The doctor described in court as Lucy Letby’s “boyfriend” can be identified for the first time after his death, following revelations that he exchanged messages with the convicted baby killer about an infant she later tried to murder.
Consultant paediatrician Mark Deakin, 53, was discovered collapsed in his car in June, the day after he was dismissed from Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool.
He was taken to intensive care, but died nine days later.
Dr Deakin, a married father of two, had been protected by anonymity during Letby’s trial. Reporting restrictions were lifted after his death, allowing him to be named for the first time.
In June, he faced a disciplinary hearing over a string of inappropriate text messages exchanged with Letby while both were working at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
The messages breached patient confidentiality and included details about the care of a premature baby boy with haemophilia, referred to as Baby N. Letby, 36, was convicted of attempting to murder him in June 2016, the day after he was born.
Dr Deakin also arranged as many as six “observational visits” for Letby at Alder Hey, where he later worked as a locum, around a year afterwards.
He further backed Letby’s grievance against the Countess of Chester Hospital after she was removed from frontline nursing and placed in an office role when concerns were raised over baby deaths under her care.
At her trial, Letby denied she and Dr Deakin were having a romantic affair and claimed they were just ‘best friends’.
Prosecutor Nick Johnson KC suggested that the medic, who exchanged more than 1,300 Facebook messages with Letby, was her ‘boyfriend’ and that she was so infatuated with him that she harmed babies knowing he would be the one crash-bleeped to come and help.
But she broke down in tears and tried to leave the dock when he entered the courtroom at Manchester Crown Court to give evidence for the prosecution.
She also called him ‘sweetie’ in texts and referred to him as ‘love’ in notes scrawled with his name and love hearts that police discovered during searches at her home.
Dr Mark Deakin died after being sacked from Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. He breached patient confidentiality by swapping messages with Lucy Letby about Baby N
Lucy Letby, 36, is serving a record 15 whole-life terms after being convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more between June 2015 and June 2016
The Women and Children’s Building at the Countess of Chester Hospital where Lucy Letby murdered seven babies and attempted to murder seven more
Lady Justice Thirlwall will report her findings from the public inquiry, which was held at Liverpool Town Hall, later this month
She is serving a record 15 whole-life terms after being found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more – one of whom she attacked twice – at the Countess between June 2015 and June 2016.
Dr Deakin, a specialist diabetes consultant at Alder Hey from July 2018, was informed by bosses at the NHS Trust that they had launched a formal investigation into his conduct in January 2024 – five months after Letby was found guilty.
Their inquiry found that Dr Deakin had a very close relationship with Letby and is likely to have known that concerns had been raised about her link to the spike in deaths by her colleagues. But he arranged for her to visit Alder Hey in 2017 regardless, potentially putting patient safety at risk.
Letby accompanied him on his ward rounds and clinics, attended a hospital ‘roadshow’ on insulin – the substance she used to try to kill two of her victims – and even shadowed a nurse in paediatric intensive care during those visits.
Dr Deakin, himself a diabetic, also accessed Baby N’s medical records inappropriately, including after Letby was convicted, the investigation found.
It is understood Dr Deakin attended a three-day disciplinary hearing in early June, where he accepted breaching Baby N’s confidentiality but denied knowing Letby was under suspicion when he organised her visits to Alder Hey.
However, a panel rejected his version of events and he was fired for gross misconduct a fortnight later, on June 23.
A source told Our News Outlet that relatives reported him missing the following day and he was found collapsed in an apparent diabetic coma in his car at a retail park around 20 miles from his Cheshire home.
He was admitted to intensive care but never regained consciousness and died on July 3 at Whiston Hospital, Merseyside.
It is understood that no note was found beside his body but his death has been referred to the Cheshire Coroner, who confirmed ‘preliminary inquiries’ have begun.
Hospital bosses would have been duty bound to inform the doctors’ regulator, the General Medical Council, about his dismissal, potentially threatening his professional registration and ability to work again.
