of every legal issue connected to the case, though, right?

SPEAKER_04 15:45

Yeah, that's right. She was definitively cleared of Meredith Kircher's murder, but there was a remaining slander conviction tied to her false accusation of another person, Patrick Lumumba, during police questioning. So in 2019, the European Court of Human Rights found violations connected to the questioning, including lack of access to legal assistance and problems with interpretation. And I read the actual court rulings and records. She imagine she doesn't speak Italian. She's getting arrested for she doesn't know what. Her. Sorry, I murdered her. Um, and she never said that. So I mean, there was a lot of back and forth that was like, what on earth in this kind of a crucial situation was she given the rights? And so she, even though they found the process lacking in a lot of issues, she was still convicted of slander. So I don't know why or how that worked, but this isn't about all of that. But I it is to say that she went through so much, you know, impugning behavior without any actual evidence. Not without any, but without with circumstantial evidence. And so she knows what it's like to be judged by social media rather, and the court of opinion, really. So I think that's why her perspective is so useful. I mean, she's not a perfect victim, you know. She she has this slander conviction, but wrongful conviction cases are messy. People under pressure make confusing statements, they behave strangely strangely, they panic, they contradict themselves, they might be traumatized, sleep deprived, badly advised, or misunderstood. And so once the public decides what kind of person they are, every ambiguous detail starts pointing in the same direction.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

Yeah, or they might have uh, I don't know, an interpreter that just says what they want to say. Amanda Knox can definitely weigh in on the machinery of suspicion.

SPEAKER_04 17:54

Yeah. I mean, so we know not the neonatal medicine, but the machinery. She can weigh in on what happens when police, prosecutors, experts, media, and the public all begin building one story. And that's how her podcast frames the Lucy Leppy case. Amanda Knox hosts a podcast called, she has a couple of podcasts, but this one in particular is called Doubt, the case of Lucy Lepbee. And the official iHeart description asks whether the case is really as open and shut as the world believes, or whether there may be room for reasonable doubt. Her own website frames the show around the question of whether everything is clear, as clear as it seems.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

So we're not saying Amanda Knox gets to declare Lucy Leppy innocent just from her experience.

SPEAKER_04 18:41

Right. So she won't overturn convictions, a podcast doesn't replace a jury, and Lucy Leppy remains legally convicted unless and until a court says otherwise. But she's relevant because she understands the danger of certainty. She understands how a young woman can become a symbol and how public disgust can harden into proof. She understands how the media can flatten a complicated case into an unforgettable label. So in her case, it was the foreign exchange student turned tabloid villain. In let me's case, it's the baby killer nurse. Different facts, different country, different legal system, different evidence. But the warning is similar. Once the story becomes so simple, it becomes very hard to hear anything that complicates it.

SPEAKER_02 19:26

And so just to be clear, Amanda Knox's role here is not to solve the let be case.

SPEAKER_04 19:32

Correct. I mean, her role is to ask the uncomfortable process questions. Was this as clear as the headlines made it sound? Does the public confuse horror with proof? Were strange behaviors interpreted through a guilt filter? Did the jury hear enough competing expert evidence? I mean, we talked about last episode how there was an expert that wasn't called that the defense didn't call to testify in her behalf. Did the jury, and so the jury didn't hear that? So did they hear enough competing expert evidence? Did the hospital's failures become part of the prosecution story, or did they get pushed to the background? And most importantly, when a conviction is this emotionally powerful, are we still willing to test whether it's safe?

SPEAKER_02 20:14

Yeah. And so I think that this is why her voice belongs in the conversation.

SPEAKER_04 20:20

Yeah, not because she knows what happened inside the Countess of Chester Neonatal Unit, but because she knows what can happen when the world thinks it already knows what happened. So before we go deeper into Lucy Leppby, I want to widen the lens. So Lucy Leppby is not the first nurse to be accused of being a serial killer because patients collapsed or died during her shifts. And she's not the first healthcare worker whose case has raised uncomfortable questions about statistics, medical uncertainty, expert evidence, and how suspicion hardened into certainty. So we need to talk about three other names. Lucia De Burke, Rebecca Leighton, and Colin Norris.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

I'm gonna have to cancel my next episode because uh you're gonna cover one of them.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

I'm just kidding. You guys.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

She got she got so wide-eyed, you guys. No, I'm just kidding. Um, so all the three that you just named, they're not all the same kind of cases, right?

Other Nurse Cases As Warnings

SPEAKER_04 21:16

No, no, they're not. And I was like, you know what? I'll give it up. This is a long one. I'll give you one of these, whichever one you want to take. But yeah, that was funny. We haven't done that before, and we don't actually have a system of knowing what we're gonna talk about. So yeah, so far. All right, so I'm not saying this person's innocent, therefore Lucy Leppy's innocent. That's not how evidence works. But these cases show how dangerous medical criminal cases can become when fragile patients, unexpected deaths, incomplete information, and institutional pressure all collide. I mean, hospitals are full of vulnerable people, patients deteriorate, lab results can be confusing, staff work under pressure, notes are incomplete, memories shift, patterns can emerge for innocent reasons, guilty reasons, or reasons that no one understands at the time. And once one healthcare worker becomes the explanation, every ambiguous detail can start to bend towards guilt. So the first comparison case is Lucia de Burke. Lucia de Burke was a Dutch pediatric nurse. For a while, she was treated as one of the most frightening serial killer nurses in Europe. She was convicted of murdering patients in her care, including children and elderly patients, and attempting to murder others. The case began with a cluster of patients that were dying or collapsing. And Lucia's name appeared repeatedly on the Rhoda. Colleagues became suspicious. Investigators looked backwards at deaths and medical emergencies from hospitals where she'd worked. And once she became the focus, the pattern seemed overwhelming.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

That sounds pretty uncomfortably familiar, does it not?

