Nurse Lucy Letby admits she was ‘upset and frustrated’ before collapse of baby boy she ‘murdered’

Neonatal nurse Lucy Letby denied murdering a baby within six minutes of having a ‘frustrating and upsetting’ WhatsApp conversation with an off-duty colleague, a jury heard today.

Letby, 33, agreed with a detective interviewing her over the deaths of seven babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital that she had been at the cot-side of Baby C at the time he collapsed. But she insisted she had not murdered him.

She also denied having done anything to cause his vocal cords to swell so much that a doctor failed three times to intubate him.

And she claimed to have no recollection of holding up a Moses basket and telling the dying infant’s parents: ‘You’ve said your goodbyes now, do you want to put him in here’.

An officer told the alleged killer that the father felt ‘shocked and upset’ by the remark, particularly as Baby C was still alive despite medics having halted their attempts to resuscitate him.

Jurors were taken through a summary of numerous interviews Letby gave Cheshire Police following her original arrest in July 2018.  

In one recording, Letby told the detective: ‘I don’t recall saying it. I don’t recall that conversation’ about the Moses basket.

The jury at Manchester Crown Court was told how shortly before C’s death in the intensive care Nursery 1 the neonatal nurse had been in a WhatsApp conversation with colleague Jenny Jones-Key.

From memory Letby believes she was either in Nursery 3, where she was the designated nurse to a healthier baby, or at the nurses’ station at the time she was messaging from her mobile.

She told Jones-Key that she kept thinking about the day that Baby A had died the previous week, and seeing the image in her mind’s eye of him lying in his cot.

When her colleague suggested she needed to take a break, she reacted with a message, sent at 11.09pm on June 30, 2015, that read: ‘Forget it. I’m obviously making more of it than I should’.

During the police interview a detective asked her how the conversation had made her feel.

‘Frustrated,’ said Letby. She agreed it made her feel ‘like Jenny didn’t understand’ how she was feeling.

She went on: ‘I just remember feeling I wasn’t getting anywhere with the conversation’.

Letby also agreed she had told Jones-Key that working in Nursery 3 was ‘eating me up’.

The officer pointed out that six minutes after the 11.09pm message Baby C had collapsed, then went on to tell Letby: ‘You were the only staff member there and you were seen at his cot-side when the alarm sounded. You were feeling frustrated and upset at the time. Do you agree?’

Letby replies: ‘Yes’.

Officer: ‘You’ve then gone on to attack (Baby) C’.

‘No,’ says Letby.

And she repeated the answer when asked a moment later: ‘Did you murder C?’

Letby, originally from Hereford, denies murdering seven babies and attempting to murder a further ten.