The ‘terrible’ list of Lucy Letby’s convictions as a serial baby killer was read out loud in a courtroom today, as her re-trial on a charge of attempted murder entered its final phase.
Nick Johnson KC, prosecuting, named each of the seven premature infants she murdered at the Countess of Chester Hospital, and all six of those she tried to kill while on duty in its neonatal unit.
Her first victim, a boy, died the day he was born, the second, another boy, when he was four days old. A little girl died at two days, a boy at six days and another girl at 11 weeks.
One of a set of triplets was murdered by Letby when he was two days old, and the following day she also killed one of his brothers at the age of three days.
Killer nurse Lucy Letby was accused of ‘lying’ and changing her account of events
Body worn camera footage issued by Cheshire Constabulary during the arrest of Lucy Letby
In his closing speech at Manchester Crown Court, Mr Johnson told the jury they now had to decide whether Letby, 34, had also tried to murder Baby K. Jurors in the nurse’s previous trial failed to reach a verdict on the infant’s death.
‘Lucy Letby is an extraordinary person – and not in a good way,’ said Mr Johnson. The list of her previous convictions provided them with ‘the shocking and dreadful context’ of the case.
‘The crimes themselves are wholly abnormal, and so to were the circumstances. From first to last, one year, two weeks and three days. So cunning and devious was Lucy Letby that she managed to carry out her campaign of murder and attempted murder undetected for all those months.
‘We say that tells you an awful lot about her as a person, and we say you should take that into account when you consider this case’.
He added: ‘Even in that dreadful context, K was the epitome of fragility, a tiny, tiny girl born at 25 weeks weighing 629 grammes – seven tenths of a bag of sugar’.
The prosecution has alleged that the lead consultant on the unit, Dr Ravi Jayaram, walked into Nursery 1 at about 3.45am on February 17, 2016, to find Letby standing next to Baby K’s incubator and ‘doing nothing’ as monitors showed her saturation levels dropping to critical levels.
Mr Johnson told the jury: ‘Her answer to the accusation? ‘I don’t remember, but it can’t be true because that’s not the sort of thing I would do’.
In her evidence the convicted killer had used expressions like ‘best practice’, ‘normal practice’ and ‘common practice’ on nine separate occasions.
‘There was nothing ‘best’ or ‘normal’ about Lucy Letby’s practice,’ said the barrister. ‘But it was common practice for her to sabotage infants entrusted to her care’.
The prosecution claim Letby was caught ‘virtually red-handed’ by senior paediatrician Dr Ravi Jayaram ‘doing nothing’ as the child’s oxygen levels dropped dangerously low
Baby K died at Arrowe Park Hospital, on the Wirral, three days after her birth in Chester. The prosecution do not accuse her of causing her death, but of attempting to kill the infant while she was in her unit.
All the other staff at Chester were doing their best to maximise Baby K’s chances of survival, said Mr Johnson. But there was one exception. ‘The one exception to that is sitting in the dock’.
One doctor on the neonatal unit had helped give Baby K ‘her first breath of life’, while staff at Arrowe Park left her parents with her as she breathed ‘her final breaths cradled in the arms of her father’.
Mr Johnson said it was ‘a red herring’ for the defence to try to focus on imperfections in Baby K’s care at the Countess of Chester. ‘It has nothing to do with why K’s ET tube kept dislodging.
When Baby K desaturated at around 3.45am Dr Jayaram had been ‘doing his best’ to arrange her transfer away from Chester. One of his fellow consultants, John Gibbs, said in evidence that the quickest thing a nurse can do for a baby whose saturations are dropping is simply to turn up the oxygen on the wall.
‘One thing that was not a reasonable option was doing nothing and to wait for her to self-correct,’ said Mr Johnson.
He highlighted the fact that in agreed evidence a nursing expert had made it clear that it would not be good practice to wait.
But when confronted with that in cross-examination, Letby had replied: ‘That’s her opinion’.
‘That’s her opinion?’ asked Mr Johnson. ‘That’s not an answer. That IS what should have happened. It’s agreed evidence’.
With hindsight, staff should had Baby K transferred out of Chester earlier on, ‘because there was a killer operating on the neonatal unit’.
Mr Johnson said that despite Letby’s claims not to remember the events of June 17, she ‘took pleasure in her murderous handiwork’ and later tried to cover her tracks.
In Baby K’s third desaturation she sought to portray herself as ‘saving the day’ when the infant’s breathing tube slipped too far into her throat.
‘She was clearly lying about this incident, just as she was lying about so many things.
‘When you look at the whole picture, it’s clear that Dr Jayaram was telling the truth, and if you agree with that we respectfully submit that the only possible verdict is one of guilty’.
Letby’s barrister, Ben Myers KC, told the jury: ‘Anyone who thinks this is a done deal is wrong’.
He said the prosecution said at the outset that the case centred on its ‘star witness’, Dr Jayaram having caught Letby ‘almost red-handed’ in the act of attempted murder. But the consultant’s account was ‘incredible’.
If he had really seen what he said he saw, and believed someone was ‘killing babies and trying to hurt them’, he would have gone to the police. ‘He would have told the management, and if they dragged their heels he would have told the police.
‘You don’t need to be a paediatric consultant to do that’.
At one point Dr Jayaram had said he and his colleagues ‘didn’t have the training’ to deal with the issue. Mr Myers described that as ‘pathetic’, adding: ‘A child would know what to do. If he had really thought that, he would have gone to the police and he would have got her out’.
Dr Jayaram ‘didn’t have a clue’ what he had seen, and the prosecution had been ‘inventing’ ways of getting around his evidence. It was operating on the basis that Letby’s previous convictions would lead to a similar verdict in the current trial, ‘come what may’.
‘We say it’s an insult to the collective intelligence of this courtroom to say that Dr Jayaram saw what he says he saw and did absolutely nothing. It is ridiculous and it is unbelievable’.