Lucy Letby trial: Nurse cries as interview excerpts read in court

By Daniel O’Donoghue

BBC News

Lucy Letby broke down in tears as a court heard how she wanted to take her own life when she was accused of causing the deaths and collapses of babies on a neonatal unit.

She cried in the dock as excerpts of her interviews with Cheshire Police following her arrest were read out.

The 33-year-old is accused of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder 10 others at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

Jurors at Manchester Crown Court have previously heard that Ms Letby was moved to the hospital’s “risk and patient safety office” in July 2016 after doctors raised concerns over her alleged involvement in baby deaths.

Senior doctors at the hospital requested Ms Letby be taken off frontline nursing duties after the deaths of two triplet brothers, known as Child O and P, in June 2016.

Ms Letby was placed on a three month “secondment” to the office and told that she would be placed under “clinical supervision”.

When she was arrested in July 2018, Ms Letby told detectives that during this time she felt “panicked” and “overwhelmed” and had suicidal thoughts.

The court was shown a note, found during a police search of Ms Letby’s home, that she wrote during this period.

On the note, she had written: “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them.”

She also wrote: “I am a horrible evil person” and “I am evil” and “I did this”.

Asked about the note in the police interview, she said: “I just wrote it because everything had got on top of me.

“It was when I’d not long found out I’d been removed from the unit and they were telling me my practice might be wrong, that I needed to read all my competencies – my practice might not have been good enough.

“So I felt like people were blaming my practice, that I might have hurt them without knowing through my practice, and that made me feel guilty and I just felt really isolated.

“I was blaming myself but not because I’d done something (but) because of the way people were making me feel.

“But like I’d only ever done my best for those babies and then people were trying to say that my practice wasn’t good, that I’d done something.”

She added: “I just couldn’t cope and I just did not want to be here any more.

“I just felt it was, it was all just spiralling out of control, I just didn’t know how to feel about it or what was going to happen or what to do.”

The detective asked: “What people were they?”

Ms Letby replied: “The Trust and the staff on the unit.”

The detective said: “Did you ever make any mistakes?”

The detective asked: “How would you describe [the note] as a whole?”

Ms Letby said: “It was just a way of me getting my feelings out on to paper, it just helps me process it a bit more.

“I felt if my practice hadn’t been right then I had killed them and that was why I wasn’t good enough.”

The detective said: “In what way do you think your practice might have been the reason why these babies have died?”

Ms Letby said: “I didn’t know, I thought maybe I’d missed something, maybe I hadn’t acted quickly enough.”

The detective went on: “And you felt evil?”

Ms Letby replied: “Other people would perceive me as being evil, yes, if I had missed something.”

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She told police that she was “career-focused” and was worried that the investigation would lead to her losing her job and “change what people would think of me”.

Asked about why she thought the police would get involved, she replied: “I don’t know, I just panicked.”

After Ms Letby was moved from her frontline role with the accusations hanging over her in 2016, she told detectives: “I wished sometimes that I was dead and someone would kill me”.

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