LUCY Letby’s former boss has said that the nurse deserves an Oscar if she is lying over the deaths of babies and believes she is innocent.
Karen Rees, 62, was formerly head of nursing at the Countess of Chester Hospital, where seven babies died under Letby’s care.
suppliedLucy Letby’s former boss Karen Rees believes the nurse is innocent[/caption]
ReutersLetby was found guilty of murdering seven babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital[/caption]
PAThe nurse is serving 15 whole life orders for the killings[/caption]
Letby, 35, is serving 15 whole life orders after she was found guilty of murdering seven babies and trying to kill seven others at the Chester hospital.
She lost two attempts to challenge her convictions at the Court of Appeal last year, although medical experts claimed they found “no evidence” of murder and instead blamed the babies’ deaths on hospital errors, earlier this month.
Rees told The Times: “What I saw was a very frightened young woman who was shocked and bewildered.”
She had first met Letby in summer 2016 when had to tell the nurse she was being removed from the neonatal ward following concerns over her “clinical practice”.
Rees claims that weekly management-advised wellbeing meetings she had with Letby following this revealed how “very distressed” the nurse was.
She added that Letby was always crying whenever the two would meet and claimed the nurse told her she would not be driven out from the “job that I love”, proclaiming she had “done nothing wrong”.
Rees says this happened for weeks on end and that “she deserves an Oscar” if she was lying about being innocent.
Their weekly meetings came as Letby was investigated, following a rise in baby deaths at the neonatal ward that aligned with Lucy’s shifts there.
Rees added: “I know that they say psychopaths are clever – but if she was acting she deserves an Oscar because she was so convincing.”
The nurse’s former boss also said Letby was hurt by the allegations as they came from people she saw as friends, not just colleagues.
Dr Stephen Brearey and Dr Ravi Jayaram raised concerns about the deaths of three infants, later known as babies A, C and D between June 8 and June 22, 2015.
Baby B, A’s twin sister, had also collapsed but survived after being resuscitated.
Rees believes Letby to be innocent, saying she trusted the team around the nurse, that she claims some believe Letby to be innocent, know her best and that this behaviour would not fit Letby’s character.
She says a colleague had told her Letby was a strict rule-follower and could have never done this.
Following concerns for her mental health, Rees created a WhatsApp group with others to try and support Letby.
Messages have since emerged from the chat that supported Letby, telling her to hold strong until the investigation was complete.
Rees has admitted getting too close to Letby, who was taken out for tea every couple of months by the group.
The nurse was also undergoing counselling at the time and was encouraged to write down stressful thoughts on her mind, of which some were relied on by the prosecution during her first trial.
Post-it notes and a torn sheet of paper included densely written comments such as: “I am evil I did this”, “I killed them on purpose because I am not good enough to care for them and I am a horrible evil person”, and “hate”.
Despite these, Rees claims Letby never expressed this sentiment during their meetings and that she was a “quiet, normal 28-year-old”.
However, Letby’s ex-boss claims that stress would make the nurse “catatonic”.
Letby’s months in limbo saw forensic reviews of each death reported, although these never happened, and no Datix forms (clinical incident reporting sytem) were completed about the nurse’s clinical practice.
Despite attempts to have Letby return to the neonatal unit, the two consultants who initially raised concerns, and other doctors, declined to work with Letby, ending hopes of her being reinstated.
A personal plea by the nurse in 2017 to return to the unit saw Rees read out her statement at a meeting with the executive team and the consultant body.
The charges Letby has been convicted of in full
Child A, allegation of murder. The Crown said Letby injected air intravenously into the bloodstream of the baby boy. COUNT 1 GUILTY.
Child B, allegation of attempted murder. The Crown said Letby attempted to murder the baby girl, the twin sister of Child A, by injecting air into her bloodstream. COUNT 2 GUILTY.
Child C, allegation of murder. Prosecutors said Letby forced air down a feeding tube and into the stomach of the baby boy. COUNT 3 GUILTY.
Child D, allegation of murder. The Crown said air was injected intravenously into the baby girl. COUNT 4 GUILTY.
