A British nurse who has been accused of murdering seven premature babies allegedly sent a condolence card to the parents of one of the babies she is charged with killing.
Lucy Letby, who is also accused of seven murders and the attempts to murder ten more babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016, admitted to police she had sent the card, claiming the action was “not normal.”
In her trial she acknowledged she had an image of the card on her cell phone, according to testimony. The card came after the nurse had allegedly attempted to kill the child three times before succeeding on the fourth attempt.
Although the child was doing well until Letby “got her hands on her,” prosecuting attorney Nick Johnson asserted, after that the baby vomited and exhibited breathing problems. He added, “It was persistent, it was calculated and it was cold-blooded,” as The Daily Mail reported.
Letby allegedly injected babies with insulin, air or overfed them with milk at night when the parents were not present.
Johnson also showed the jury an image of a yellow Post-it note kept by Letby. He declared that she wrote, “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough,” “I am a horrible evil person,” and in capital letters, “I AM EVIL I DID THIS.”
Johnson concluded, “Well, ladies and gentlemen, that in a nutshell is your task in this case. Whether or not she did these dreadful things is the decision you will have to make when you have heard all the evidence.”
Police investigating the murders of seven babies found a note in the home of neo-natal nurse Lucy Letby saying ‘I am evil, I did this’, a jury heard this morning.https://t.co/EggAmV6fWf
— Dan Haygarth (@DanHaygarth1) October 13, 2022
The prosecution at Letby’s trail claimed she tried to kill twins more than once and in June 2016 murdered two babies who were part of triplets while the third baby survived.
In the case of the first child Letby is alleged to have murdered, the prosecution claimed she first injected air into the baby’s stomach before trying twice more. After the third attempt the baby was transferred to another unit, making a substantial recovery, but then was returned to Letby’s care where the baby collapsed and needed cardiac compressions.
When the parents arrived after the baby’s death, they were asked if they wanted to bathe their baby. Johnson related that as the baby’s mother “bathed her recently departed child, Letby came into the room and, in the words of the mother, was ‘smiling and kept going on about how she was present at Child I’s first bath and how much [the child] had loved it.’’”
“A post mortem revealed that all the loops in the infant’s bowel were significantly dilated due to increased air content,” The Daily Mail reported.
“We suggest that it is highly significant that children within the orbit of Lucy Letby persistently and consistently suffered unexplained collapses,” Johnson contended.
“Sometimes the evidence of her hand at work is more obvious than others and it is remarkable that on many occasions when children who had suffered unexpected spectacular and life-threatening collapses were removed from her orbit, they had exceptional recoveries,” he asserted.
