as the trial ended today, letby refused to come into the courtroom. prosecutors later reflecting on the scale of her deceit. in her hands, innocuous substances like air, milk or medication like insulin would become lethal. she perverted her learning and weaponised her craft to inflict harm, grief and death. the nurse even wrote this sympathy card to the parents of one baby and searched for many of the other families on facebook. not a single thing that i ve ever seen or witnessed of lucy would let me for a moment believe that she was capable of the things she was being accused of. dawn is one of lucy letby s childhood friends and has watched events unfold with disbelief. she is the kindest person that i ve ever known. she would only ever want to help people.
on the unit who shared joint concerns about letby. he s now speaking publicly about their experience for the first time. it s something that nobody really wants to consider, you know, that a member of staff might be harming the babies under your care. things came to a head when two out of three healthy triplets died within 2a hours of each other injune 2016. afterwards a meeting was held for staff. lucy letby was there. she was sitting next to me. i spoke to her and said how tired and upset she must be after two days of this, and hoped that she was going to have a restful weekend, and she turned to me and said, no, i m back on shift tomorrow. the other staff were very traumatised by all of this. they were crumbling before your eyes almost, and she was quite happy and confident to come into work.
duty for all of them. asjudith was reporting there, doctors on the unit were raising concerns for months about letby, but senior managers ignored their warnings and protected her. 0ur social affairs correspondent michael buchanan has this exclusive report. this is the story of an nhs trust that didn t properly investigate why 13 babies died unexpectedly in a one year period. instead, it turned against the very people who wanted the police to examine the deaths. there is only one serial killer of babies that s worked in that organisation, and the executive team were not the people who were responsible for the deaths of those babies. but they had some opportunities to get to the bottom of what was happening. susan gilbyjoined the countess of chester nhs trust as medical director a month after lucy letby was arrested. within two months, she was made
lucy said, don t worry, the registrar was coming. and then she told me to go back to the ward. the baby s mum left him in this intensive care area and went to call her husband. they thought their son was in safe hands with nurse letby, but a short time later, they were told he was dangerously ill and they rushed back to find doctors trying to save him. we were taken in, and we were told to talk to him and hold his hand. and then. ..we had a conversation with the consultant, and he said, you know what, we re going to stop because it s not helping. we want him to die in your arms. on the unit, there were typically up to three deaths a year, but in 2015, they had that number in the month ofjune alone. and the pattern continued, with babies dying or coming close to death.
couldn t have been further from her mind. the crying, i ve never heard anything like it since. it was screaming. it was screaming, and i was like, what is the matter with them? legally, we can t identify the families in this case, but their stories are distressing. these are the parents of twin boys born prematurely in 2015. their mum was taking milk to them when she heard one of her sons crying loudly. he had blood round his mouth, and lucy was there, but faffing about and not really doing anything. lucy said, don t worry, the registrar was coming. she told me to go back to the ward. the baby s mum left him in this intensive care area and went to call her husband. they thought their son was in safe hands with nurse letby,