Most of those commenting on the guilt or innocence of Lucy Letby – the nurse who is serving 15 whole-life jail terms for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others – don’t know what it’s like to work alongside a killer nurse. I do. Benjamin Geen, whom I worked with at Horton General Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire, took the lives of at least two patients during his time there.
Something in the nature of our interest in murderers has a habit of making us forget logic
Geen’s case has, like Letby’s, become popular with conspiracy theorists. Public fascination has been far greater with Letby. But the two cases share an attraction for those convinced that they have hit upon the ‘truth’. Living through Geen’s case made me realise, however, that ill-chosen fascinations can give rise to foggy judgements.
When I first met Geen in 2003, he was a cheerful young nurse just starting his career, and I was a junior doctor in the same emergency department.
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