SPEAKER_04 22:58

It sure does. So the prosecution argued that it could not be coincidence that so many incidents happened while she was on duty. One statistic presented in the case suggested that the odds were astronomically low, reported as 342 million to one. And so that number became part of the public mythology of the case. And then came the personality evidence. Which isn't really evidence, but come on. They yeah, I hate that. Lucia was, yeah, that yet your personality is evidence you could be guilty. But she was portrayed as odd. Her diaries were interpreted darkly. Her interest in tarot cards was treated as suspicious. The public was given a story that felt coherent. Strange nurse, vulnerable patients, unexplained deaths, and impossible coincidence. So she was convicted. In 2004, after appeal, she was convicted of seven murders and three attempted murders. But then the case started to fall apart. Statisticians challenged the probability claims. Doctors and scientists questioned the medical evidence. Some incidents, originally treated as suspicious, were later understood differently. Cases that had looked like poisonings were re-examined. The supposed pattern was not as clean as it had appeared. In 2010, Lucia De Burke was acquitted. The British Medical Journal described her case as one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Dutch history and reported that her convictions, her seven murders, and three attempted murders had been quashed after she spent six years serving a life sentence.

SPEAKER_02 24:34

So serial killer nurse was a wrong story.

SPEAKER_04 24:38

And the scariest part is that it had felt right to a lot of people. Lucia's case shows how easily unexplained can quietly become criminal. A patient dies unexpectedly, and then another, a nurse's name keeps appearing, and those stats make the pattern feel impossible. And then if their personality doesn't match what people think is normative, then that person becomes sinister. So by the time experts start taking the case apart, the public has already decided what who the monster is supposed to be.

SPEAKER_02 25:07

I just hate that so much. So Lucia DeBurke does not tell us Lucy Latvie is innocent.

SPEAKER_04 25:15

No, but I think it's a helpful warning because you know it's a case of a nurse that's present at repeated emergencies, and they can be present at repeated emergencies, but not necessarily because they cause them. She could be present because she works a lot, or she's assigned to fragile patients, or she raises alarms more quickly than others, or because investigators start with a suspect and then build the data set around that person. So that's why the denominator matters. We need to know how many total shifts were worked, how many total collapses happened, which events were included, which events were left out, who decided what counted as suspicious. So a spreadsheet can look devastating, but if the spreadsheet's built after suspicions already landed on one person, it's a mirror reflecting the assumptions that built it. Okay, and then there's Rebecca Leighton. Her case is different from Lucia De Burke's because at Stepping Hill Hospital, there really was a poisoning crisis. In 2011, patients at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport were suffering unexplained episodes of dangerously low blood sugar. Investigators believed that saline products had been contaminated with insulin. So Rebecca Leighton, a nurse at the hospital, was arrested. She was 27 years old. She was suspected of tampering with saline solution. She spent weeks in custody, and her name became publicly linked to one of the most frightening hospital investigations in the UK. And then the charges were dropped. Sky News reported that Leighton had been held in custody for six weeks after being suspected of tampering with the saline, but suddenly they were dropped.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

So there was a real poisoning event then, but she was not the person that was convicted. Right.

SPEAKER_04 26:54

So that's a lesson. Years later, another nurse, Victorina Chua, was convicted. In 2015, he was convicted of murdering two patients, poisoning 19 others, and attempting to poison seven more. This I know. The sentencing remarks said Chua injected insulin into saline bags and ampules. Those contaminated products were then unknowingly used in patient care by other nurses.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

Sheesh, that changes how you look at the old the nurse at the bedside.

SPEAKER_04 27:23

Right. So in a hospital poisoning case, the person present when the patient crashes may not be the poisoner. The nurse who hangs the bag of saline may not know that that bag has been contaminated. The person whose fingerprints are on the equipment may have touched it because touching that equipment is their job. So Rebecca Leighton's story is a warning about proximity because being close to a medical emergency doesn't automatically mean that you caused it. And in a hospital, proximity can be misleading because everyone's work overlaps. Nurses administer medications, they check lines, they respond to alarms, they handle charts, they touch equipment, they cover for one another, they enter and leave rooms constantly.

SPEAKER_02 28:02

Exactly. So the old she was there cannot carry more weight than it actually can hold.

SPEAKER_04 28:08

100%, because being there can be part of a case, but it's not the same thing as proof. So Rebecca Leighton's life was turned upside down before investigators reached the actual person who should be convicted. So this doesn't map perfectly onto Lucy Leppy, but it reminds us that a real hospital crime can still exist while suspicion initially lands on the wrong nurse. So when people say something clearly bad happened on that ward, that's true, but it doesn't answer who caused it. Okay, the third and final comparison is Colin Norris, who goes by Colin Campbell now. And this is not one of exoneration. This story is one where Colin Norris remains convicted. In 2008, he was convicted of murdering four elderly patients and attempting to murder a fifth while working as a nurse in Leeds. The prosecution case was that the patient suffered severe hypoglycemia, which is dangerously low blood sugar because he had administered insulin. So again, we're in the world of insulin: fragile patients, a nurse, a cluster, and an expert interpretation. The CCRC later summarized the case against Norris as circumstantial and heavily reliant on expert opinion evidence. The prosecution argued that spontaneous hypoglycemia was extremely rare and that it was extraordinary to have a cluster of cases in one place, and that Norris's presence was a common factor. Norris denied wrongdoing.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

I'm not going to go down a rabbit hole here, but I just have to mention that this nurse that I used to work with said that she used to tell her husband if he ever acts up, she knows how to kill him without getting caught. And she would inject insulin into his scalp while he was sleeping. Oh my God.

SPEAKER_04 29:50

So I love the detail there, his scalp.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

Yeah, she was like, they won't even see the needle prick in your scalp. So anyway, I just we've been talking about insulin so much lately, so I had to mention that. But anyway. That's so funny. Back to this case, the legal shape of the case definitely has similarities, even if the facts are different.