Lucy Letby worked as a neonatal nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital between January 2012 and July 2016
Dr Deakin told the Thirlwall inquiry – the public inquiry investigating Letby’s crimes – in October 2024, the Band 5 nurse ‘misled and maybe manipulated’ him into giving her information about babies she had attacked.
The then junior doctor swapped 1,355 Facebook messages with Letby, discussing babies who collapsed when they were on shift together, over a three-month period between June 2016 and September 2016.
The pair also exchanged more messages about their private lives, sometimes late at night, met up for walks and meals and went on day trips to London together in their free time away from work.
In one message Letby asked Dr Deakin about the condition of Baby N and queried whether she had done anything wrong concerning his care.
He messaged back: ‘Oh Lucy, poor little thing. I am sure he has had the best care possible and you will have done everything you could for him.’
Asked by counsel for the inquiry, Rachel Langdale KC, whether such a message was appropriate, Dr Deakin replied: ‘In hindsight, no. Looking at the content of the messages here, I’ve shared too much.
‘It’s common to give updates on how patients are without naming them, without giving lots of clinical detail to help the recipient understand where that patient is up to.
‘I gave details that I thought were helpful but I see now that that probably wasn’t the case.’
In her evidence to the inquiry, which was overseen by High Court judge Lady Justice Thirlwall and is set to report later this year, Baby N’s mother accused Dr Deakin of ‘blatantly’ breaching her son’s patient confidentiality. She also revealed she had lodged a formal complaint with Alder Hey about his conduct.
The inquiry also heard that Dr Deakin forwarded Letby an email from Dr Stephen Brearey, the neonatal lead at the Countess, in which he indicated that the deaths of two triplets, Child O and P, who Letby was later convicted of murdering, would be investigated at inquests.
Dr Deakin explained to Ms Langdale that he did so because ‘of the worry about those two babies.’
‘They were unexpected deaths,’ he said. ‘She (Letby) gave me the impression she was very upset…I was basically trying to give her some insight into what was going on.’
He agreed that, with hindsight, it was an ‘error’ to send the email and he should ‘not have sent it’.
Dr Deakin admitted that, at the time he was trying to be ‘supportive’ but added: ‘That now feels like a massive mistake.
‘It’s something that I’ve considered on a daily basis for the last six to eight years. The amount of reflection that I’ve done over this is significant.
‘I was not aware of the full clinical picture and I provided support by being misled and maybe manipulated, and for that I’m really sorry that things have come to an end as they have.
‘I have a lot of regrets over how that period of time took place.’
The inquiry heard that Dr Deakin emailed bosses at Alder Hey in December 2016 to say Letby, who was studying for a masters degree, had an interest in the care of post-operative premature babies and wanted to observe some theatre sessions to ‘facilitate her personal development’. She had been removed from frontline nursing by bosses at the Countess because of concerns about her link to the spike in baby deaths six months earlier.
Dr Deakin claimed he was told it was approved by ‘whoever was managing Letby at the Countess of Chester’ on the basis that she must be supervised at all times and have no direct patient contact.
The inquiry was told that Letby went on to attend a multi-disciplinary team meeting in March 2017 at Alder Hey and may also have attended an outpatient clinic with Dr Deakin in the same month. She was also at a ‘roadshow meeting’ relating to insulin – the substance she used to try to kill two of her victims – at the hospital in April 2017.
In an email shown to the inquiry Letby also claimed she had shadowed a nurse on paediatric intensive care at Alder Hey around that time.
The inquiry heard the visits were made possible because Karen Rees, who was the head of nursing in the urgent care division at the Countess, sent a letter of approval to Alder Hey.
The letter stipulated that Letby must have no direct contact with patients and should be supervised at all times but made no mention of the fact that she had been suspected of causing harm.
Letby, formerly of Hereford, was convicted at Manchester Crown Court in August 2023 after the longest running murder trial in British history.
She has always maintained she did not kill or harm any babies in her care.
Letby has twice applied and been denied the right to appeal, but has lodged documents with the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the body which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, in a bid to secure her freedom.
