Lucy Letby saved our daughter's life... twice: With a gravely ill newborn in a chaotic, overstretched maternity unit, Clare and Carl Bolton reveal how the controversial nurse went 'above and beyond' to rescue their child

By KATHRYN KNIGHT, FEATURE WRITER Published: 00:59, 12 July 2026 | Updated: 00:59, 12 July 2026 When Carl and Clare Bolton met with the senior medical team at the Countess of Chester Hospital seven years ago, they were looking for reassurance. Their daughter Jessica had spent five days in the hospital’s neonatal unit three years earlier and just two months later, one of its nurses, Lucy Letby, was moved to administrative duties amid mounting concerns over an unexplained spike in infant deaths and medical collapses. Jessica was now happy and healthy but, like any anxious parents, the Boltons couldn’t shake the nagging worry, following Letby’s arrest, that something untoward might have happened to their baby during those early, precarious days. And the meeting designed to alleviate their fears ‘stopped them in their tracks’ as they learned the full story of what had happened to their daughter. What Carl, 49, an artist who runs an animation studio and Clare, 48, a former IT specialist, discovered for the first time was that not only had their daughter been gravely ill but she’d dangerously deteriorated on the unit. Twice. And they were told that the healthcare professional whose actions saved her has since, in some quarters, become synonymous with evil. ‘They told us Lucy Letby had been the lead nurse in Jessica’s case and that on the night our baby was admitted she acted to save her twice – on the second occasion going above and beyond the call of duty,’ Carl says. In other words, the nurse who would later be convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more – making her the most prolific serial child killer in modern British history – had, on this occasion, saved the life of their daughter. A decade after those tragic deaths at the Chester hospital, the extraordinary case of Lucy Letby has generated reams of newspaper copy, academic papers, books and documentaries. She is currently serving 15 whole life sentences in Bronzefield Prison, Surrey, meaning she will never be released. Doctors, scientists, statisticians, psychologists and legal experts have pored over every detail of the case. There has been a 145-day court hearing, a two-week retrial of the case of one infant, and a public inquiry due to report soon. Carl and Clare Bolton couldn’t shake the nagging worry, following Letby’s arrest, that something untoward might have happened to their baby during those early, precarious days ‘They told us Lucy Letby had been the lead nurse in Jessica’s case and that on the night our baby was admitted she acted to save her twice,’ Carl says Even in the midst of such a slew of information, the revelation that Letby, in fact, prevented harm is extraordinary. And it comes as voices who fear a monstrous miscarriage of justice has taken place grow ever louder. Hearings concluded in the Thirlwall Inquiry last year and, after three delays, the final report recommendations are expected to be released on August 21 after Parliament’s summer recess. Meanwhile, the Criminal Cases Review Commission – which investigates potential miscarriages of justice – is considering the case’s merit for a retrial, based on evidence presented by an international panel of neonatology experts. The Boltons, along with the rest of a horrified nation, learned that Letby, then 28, had been arrested on suspicion of murdering babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital on July 3, 2018. Carl instantly recognised the expressionless woman shown in TV footage as the quietly spoken nurse who had treated them with courtesy and kindness during a difficult period. ‘It wasn’t panic exactly,’ he says. ‘It was shock.’ The couple contacted Cheshire Police and were reassured Jessica was not part of the investigation – something that was confirmed again in 2019 as inquiries widened. The police encouraged the hospital to initiate a meeting with the worried pair. Understandably they had been mentally replaying those first five days of their daughter’s life, reliving the fear they had felt and remembering the ‘chaos’ of the neonatal unit, which they say was understaffed, under-equipped and visibly struggling. Their over-riding impression of Letby, however, had been positive. Clare was admitted to the Countess of Chester for observation at 35 weeks, when, after an uneventful pregnancy the couple learned the baby was lying transverse – horizontally across the uterus instead of vertically. A week later, on May 7, 2016, she underwent an emergency caesarean after doctors realised the baby was distressed. ‘Jessica required 47 minutes of surgery because her position in the womb was so complicated,’ Carl recalls. Initially, all seemed well. Carl held Jessica briefly before a midwife spotted what she called ‘a nostril flare’ and took her away. ‘A consultant told me Jessica was “having a little trouble getting a big breath in, but not to worry”,’ he says. Former NICU nurse Lucy Letby is currently serving 15 whole life sentences in Bronzefield Prison, Surrey, meaning she will never be released Jessica, pictured aged four, 'had been the sickest baby on the entire unit during her first 24 hours,' says Carl Two hours later, the bewildered couple – Clare in a wheelchair – entered the neonatal unit for the first time. What struck them both was how inexperienced many of the staff appeared. ‘A lot of people working there seemed more like healthcare assistants who didn’t know a great deal about medicine. In that particular unit we never saw an actual doctor,’ Carl said. ‘There was a baby near us whose alarms kept going off because she was stopping breathing, and the nurses were saying they didn’t know why. It was very unsettling as new parents with Clare recovering from traumatic surgery.’ The first nurse the couple met immediately stood out: Lucy Letby. ‘She said, “Let me explain what we’ve done since Jessica came into the unit,”’ Carl recalls. ‘She was the one who took the time to talk to us as parents who wanted to understand our daughter’s care.’ At the time, that kindness simply meant a great deal. ‘Generally, whenever we asked how Jessica was doing, the other staff would say, “She’s absolutely fine, just go and rest.” You felt like you were imposing just by being there.’ Today, as a result of that 2019 meeting, they know that Jessica deteriorated unexpectedly twice during her first night on the unit and once required emergency intubation. ‘Jessica had been the sickest baby on the entire unit during her first 24 hours,’ says Carl. The revolving staff rota meant the couple only saw Letby twice more. But it was Letby who brought Jessica to Clare’s room after she was declared fit for discharge after five days. ‘She just opened the door and quietly handed over Jessica, saying, “She’s all yours”,’ Carl recalls. He saw her once more when Jessica returned to the neonatal unit for one of the twice-daily intravenous antibiotics she required. ‘Lucy asked if I wanted to wait outside as Jessica would get upset when they changed the cannula and it might be distressing to watch. I said I wanted to stay,’ says Carl. And today, thankfully, they are the parents of a bright, dance-mad, ten-year-old daughter who they describe as ‘the centre of our lives’. The couple won’t be drawn into the debate currently raging around Letby’s culpability. They are not campaigning to overturn her convictions, nor do they claim that because she saved Jessica she must therefore be innocent. As Carl puts it: ‘We don’t know whether Lucy Letby is innocent or guilty – all we know is that she saved our child and we can’t comment on the other cases. ‘From our perspective, she was the person who seemed to know what she was doing on that unit and who took the time to explain what was happening while working in a place that was clearly struggling.’ As Letby’s case slowly made its way through the courts, the Boltons contacted Cheshire Police to try to share what they had experienced of the neonatal unit itself. ‘It didn’t mean we thought Lucy was innocent,’ Carl says. ‘But we did think that what we had to say was important.’ Much to his frustration, Carl says: ‘The police never acknowledged our attempts to share our experience. They would just say Jessica is not affected.’ He followed Letby’s trial carefully, although Clare, who found it triggering, preferred to wait for the verdict. 'We don’t know whether Lucy Letby is innocent or guilty – all we know is that she saved our child and we can’t comment on the other cases,' says Carl Today, thankfully, they are the parents of a bright, dance-mad, ten-year-old daughter (pictured aged four) who they describe as ‘the centre of our lives’ When Letby was convicted in August 2023 and, later, a BBC Panorama documentary re-examined the case and highlighted failings in the unit, the couple’s concern about the general chaos they had encountered there intensified. ‘It was obvious to us that many of the things we’d tried to tell police about the wider picture hadn’t been put before the jury,’ Carl says. The couple again contacted police, the hospital and Letby’s defence team. ‘Nobody wanted to know,’ says Carl. So in a passionate desire for transparency and answers they have stepped into the centre of one of the country’s most contentious criminal cases. They were inspired by the recent Nottingham maternity inquiry, which they believe shows ordinary families can force institutions to answer difficult questions. Indeed, when they pressed Countess of Chester staff at that 2019 meeting – who referred to Letby as ‘that person in the papers’ – they were horrified by what they learnt. Carl recalls: ‘Extraordinary as [Letby’s involvement] was, the bigger shock was discovering for the first time just how ill Jessica had been. We’d never been told she’d required two emergency interventions or that she’d been intubated.’ When they pressed for more detail, however, Carl says the meeting changed tone. ‘From then on it was pretty much one-word answers,’ he says. Clare’s biggest question was whether hospital staff already knew there were wider problems on the unit before Jessica was admitted. ‘One of the doctors said, “Absolutely not”, but we now know consultants had been raising concerns for at least a year before Jessica was born. That’s very difficult to reconcile.’ In fact, from their short time at the unit the couple can highlight specific areas of concern. At one point staff told them Jessica had given them ‘quite the scare’ when they thought she’d lost more than a pound in weight. ‘In fact,’ says Carl, ‘the delivery suite scales were wrong and needed recalibrating. Babies naturally lose weight after birth, but that’s a terrifying amount. I don’t know how many babies were born during that period, but every one of them would have had the wrong birth weight until we discovered what had happened with Jessica. ‘This was a unit caring for vulnerable babies where feed volumes and medication really matter.’ Later the same day they also learned Jessica had experienced two ‘pale moments’. ‘When I asked what it means, the nurse said her “observations” [clinical indicators] had dropped, they didn’t know why, but she was OK now,’ Clare says. Only at that 2019 meeting did they discover this was a consequence of silent reflux, where stomach contents rise into the oesophagus before being swallowed, causing no visible vomiting. ‘Apart from the silent reflux, the only issue we had from then on was a floppy larynx, meaning she sounded like a little pig when she breathed,’ Clare says. ‘We were told it was a normal birth defect that would resolve itself, but we do wonder whether the intubation played any part. That’s one of the legacies of all this – the wondering and not knowing.’ The other consequence, and one Clare and Carl are keen for other families to avoid is the years of anxiety it has unleashed. ‘I had these ridiculous dreams where Jessica was falling into a vat of fat or flying off a mountain and I was desperately trying to catch her, but she was gone,’ Clare says, emotion catching in her voice. ‘Even when she started school I’d walk away wondering, “Did she actually go in?” I’d have to convince myself to go home. That was how my mind worked all the time. ‘We are so grateful she is OK, but when you find out years later that something terrible was happening to your child and you had absolutely no idea, you spend the rest of your life wondering, “Is something terrible happening to my child right now?” To this day we are both incredibly over-protective.’ They remain convinced there are many unanswered questions about the level of care provided at the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal unit and about what families were – and were not – told. ‘Parents shouldn’t have to spend years pushing to discover what happened to their own baby. If speaking out helps another family feel able to ask difficult questions, then it’s worth doing,’ says Carl. Meanwhile, for Letby, now 36, the questions about the safety of her conviction continue to mount.