SPEAKER_04 30:10

Yeah. Well, that's clever though, doing it in the scalp, so it can't be protected. Listen, don't yeah, don't do that, Ally Cats. But if you are gonna be a murderer, like be that clever. Okay, all right. Oh gosh. So yeah, this is similar. I mean, except we're talking about older patients instead of babies and orthopedic wards instead of neonatal units. But different hospitals, different victims, different evidence. But the structure overlaps because here you have a cluster of unexplained medical events where a healthcare worker was repeatedly present, experts saying that the natural explanation was extremely unlikely, and a jury asked to decide whether medicine had become murder. So years later, the medical assumptions came under renewed scrutiny. The CCRC referred the case back to the Court of Appeal in 2021, but in June 2025, the Court of Appeal held, upheld the conviction.

SPEAKER_02 31:08

So Colin Norris is not another Lucia De Burke.

SPEAKER_04 31:12

Right. So he's not a proven wrongful conviction. But his case belongs in the conversation because I it just shows how much these prosecutions can depend on medical knowledge at a particular moment in time. So at trial, the prosecution represented spontaneous hypoglycemia in elderly patients as extraordinarily rare. And later, experts argued that that medical picture was more complicated. And though, even though the conviction survived, the case shows how rare is not the same as impossible and how medical science can move after a jury's already reached its verdict.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

I am just still so curious why, excuse me, they did not have the medical expert testify. I still want to know that. But for Lucy.

SPEAKER_04 32:01

Yeah, because in both Norris and Lepi, the insulin evidence played a role. I mean, lab results and expert interpretation created a sense of certainty. But medical certainty can shift when there's new research, better data, or different expertise enters the room. Just like, you know, years ago, if you're if you know, you were arrested for murder in the 70s and 80s, and now we have DNA that we can run, and it turns out they weren't involved. You know, like we we have to keep up with the pace of discovery, right? But that, you know, is in direct competition with a courtroom that needs and needs and wants finality. So here we have medicine constantly asking questions, and then the courtroom that wants black and white finality. And we've brought this up in our many episodes in the past, but that's the tension that's at the center of a lot of these cases.

SPEAKER_02 32:51

Yeah, absolutely. So what do these three cases give us then? Tell us. Tell us.

SPEAKER_04 32:58

They give us they give us warning lights. I mean, Lucia De Burke warns us about stats, hindsight, personality evidence, and the danger of turning medical uncertainty into a murder narrative. And Rebecca Leighton's case warns us that suspicion and blame can initially land on the wrong nurse. And Colin Norris warns us that convictions based heavily on expert medical interpretation might later face serious scientific challenges, even if the legal result doesn't change. So none of that clears Lucy Lepbee, but it changes the way we listen. Because now when we hear Lucy Leppby was always there, we should ask what the full rota showed. And by the way, I don't know, non-medical people, rota is it's a roster of people that are on duty and what they're on duty for, where where they're supposed to be, what they're supposed to be doing. So when we hear the babies collapsed in unusual ways, we should ask what else can cause a collapse and those signs. And when we hear the insulin results prove poisoning, we should ask what kind of test was used. What could it reliably show? And whether the jury heard the full scientific debate. When we hear she wrote something that sounded like a confession, we should ask what else was on the page? What state was she in? Was distress being mistaken for guilt?

SPEAKER_02 34:15

Yeah, absolutely. And it's not about ignoring evidence. I think it's about asking how much weight each piece can safely carry.

Operation Duet And CPS Limits

SPEAKER_04 34:24

Yeah, that's a better way to frame doubt. Doubt's not disrespect, it's the method, especially when someone is serving a whole life order and the case rests on medicine that most jurors and most people can't evaluate without expert guidance. So let's talk about the hospital itself. One of the newer developments in this case is not about Lucy Leppby directly, it's about the people running the Countess of Chester Hospital during the period when babies were collapsing and dying. After her conviction, Cheshire police opened a separate investigation called Operation Duet. The investigation looks at the hospital's leadership and whether decisions made by senior people could amount to corporate manslaughter or gross negligent manslaughter. In 2025, three former members of the hospital's senior leadership team were arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter. Then in April 2026, as I was writing this script, there was another major development. So quick shout out to Friend of the Pod, Richard Marsh, for sending me the news article about this. A former senior manager, a countess of Chester Hospital, was arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice as part of Operation Duet. The British Medical Journal reported that the unnamed manager was one of three former bosses previously arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter, and that Operation Duet was looking at suspicions of corporate manslaughter and gross negligence manslaughter connected to the deaths of newborns at the hospital in 2015 and 2016.

SPEAKER_02 35:54

Perverting the course of justice is not just bad management.

SPEAKER_04 35:59

Right? It's serious. It's a serious allegation. But we need to say this clearly: an arrest isn't a charge, and a charge is not a conviction. That person that there was arrested is entitled to the presumption of innocence. We don't know what evidence the police have. We don't know whether anyone will be prosecuted, but the arrest pulls hospital leadership further into the center of the story. Because when someone connected to hospital management is arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice, it raises questions about whether info was handled properly, whether the institution was transparent, and whether their response to the deaths and collapses were part of the problem.

SPEAKER_02 36:35

So either way, the hospital is not off the hook.

SPEAKER_04 36:37

No, they're not. If Lucy is guilty, then the hospital may have failed catastrophically to protect babies from her. If she's innocent, then the hospital's failures may have helped create the conditions for catastrophic miscarriage of justice. And if the truth is somewhere more complicated than either clean version, we still need to understand how a neonatal unit, hospital leadership, outside reviewers, police, prosecutors, and experts all arrived at the story that they arrived at. So there's no version where a countess of Chester Hospital walks away untouched. The next development is the CPS decision from January 2026. Cheshire Constabulary had submitted files of evidence asking prosecutors to consider further allegations against Lucy. Those allegations related to deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies at both Countess of Chester Hospital and Liverpool Women's Hospital. The Crown Prosecution Service, or CPS, reviewed possible offenses involving nine babies, two infants who died, and seven who survived, and decided that no further criminal charges would be brought because the evidential test was not met.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

So the police thought that they had enough, but CPS said, no way, Jose.