Child E, allegation of murder. The Crown said Letby murdered the twin baby boy with an injection of air into the bloodstream and also deliberately caused bleeding to the infant. COUNT 5 GUILTY.
Child F, allegation of attempted murder. Letby was said by prosecutors to have poisoned the twin brother of Child E with insulin. COUNT 6 GUILTY.
Child G, three allegations of attempted murder. The Crown said Letby targeted the baby girl by overfeeding her with milk and pushing air down her feeding tube. COUNT 7 GUILTY, COUNT 8 GUILTY, COUNT 9 NOT GUILTY.
Child H, two allegations of attempted murder. Prosecutors said Letby sabotaged the care of the baby girl in some way which led to two profound oxygen desaturations. COUNT 10 NOT GUILTY, COUNT 11 JURY COULD NOT REACH VERDICT.
Child I, allegation of murder. The prosecution said Letby killed the baby girl at the fourth attempt and had given her air and overfed her with milk. COUNT 12 GUILTY.
Child J, allegation of attempted murder. No specific form of harm was identified by the prosecution but they said Letby did something to cause the collapse of the baby girl. COUNT 13 JURY COULD NOT REACH VERDICT.
Child K, allegation of attempted murder. The prosecution said Letby compromised the baby girl as she deliberately dislodged a breathing tube. COUNT 14 JURY COULD NOT REACH VERDICT AT ORIGINAL TRIAL, GUILTY AFTER RETRIAL
Child L, allegation of attempted murder. The Crown said the nurse poisoned the twin baby boy with insulin. COUNT 15 GUILTY.
Child M, allegation of attempted murder. Prosecutors said Letby injected air into the bloodstream of Child L’s twin brother. COUNT 16 GUILTY.
Child N, three allegations of attempted murder. The Crown said Letby inflicted trauma in the baby boy’s throat and also injected him with air in the bloodstream. COUNT 17 GUILTY, COUNT 18 JURY COULD NOT REACH VERDICT, COUNT 19 JURY COULD NOT REACH VERDICT.
Child O, allegation of murder. Prosecutors say Letby attacked the triplet boy by injecting him with air, overfeeding him with milk and inflicting trauma to his liver with “severe force”. COUNT 20 GUILTY.
Child P, allegation of murder. Prosecutors said the nurse targeted the triplet brother of Child O by overfeeding him with milk, injecting air and dislodging his breathing tube. COUNT 21 GUILTY.
Child Q, allegation of attempted murder. The Crown said Letby injected the baby boy with liquid, and possibly air, down his feeding tube. COUNT 22 JURY COULD NOT REACH VERDICT.
The four-page statement, that professed Letby’s innocence, was an attempt to touch the hearts of people, Rees believes.
Despite trying to again move her back into the unit, Rees says resistance from the consultants’ body meant this never happened.
Letby was found guilty of attacking babies in her care often just moments after parents or other nurses left their sides.
She was found guilty of fatally injecting seven babies with air, guilty of trying to kill two others by lacing feed bags with insulin, and guilty of the attempted murder of another by thrusting a tube down the baby’s throat.
Dozens of medical documents belonging to her victims were found hoarded in her home, and Facebook searches on the babies’ parents were also discovered.
The last time Rees saw Letby was at a small retirement party when the nurse gave her a garden lantern as a gift.
She was prevented from attending Letby’s trial at Manchester Crown Court as she was on a list of potential witnesses – she also offered to give evidence for Letby’s defence but was never called.
Her lawyers advised her to publicly denounce the nurse, following Letby’s conviction in August 2023, but that Rees now regrets this.
She says she has contacted HMP Bronzefield in Surrey, where Letby is serving her sentence, to apply for a visiting order but that Letby has not accepted this.
This comes as medical experts earlier this month found “no evidence” of murder and instead blamed the babies’ deaths on hospital errors.
A “blue riband committee” of 14 neonatalogists claimed they found “no murders” after going through the evidence at a press conference in London.
Lawyers for Letby revealed before the hearing that they had submitted an application to the independent Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) citing a miscarriage of justice.
The CCRC will now investigate whether the case should be sent to the Court of Appeal, who are the only ones that can overturn a conviction.
PASome believe Letby to be innocent[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
