'Crying' Letby is innocent, claims former nursing boss

A retired head of nursing at Lucy Letby's hospital has said the convicted killer is innocent, describing meetings with the nurse who "cried in my arms".

- WILLIAM WARNES

Letby, 35, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted across two trials of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016.

She lost two bids last year to challenge her convictions at the Court of Appeal - in May, for seven murders and seven attempted murders, and in October, for the attempted murder of a baby girl for which she was convicted by a different jury at a retrial.

Karen Rees, 62, a now-retired head of nursing at Countess of Chester Hospital, met Letby for the first time in the summer of 2016 when she had to tell the nurse she was being removed from the neonatal ward after concerns about her "clinical practice".

She told The Sunday Times: "What I saw was a very frightened young woman who was shocked and bewildered." Over the next two years, Ms Rees met with Letby regularly and developed a close relationship with the nurse. At her first meeting with her, the retired head of nursing claimed she was shocked and sympathetic to see the broken woman before her but that she had a job to do.

She reportedly told Letby: "I've been given a management instruction that I have to remove you from your clinical practice.

This is a neutral act. It's to protect you as well as the babies. But until this is investigated, you're going to do a non-clinical role."