SPEAKER_04 37:51

That's basically what public statements show. So CPS said its decision was independent and based on a legal test for charging. So legally, this doesn't overturn anything, but it does separate suspicion from provable criminal charges. One of the things that made the Leppy case feel so overwhelming was the idea of pattern. Too many babies, too many collapses, too many times that Lucy was there. But when additional suspected cases are reviewed and prosecutors decide not to charge, we must be careful about treating every suspected event as part of one proven pattern. Because suspicion's understandable and reasonable, but it's not the same as proof.

SPEAKER_02 38:29

Yeah, and that becomes especially relevant in a case that's built from patterns.

SPEAKER_04 38:34

Yeah, patterns can reveal truth, but they can also hide assumptions. And that's why each piece has to be tested on its own and in context. So let's go back to talking about insulin. Because for many people, the insulin evidence was the strongest part of the prosecution case. So we have two babies, baby F and baby L. They had blood results that prosecutors argued showed deliberate insulin poisoning. So as we talked about the last episode, the basic idea is that when the body makes insulin naturally, it also releases C peptide. So if insulin is high, but C peptide is low or suppressed, that can suggest that the insulin did not come from inside, but rather outside the body. And so at trial, that was presented as powerful evidence that someone deliberately administered insulin.

SPEAKER_02 39:20

And because insulin sounds like a lab result, it feels more solid than some of the other allegations.

Insulin Evidence Under New Scrutiny

SPEAKER_04 39:26

Yeah, I that's the psychological force of it. Because error embolism involves clinical interpretation like skin discoloration, collapse, differential diagnoses. But insulin is numbers and numbers create confidence. But the newer critiques ask whether those numbers were asked to do more than they could reliably do. The Guardian reported that the insulin cases were presented as highly significant evidence of deliberate harm, and that the trial judge told jurors that if they were sure that babies had been attacked in those insulin cases, which they said they were sure, then the jurors should take that into account when they were considering all of the other charges, including air embolism and everything else. So everything was viewed through this lens of insulin. And by the way, these babies survived, but they were the only babies that actually showed that something nefarious had happened. So that was huge. So if you believe that these were cases that were nefariously caused, then that can shape the lens that you're looking at, all of these other collapses, air embolism and other things that people can't prove. But now if we're coming back and saying, well, actually, those babies can create high incidence of insulin and and not necessarily need high C peptide levels because they're premature and there's evidence in that. Now we've got somebody who's been convicted based on the lens of assumption that may not be true. You know what I'm saying? Like I just, oh gosh.

SPEAKER_02 41:03

So yeah, I mean, you bring up a good point. So if the evil insulin evidence weakens, it does not just affect those two babies then.

SPEAKER_04 41:12

So the if the jury had more confidence that someone was deliberately attacking babies, I'm kind of repeating myself, but I'm I'm kind of shocked by it, so I'm gonna keep going. The confidence could influence, obviously, would influence how jurors saw the rest of the case. And then you take that and then you add the notes, the Facebook searches, the shift chart, the other collapses, and the whole pattern. So in 2025, LEP's legal team submitted expert material to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which is CCRC, challenging the insulin evidence. Reporting described expert criticism of the immunoassay testing used in the insulin cases and whether it could safely prove deliberate poisoning in a criminal court setting. So there's different ways to test in the lab. And they kind of took the easy route, and there's a more complicated route, right? I don't want to get into it because I don't want to do part four. So just say there was enough of a question mark that this was brought up by an expert panel. And then a separate line of criticism from Professor Jeffrey Chase and Helen Shannon argues that there may be non-malicious explanations for insulin as well and these C peptide patterns in premature babies. In April 2026, Chase and Shannon published a letter in the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology. It's entitled Impossible. Insulin to C peptide ratios are common in insulin-free preterm NICU infants. Antibodies act as a storage medium.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

Well, that title is doing a lot.

SPEAKER_04 42:43

Wow. No, it's not exactly catchy. It doesn't roll off the tongue. So the prosecution theory depended on the idea that the insulin and C peptide pattern could only realistically mean externally administered insulin. But that 2026 publication suggests that might be wrong, may not be impossible, and that it might actually occur in premature NICU babies who were not given insulin. So we shouldn't overstate it. I mean, this is an appeal, this is not an appeal judgment. It doesn't overturn anything, doesn't prove she's innocent, but it goes directly to one of the prosecution's clearest sounding scientific claims. So if a jury heard that a lab pattern had only one realistic explanation, and later experts argue that there's another explanation, the safety question of her innocence becomes much harder. Or the safety question of her conviction becomes much harder to dismiss.

SPEAKER_02 43:36

Yeah, because if the insulin cases gave the jury confidence that someone was deliberately harming the babies, then that confidence could affect how they obviously saw everything else, like you said.

SPEAKER_04 43:47

Yeah, for sure. So if that insulin pillar weakens, the rest of the structure needs to be re-examined, not erased, but re-examined. And so this is where the international expert panel comes in. In February 2025, a panel of 14 international experts, led by retired neonatologist Dr. Shu Li, publicly challenged the medical evidence used to convict Leppy. The British Medical Journal reported that the panel said there was no medical evidence to support malfeasance and that the baby's deaths or injuries were the result of either natural causes or bad medical care.

SPEAKER_02 44:21

But that is an expert panel, not a court.

SPEAKER_04 44:25

Right. But this is an expert panel that doctor so they relied on evidence about air embolism from a 1989 paper written by Dr. Shuly et al. And then he later came back to refute his initial assumptions about air. Embolism and what side effects, like what the you know, the color modeling and all of that stuff that they base this whole case on his 1989 paper that he himself, after researching and work collaborating with others, refuted. Yeah. So he came back as part of this panel to say, you guys base this on something I said that I don't believe in anymore.

