Lucy Letby’s parents have gone public with a raw, emotional attack on Netflix’s new documentary about their daughter, saying watching it would “destroy” them and accusing the filmmakers of turning their family home into entertainment. As the streaming giant prepares to release The Investigation of Lucy Letby, Susan and John Letby say they never agreed to the use of intimate arrest footage and feel their quiet street has been turned into a grim landmark. Their anger drops viewers right into the uncomfortable space where true-crime storytelling collides with the pain of people still living with the fallout.
At the same time, the documentary is being sold as a rare inside look at a case that has already been described as a once-in-a-generation crime story, with unseen material and key figures from the trial. That tension, between public appetite for answers and a family’s plea for privacy, is now shaping the conversation before a single frame has officially landed on Netflix.
What Netflix is promising with its new Letby film
Netflix is positioning The Investigation of Lucy Letby as a feature-length deep dive into one of the most disturbing criminal cases to hit the UK in years. The project, flagged in a NEWS announcement, is framed as a chance for viewers to see exclusive material and hear from people who were directly involved in the investigation and trial. The film is set to land on the platform as a single, feature-length documentary rather than a multi-part series, which signals Netflix’s belief that the story is strong enough to command a full evening of viewing on its own.
According to listings for the project, The Investigation of Lucy Letby is marked as Coming soon, with the page confirming it Releases February 4, 2026. That timing keeps the documentary close on the heels of Letby’s conviction and sentencing, and it arrives while public debate is still live over how the case was handled and what it says about the wider health system.
The crimes at the heart of the documentary
Any film about Lucy Letby is anchored in the stark facts of her convictions. Letby is serving 15 whole life terms for the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of seven others at the Countess of Chester Hospital, a scale of offending that has already been described as a “once-in-a-generation type case”. The documentary is expected to revisit that period between June 2015 and June 2016, when the babies were attacked on the neonatal unit, and to walk viewers through how suspicions hardened into a criminal investigation.
Producers have also signalled that the film will feature Letby’s own barrister, who has argued that no babies were murdered and that the case against her was built on flawed assumptions rather than hard science. That detail, highlighted in reporting about the documentary, hints that Netflix is not only retelling the prosecution’s narrative but also giving airtime to the defence’s lingering objections. For viewers, that sets up a film that is as much about how the justice system reached its conclusions as it is about the crimes themselves.
Why Susan and John Letby say the film crosses a line
For Susan and John Letby, the problem is not just that Netflix is revisiting their daughter’s crimes, it is how the documentary is doing it. The couple say they were blindsided by the decision to use footage from inside their home in Hereford, including scenes of their daughter being arrested while wearing her dressing gown. They describe the use of that material as an “invasion of privacy” and have criticised the way cameras captured Lucy Letby being led away from the family property in her gown, a moment that was later shown in Granada coverage of the case.
The parents say they had “no idea” that footage from inside their house would be used in a global streaming release and insist they never consented to their home becoming a backdrop for a true-crime spectacle. They have also objected to the way the documentary appears to linger on the moment officers arrived at the property, arguing that this turns a deeply personal trauma into a kind of set piece for viewers who will never have to live with the consequences on their own street.
The arrest footage that sparked their fury
The flashpoint for much of the anger is the decision to show Lucy Letby’s arrests in detail. Letby was arrested three times, and on the first occasion, in July 2018, she was led out of her home wearing a blue tracksuit as officers searched the property. Her parents say the Netflix documentary goes further than previous coverage by stitching together sequences from that day and later arrests, including the moment officers came back to the family home to arrest her again, which they see as an attempt to heighten drama at their expense. They have accused the filmmakers of “invading” their privacy by using this material from the family home.
In their account, the way the footage is edited makes their quiet street look like a stage set, with police cars, cameras and neighbours all pulled into the frame. They argue that “all this taking place” in such a small community, where everyone knows everyone, has already been hard enough without Netflix turning it into a global spectacle. Their criticism, captured in detailed quotes, is that the documentary is not just telling a story about crime and justice, it is also using their home and their neighbours as uncredited extras in a show they never agreed to join.
“It would likely kill us”: the emotional toll on the Letby family
Beyond the privacy arguments, Susan and John Letby are blunt about what watching the documentary would do to them. In a statement, they said they will not watch The Investigation of Lucy Letby and added that “it would likely kill us if we did”, a line that captures just how raw the wounds still are. They have already endured the trial, the sentencing and the public branding of their daughter as a child killer, and they say reliving those events in a slickly produced Netflix film is simply not survivable for them. Their comments were shared in coverage of how Lucy Letby has become the focus of yet another wave of attention.
They have also spoken about the impact on their hometown, describing it as a place “where everyone knows everyone” and saying the renewed spotlight risks turning their street into a permanent point of curiosity. In comments reported after they vowed not to watch Investigation of Lucy, they suggested that the documentary could effectively freeze their community in the worst moment of their lives, with strangers arriving to see the house where the arrests took place.
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