The former Labour MP and reporter that helped expose one of the worst miscarriages of justice, leading to the release of the Birmingham Six, has compared that situation to the case of Lucy Letby.
As a journalist, through his book Error Of Judgement, and a series of documentaries, Chris Mullin investigated the Birmingham pub bombings, leading to the release of the Birmingham Six after their convictions were quashed in 1991.
Some 21 people were killed and 182 injured in the IRA attack on two pubs on November 21, 1974.
Six men from Northern Ireland were each sentenced to life imprisonment the following year for the atrocity, and served a 17-year stretch in prison before Mr Mullin helped overturn their convictions.
Mr Mullin’s work has since been described as ‘one of the greatest feats ever achieved by an investigative journalist’.
He later went on to become MP for Sunderland South and a minister in Tony Blair’s Government, and has now stated his belief that there are similarities between the case of the Birmingham Six, and that of disgraced nurse, Lucy Letby.
The 35-year-old from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted across two trials at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016.
She lost two bids last year to challenge her convictions at the Court of Appeal – in May for seven murders and seven attempted murders, and in October for the attempted murder of a baby girl which she was convicted of by a different jury at a retrial.
Lucy Letby convictions branded ‘one of major injustices of modern times’
However, there has been growing concern amongst the public and professionals, that Letby has been wrongly convicted for these crimes.
Taking to X, formerly Twitter, earlier this month, Mr Mullin pointed out that “the Lucy Letby case has one thing in common with the Birmingham bombings convictions: both were heavily dependent on the evidence of a single expert witness”.
Speaking further to The Sunday Times this weekend, he added: “’I cannot, hand on heart, say that Lucy Letby is innocent, only that the case against her was not proven beyond reasonable doubt.”
He joins a growing number of people who have raised qualms about the court’s decision regarding Ms Letby’s conviction, including Professor Shoo Lee, a neonatologist who convened an international panel of medical experts who concluded that Letby had not murdered or attempted to murder any babies.
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A retired head of nursing at Countess of Chester Hospital, where Ms Letby worked, has also claimed her to be innocent, describing “shocking” meetings with the nurse who “cried in my arms”.
Karen Rees (62) met Letby for the first time in the summer of 2016 when she had to tell the nurse she was being removed from the neonatal ward after concerns about her “clinical practice”, according to The Sunday Times.
She said: “What I saw was a very frightened young woman who was shocked and bewildered.”
Over the next two years, Ms Rees met with Letby regularly and developed a close relationship with the nurse.
The babies were attacked by various means while Letby worked as a nurse on the neonatal unit at the hospital.
One such method was injecting air into the bloodstream which caused an air embolism that blocked the blood supply and led to sudden and unexpected collapses.
Ms Rees, who lives with her husband on a farm in Flintshire, retired in March 2018 – four months before police first arrested Letby.
She also told The Sunday Times she wanted to attend Letby’s trial at Manchester Crown Court but was prevented from doing so because she was a potential witness.
She even offered to give evidence for Letby’s defence but was never called, saying she always believed her to be innocent.
Lucy Letby: Why are there growing doubts over her conviction?
Following Letby’s conviction in 2023, Ms Rees was advised to publicly denounce the nurse, and she said at the time: “(Letby) was very convincing. I now know that this was a calculated and successful attempt to make me believe her story, and I was deceived.”
But asked by The Sunday Times why she believes Letby is innocent, she said: “The one person that knows her nursing team is the manager or the unit manager – not a consultant that visits a couple of times a week.
“They know the strengths and weaknesses. I trusted Lucy’s ward manager when she looked me in the eye and said, ‘she’s (Letby) fantastic and she’s right by the book, she does everything right’.
“I believed Lucy when she told me she had done nothing wrong. I will always recall her saying to me, ‘you’re the only person, Karen, that hasn’t asked me if I did it?’ Because I didn’t think she had.”
Letby’s legal team is continuing its campaign protesting her innocence. Her case will be reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, after Letby’s lawyers made an application to the body earlier this month.