SPEAKER_02 45:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:06

It blows my mind.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

You found what fit your story and didn't care to share with the court that I don't even have that same story anymore. Right.

SPEAKER_04 45:17

So, you know, the panel doesn't free her, it doesn't erase the jury verdict, it doesn't replace the court of appeal, but it may become part of the argument that the case should be reviewed again. So the criminal case review commission is now the key body here. In February 2026, the CCRC said it received a preliminary application on Lepbe's behalf in February 2025, and that additional material had been submitted throughout 2025 and into January 2026, and that a review of her convictions was underway. The CCRC also made clear it doesn't determine innocence or guilt. That's for the courts to decide. Its role is to decide whether new evidence or new argument creates a real possibility that a conviction would not be upheld.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

And so to be clear, the CCRC is not saying she is innocent.

SPEAKER_04 46:10

No.

SPEAKER_02 46:11

And it's also not saying that the convention convictions are unsafe. No. It is simply reviewing for the record whether the case should go back to the appellate courts.

SPEAKER_04 46:25

Right. That's the frame, and that's the high bar. I mean, you can't simply say here's another expert who disagrees. The new evidence must fit the legal test. It has to be strong enough to create a real possibility that the conviction could be overturned. That's why pro's conviction cases are so hard. The trial creates such legal finality and the review process asks whether that finality can still be trusted.

SPEAKER_02 46:49

And in a case like this, the social pressure has got to be enormous, also.

SPEAKER_04 46:54

Absolutely, because the allegations are so horrific. People don't want to revisit this. They don't want to hear that something may have gone wrong. They don't want to imagine that the trial narrative may not have captured the whole truth. But if new science calls the insolent evidence into question and a criminal investigation is looking at senior hospital leadership, and prosecutors have declined to bring further charges on additional allegations, the case cannot simply be treated as closed, in my mind. And then there's also the Thurwall inquiry. As of May 12, 2026, the Thurwall Inquiry has not released its final report. The latest official update, published April 21st, 2026, says the inquiry is not yet able to announce a publication date. Work on the report continues, and the report will be published at the earliest practical date, but not during a parliamentary recess. So one of the biggest institutional questions remains unanswered. What will Lady Justice Thurwal ultimately say about the hospital, the leadership, and the failure around these babies? Because even if someone believes Lepbee's guilty, the hospital still has to answer for what happened to her. Why, why did the consultants feel unheard? Why were families not given full explanations sooner? Why did the issue move through the internal processes before police were actually brought in? And why was Lepbee removed from the ward in July 2016? But the police investigation didn't begin until May 2017. So these questions don't disappear just because there was a conviction.

SPEAKER_02 48:29

And so then how do we say all this without sounding like we're picking a team?

SPEAKER_04 48:34

I think we say it like this. Lucy Lepbe remains legally convicted. The families deserve compassion, truth, and justice. The babies at the center of this case are not talking points. They were children. And their families are living with the devastating consequences. At the same time, justice is not protected by refusing to test a conviction. Justice is protected by testing it carefully. Amanda Knox reminds us of what happens when a woman becomes a public villain before the evidence is fully understood. Lucia De Burke reminds us that statistics, medical uncertainty, and personality evidence can help build a wrongful, serial killer nurse story. Rebecca Leighton reminds us that even in real hospital poisoning cases, suspicion can initially land on the wrong nurse. And Colin Norris reminds us that medical science can keep shifting after a jury reaches a verdict. Operation Duet keeps the hospital's conduct in the frame. The CPS decision shows that additional allegations did not meet the charging test. And the insulin debate challenges one of the prosecution's strongest sounding scientific pillars. And the CCRC review means that the legal story is not completely dormant.

SPEAKER_02 49:46

So what I'm hearing is this case is legally settled for now, but not quite.

SPEAKER_04 49:52

I mean, that's a great way to say it. That's the cleanest way to say it. It's settled for now, it's scientifically contested, it's institutionally unresolved, and it's emotionally devastating in any direction. So if Lucy is guilty, then the hospital failed to protect babies from a nurse who should have been stopped sooner. If she's innocent, or even if some convictions are unsafe, then grieving families may have been given the wrong explanation. And a nurse may have been condemned for crimes that the evidence didn't safely prove. So there's no easy version, there's no painless version. There's only the responsibility to keep asking whether the truth has actually been found.

SPEAKER_02 50:28

And that is why doubt is not disrespectful.

SPEAKER_04 50:32

Right? Because doubt's how we test truth. And in a case this serious, case closed, quote unquote, cannot do the work that evidence is supposed to do.

SPEAKER_02 50:40

Okay, so I have a question then. What do you think is the strongest part of the prosecution case?

SPEAKER_04 50:46

Oh boy. Well, historically I would have said the insulin evidence because high insulin with low C peptide, from what we understood in our rudimentary knowledge, was hard to explain naturally, the way it was presented at trial. But the newer critiques make it seem more complicated. So now the questions were become: were the samples reliable? Were the tests interpreted correctly? Were the reference ranges appropriate for premature babies? Could there be lab issues? Can you prove who administered anything, even if it, you know, came out that it was nefarious? So yeah, insulin's been one of the strongest prosecution points, but it's not magically simple.

SPEAKER_02 51:25

Yeah, for sure. And so what do you think is the weakest part of prosecution then?

SPEAKER_04 51:30

I think anything that depends too heavily on a pattern without full context. So one of the the prosecution published this chart as evident and admitted that into evidence, and it just looked perfect. It was like, okay, there's these collapses, and Lucy's name is on every single one. But again, we talked about this earlier. Who chose those cases and who decides what was a suspicious or collapse? Did we include collapses that happened when Leppy wasn't there? Did how do we know what the full denominator is? So without that context, it you know, the visual, the optics are looking a lot more powerful than maybe it really is.

SPEAKER_02 52:07

I would also like to just say the notes thing really bothers me.

SPEAKER_04 52:11

Oh, for sure. I mean, they're emotionally powerful, but emotionally powerful doesn't always mean evidentially clean.

SPEAKER_02 52:18

I remember from last week the phrase, I am evil, I did this, which is obviously almost impossible to forget, but I just hate the notes thing. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:29

Yeah, no, that's impossible to forget. That's why it has to be handled carefully, because a phrase like that can feel like a confession, but a distressed person accused of horrific things can write frightening, contradictory, and self-blaming thoughts. I mean, she was in therapy at the time, and her, and I'm not saying that it's not true. I'm just saying, in the you know, in light of looking at she was it was a therapy exercise to basically just do a brain.

SPEAKER_02 52:54

I was gonna bring that up on a piece of paper because the notes that they did not take into account were the opposite tune of like, I'm innocent.

SPEAKER_04 53:02

I'm innocent. Why is this happening to me? Yeah. And so she might have been facing her worst fear that that she'd be convicted, you know, by writing that. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 53:11

I just think we don't know and in this case stands how the case stands. I'm just saying if we're gonna look at one thing, we have to look at all of the pages of the diary.

SPEAKER_04 53:21

Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 53:23

So do you think the expert panel means that she'll get a new appeal, or what do you think?

SPEAKER_04 53:29

I don't, I mean, not necessarily. If if it were up to me, I think she should, just because I think there's reasonable enough doubt at this point to at least retry the case in light of new scientific opinion. I don't even know if there's new evidence. I just know that between potentially new evidence and the fact that she didn't have an expert witness at her trial. Like how what? I still don't understand that. That is something isn't bonkers. Yeah. And is it because she's hiding something? Maybe this is just gonna serve to like make everybody like a retrial would make everybody sit back and go, Oh, thank God we convicted her because it's you know, yeah, it still stands. Right.

SPEAKER_02 54:13

Because it was it was her team that did not call their expert witness.

SPEAKER_04 54:17

Correct. So did what are they what do they know that we don't know? I want to I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 54:24

We want we want to know. I mean, so but at the end of the day, it's these families who are still stuck in this endless nightmare, and I just I cannot imagine I have a newborn. I I can't imagine.

SPEAKER_04 54:39

Right? And and every article, every documentary, every expert report, every appeal headline, because this isn't going away. I mean, for them, this isn't content. This is their babies. Can you imagine what that triggers every time they see Lucy Leppby's name in the news or anything about this?

SPEAKER_02 54:55

No, it makes me sick to even try to fathom that. And I think that's the part that people forget.

CCRC Review And Thirlwall Inquiry

SPEAKER_04 55:03

Right? You want to say, okay, stay suspicious, but stay humane. So for now, that's where Lucy Lepbee and her case stands. Convictions are still in place, a CCRV review is underway, a public inquiry report is still pending, a separate police investigation into hospital leadership continues, and a growing scientific debate over whether the medical evidence was as certain as a jury was led to believe. Whether this case is ultimately remembered as a story of a nurse who hid in plain sight or as a story of a justice system that got medicine wrong, one thing's already clear. The Countess of Chester Hospital failed those babies and families long before the world knew Lucy Leppy's name. And that's where we must leave it for now. Not resolved, not overturned, not simple, but still being questioned. And in a case this serious questioning isn't optional, it's the whole point.

SPEAKER_02 55:54

But before we get further into that, it's time for a chart note.

SPEAKER_01 56:00

I'm just kidding. I hope everyone looked at the clock and thought, what the fuck? A chart nook. I'm just kidding. Oh man. Before there's no chart note on purpose.

SPEAKER_02 56:16

Before we get to the end, I will do sponsor number two. I just thought that would be funny. So y'all. Elevate your hair care routine with yark, plant-based hair care, the ultimate fusion of nature and luxury. Their organic vegan shampoos, conditioners, and mousses are meticulously crafted to feed your hair with a potent blend of vitamins, minerals, and essential oils. Free from alcohol, parabens, and sulfates, the products deliver a nourishing experience that your hair deserves. Embrace the power of clean beauty with yark, where every drop is thoughtfully curated to enhance your hair's natural beauty while respecting the planet. Transform your hair care regimen into a holistic self-care ritual with yark because your hair deserves nothing but the best. Baby, visit www.yarakare.com. That's Y A R O K H A I R for 15% off with our code. What's our code?

SPEAKER_04 57:17

Stay suspicious. Angel.

SPEAKER_02 57:23

Jenna. Yes, Amanda. Thank you so much for bringing us this case. This three Pada. This unprecedented three Pada episode. Three Pada. It had to be Pada. It had to be a three-pada.

SPEAKER_04 57:42

Hold on. I was trying to do this.

SPEAKER_01 57:46

Noise.

SPEAKER_02 57:49

There it is. There it is. I thought that might be the one you're looking for. No, for real though. You did an excellent job. Thank you so much. I know what it's like to read one book and have to try and tease out what's important, what's not. I need all of it. And I know that you'd put a lot more into all this research than just reading one book. So excellent job. Fabulous. Thank you. You did great.

SPEAKER_04 58:16

Are you going to talk about the prompt in the script?

SPEAKER_02 58:20

No. I am now actually. But I before I tell you what the prompt says, I will tell you all that what I just said was genuine.

SPEAKER_04 58:32

I appreciate it.

unknown 58:33

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 58:35

But the prompt says wrap-up talks about how awesome, which is like 27-point font bigger, how awesome Jenna did. Lol.

SPEAKER_04 58:49

I think I've got a little crazy. Thank you so much. I mean, I'm definitely looking forward to thinking about somebody other than Lucy Leppie for now. But before we wrap this up in a bow, we have a surprise. This week our medical mishap was sent in by a fantastic nurse, friend of the pod, Mary Beth Bessicky. Mary Beth comes from 17 years of nursing in various trauma settings. She prefers trauma in the rural area where resources are few and interesting cases are frequent. Shootings and stabbings, I know, farm accidents. She worked in prison reservations and rural health care. Her first 10 years were in a major trauma hospital that thrust her into human meats train accidents, major meat processing plants, patients from around the world, and a few celebrities too. Prior to nursing, she was a social worker for the better part of 25 years. Her niche was addiction meets mental health, meets marginalized populations. She's particularly fond of Native Americans and passionate to the needs of those who are judged daily. Prior to college, she grew up on an average farm that had puppies, kitties, cows, piggies, plenty of duckies, and a never-ending supply of chicks. She's still working with a marginalized community now, surrounded by the most unique friends. She dabbles in holistic health. She makes bare fat soap and even passed legislation to enable her to do so. And she never misses a chance to enjoy a dinner on the deck with family and friends. Mary Beth's story submission was so compelling, I had to have her record it for the pod. And you're about to hear it now, so buckle up, Alley Cats.

Sponsors Thanks And The Human Cost

Medical Mishap Story With Mary Beth

SPEAKER_00 1:00:37

Let's go. My name is Mary Beth Basic, and I have an experience I would like to share with you. In my previous life, I was a social worker in the orbit of clients who often had overlapping addiction and mental health issues. The story I'm going to share with you is about a gentleman who had many years of sobriety and for all examples worked his mental health program. I had a great deal of trust for this man and no reason to be wary of him. In the summer of 2004, this client who I will call Duke had a moment that caused him to start drinking. He lost his beloved dog. This dog had been with him for many years and was quite unhealthy. Duke was a kind of drinker who drank till he passed out wherever he was. The family called the county and requested welfare visits. I had stopped several times when he was just waking up or woke him from a sleep. I had never seen him intoxicated and didn't know what to expect. So here I am on a Friday night and driving home. It is after five, and I'm going to take a quick swing into Duke's house for a Friday night welfare visit, and then head home for the weekend. I swing into Duke's yard out in the country, and the closest neighbor is at least a mile away. The car clock says five sixteen. So let me set the scene for you. Like other times, I had found Duke outside on the grass, hunched over his lawn chair. I get out of my car, walk around the small yard, looking around the small buildings. His truck is in the driveway, and the driver's door is open. I heard from the family that Duke was sleeping with his dead dog in his bed. Now Duke lives in a twenty-four by twenty-four log cabin. He built by himself. Walking into that cabin is like walking into your grandparents of the 1950s. A small TV is on the rolling stand. The living room is just big enough for two kitchen type chairs and a second hand upright chair that might be mistaken for a lazy boy. The kitchen is on the other side of the living room wall and has homemade cabinets that were removed from his grandparents and fitted for his kitchen. He has a small scale gas stove and a kitchen table from the fifties. I had only seen the other half of the house once in recent weeks when I did a welfare check, and that was pretty rustic too. His bathroom is very small with a sink on four chrome legs, a simple toilet, and one of those walk in showers that comes in a single piece and is set in place. Behind this is a very small room he used for storage. His bedroom is across the hall and very small. Weeks earlier, I had found Duke passed out in his bed while his dog was still alive, but very ill. He had a simple double bed and one wooden dresser. I walked up the front door and didn't see anything. I knocked on the rickety screen door with no answer. I started calling his name, and in a minute or two I heard rumbling in the house. I opened up the screen door, stepped inside about two feet. I felt pretty comfortable in my relationship with him that I would not be overstepping my bounds. I heard footsteps coming down the hall, and there he is. Right in front of me is Duke. He is wearing a pair of old dirty jeans and a long sleeve western shirt that had been worn very thin. His stench of sweat and stale beer arrived before he did. He never says a greeting to me but isn't aggressive either. I greeted him and started asking questions. His eyes are empty and dark. There was nothing behind those eyes and they were expressionless. In that moment, I am pretty sure he has just woken from a stupor and probably still intoxicated. I said Duke, I spoke with your uncle and he says you gave him all your guns last week except for the pistol. How about if you give me that pistol and I will drop it off with him? Wouldn't you feel better if all those guns were at your uncle's house? Like magic. Duke turns around, walks down the hall. At first I thought he was going to the bathroom, but two steps deeper into the house told me that he went further down the hallway. I hear rustling and what I'm pretty sure is back in his bedroom. All of a sudden, I hear Duke coming down the hall, his left side in my view. This is important. There he is returning to me in a visit with not one peep from Duke. He says this one. His right hand is out of my sight. His left hand in front and off to my right. In what seemed like a flash, his right hand raised the pistol and pointed it at my head. Holy shit bombs. I had a gun within six inches of my temple. Duke is holding a gun and his figure is on the trigger from what I can see. In 2004, I was a slight 150 pounds and 5'3. On paper, that seems pretty solid, woman. But in that moment, I was past fight, past flight, and definitely in freeze. I remember my brain was like some movie in fast motion. My life was flashing before my eyes. My parents, siblings, graduation, college, my sweetheart, my dogs, and my friends. And what seemed like a flash, the movie stopped and the moment returned. Out of the side of my eye, I can still see Duke holding the gun to my head right above my temple. In my calmest voice, I ask him to put down the gun, but he doesn't move. I remember going through a few emotions right then. I realize that it's Friday night after five, and I am at least a mile from the nearest neighbor. And no one is going to save me. Hell, no one is going down the gravel road probably. If the walls could talk, they would probably say I was shaking like a leaf. My voice must have been cracking, and I was probably white as a ghost. I started having this one sided conversation with Duke. I'm asking him questions, but he never answers. I'm telling him that his mother wants to see him, and his neighbors are worried about him. Actually, the sentences are just a repeat of a begging woman who is afraid she is going to get shot in the head on a Friday night and no one will find her. In what seems like a couple of minutes, I see he is slowly moving the gun and I ask him to give it to me. Immediately he raises it back to my temple. This one sided conversation goes on over and over and over with periodic movement of the gun. And every time I asked for the gun, he would raise it back to my temple. My brain was split in two. One side is logically telling Duke his mother loves him. His neighbors are worried about him. His uncle wants to see him and the other half is grabbing at straws and getting more fearful by the moment. I'm running out of ideas when my mouth gets a mind of its own. I said, Hey Duke, I'm kind of thirsty. Can you go get a couple of beers? In a split second, he drops a gun to the floor and turns to the kitchen. I hit the screen door so hard I broke the screen webbing. Two steps on the porch and I jumped like a deer over the railing. I'm no flowjoe, but I was an Olympic athlete that day. In what seemed like ten steps, I was in my car. I didn't even have the door closed and the key was turning over the engine. That little four speed never turned around in the yard. I backed it down the football field length driveway with dust, rocks flying everywhere. When I hit the gravel road, that car slammed into gear and I was flying everywhere forward. I remember looking in the rear view mirror to see if he was chasing me. Nothing. He was home drinking a beer in his cabin. A mile down the road was a stop sign. The adrenaline had dropped and I killed the engine at that stop sign. At that moment I was shaking and dying to crawl out of my skin. I remember holding on to the steering wheel and screaming for what seemed like forever. I screamed till I had nothing left. At that moment I looked at the car clock at 62. I had been at that farm for an hour. Duke's house to my house is about 40 minutes. And when I hit my house, the doors were locked, shades were closed, and I slept with my own gun under my pillow and both my Dobermans. How crazy. Duke never had a clue where I lived. The learning lesson for me in this experience was that no matter what, your brain is your strongest weapon.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:06

Wow. What a story. I mean, we definitely need to get Mary Beth to send in more stories like that one.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:12

Mary Beth, can you please have your own segment? Oh my gosh. I know, right? I had so many thoughts. Okay, so like my first thought came in the first five sentence. Well, maybe not five sentences, but I can't keep track of it. Sleeping with his dead dog. He yikes. Yeah, that's oh god, that got me in the heart.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:33

That's so sad.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:34

Uh but also, Mary Beth, you are an incredible storyteller. You did such a great job of painting the picture of the scene. I could literally picture it. I was in the house with you. I was jumping like a deer with you. I was like heart racing in the car. Yeah, no, really, really good. And oh my god, the suspense when you were describing his eyes, I was like, Yeah, I got chills. I definitely got chills. And I'm sorry to interrupt and take all this over, but the way I would not want to be going to someone's house to be like, hey, you know, you still got that gun in the house. How about how about I'll just take it, you know?

SPEAKER_04 1:13:14

Just says that in her cheerful Betty Boop voice. Because, like, let's face it, just kind of Betty Boop meets Janice Chaplin meets Marilyn Monroe voice. Gotta love it.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:23

And I think there was a point where I I had the actual thought of like, oh my fucking God. And then she she says, holy shit bombs.

unknown 1:13:32

I know.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:34

Oh gosh. That Mary Brad, you're so brave. Thank you so much for sharing this story. And honestly, shout out to social workers because oh my fucking God, I I never would have thought that.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:49

Saints. Yeah. No. Amazing. So dangerous to listen, Alley Cats. If you have a story for our medical mishaps, obviously we want you to send it in. But if you have a story that you want recorded in your own voice, let us know. Tell us a little bit about yourself, send your story in, and we'll get in touch. Yeah. And I too could be a Mary Beth.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:16

I've had people say, Oh, I would want to be on your show, but I don't know what I would talk about. Well, here you go. You could do this. There you go. You know what? Mary Beth just set a standard. Let's go.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:28

She did.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:29

I love it.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:29

She did. And I hope she's going to be a reg because I she just keeps spouting out teasers. I'm like, no, I need to know more. So she just one of those people you could sit and talk to for hours. And have. Sometimes I'm like, okay, okay, don't tell me now. Write it down. I'll send it into the pot. So I can live react. Oh, anyway. Speaking speaking of stories, Amanda, what's up for what's in store for us next week?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:59

Well, you know, initially I had on deck a two-parter, but I did I did that before I knew this was going to be a three-parter. So I'm kind of wondering if I should find something that's just a one and done. So it's either going to be a surprise or we're going to go across the big pond over yonder into Europe area.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:24

Now I'm like, I can't.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:25

Okay, so we've been in the pond. We've been over the pond for three weeks in England.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:30

So we're gonna stay.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:35

There's nothing wrong with pointing fingers at England every every other episode. Because honestly, just like dentists, I feel like England has got a lot of stories.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:43

I'm like, you know, we spent a lot of time in Colorado for a while.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:46

So yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:48

Um so okay, it's either gonna be a two bar across the uh waters, or or I don't know, or I'll find something new.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:57

We'll see.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:58

It could be a surprise. Well, either way, I know you're gonna just it's gonna be fire. You're gonna it's gonna be amazing.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:06

So I just peeked back at what my two-parter is, and I'm just like, oh my god, we need to talk about it. I don't know. We'll see. Okay, well, you know what? She's right. Let me wrap this up. Okay, Alley Cats. We know that this one is emotional, it's complicated. Thank you for hanging in there for this three-part episode on Lucy. Let be it's still developing, so we'll keep an eye on the CCRC reviews, the Thurwall inquiry reports, and the ongoing hospital leadership investigations. And of course, if there are major developments, we will always keep you posted in our future episodes. So meanwhile, do not miss a beat, subscribe or follow Doctor in the Truth wherever you enjoy your podcasts for stories that shock, intrigue, and educate. Trust, after all, is a delicate thing. You can text us directly on our website, email us your own story ideas, be a Mary Beth, medical mishaps, and comments, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Download rate and reviews so we can keep bringing you more stories. And until then, you know what, just stay safe and stay so special. If you can't stay safe, make sure you can jump like a deer and run like an Olympian.