‘Letby was broken, she cried in my arms - if she was lying she deserves an Oscar’: Lucy Letby’s former boss

A retired head of nursing at the convicted baby killer’s hospital, who offered to give evidence for her defence, but was not called, speaks for the first time about why she believes Letby is innocent.

‘I trusted Lucy’s ward manager when she looked me in the eye and said, ‘She’s [Letby] fantastic and she’s right by the book, she does everything right’, said the nurse’s former boss. Picture: Facebook

Karen Rees met Lucy Letby for the first time in summer 2016 when she had to tell the nurse she was being removed from the neonatal ward after concerns about her “clinical practice”.

Rees, 62, the head of nursing who is now retired, said: “What I saw was a very frightened young woman who was shocked and bewildered.”

Over the next two years she met Letby regularly and struck up a close relationship with the nurse who would be convicted as the UK’s most prolific child serial killer. Letby, 35, is serving 15 whole life orders after she was found guilty of murdering seven babies and trying to kill seven others at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester. Last year she lost two attempts to challenge her convictions at the Court of Appeal.

Letby’s arrest in August 2023. Picture: AFP

Today, for the first time, Rees speaks openly about the months she spent supporting Letby and why she believes she is innocent.

Rees said that when she took the job in 2015 she was unaware of what was about to unfold in the neonatal unit. This was although months previously, two consultants, Dr Stephen Brearey and Dr Ravi Jayaram, had reported concerns about a sharp rise in infant deaths to the hospital’s executive team.

Karen Rees described the meetings with Letby after she was removed from the ward as ‘shocking’. Picture: Supplied

Three infants, later known as babies A, C and D, had died between June 8 and June 22. Baby B, who was baby A’s twin sister, had also collapsed and survived after being resuscitated. “Certainly from October until the following year, there were no concerns raised with me,” Rees said. The first time she became aware of any issue was in early 2016 when she was told the mortality rate on the neonatal ward was increasing, but she claims there was “still no mention of Lucy”. Rees said the concerns were taken seriously even though many of the babies treated in the unit were often born prematurely and were high risk.

In February 2016, Brearey, working with a specialist consultant from Liverpool, carried out a half-day thematic review into the deaths and collapses. They produced a report listing complex clinical issues alongside a mortality table and an appendix. The appendix, which was reproduced in a police report, showed Letby was on shift for each of the deaths and collapses.

Rees was sent the results but was reassured in an email from the unit manager that there was nothing to “directly point the finger at Lucy”.

On June 24, 2016, the divisional director was first told of concerns about Letby by Jayaram.

After meeting him in a cafe in the hospital, the hospital manager immediately contacted Rees and told her Jayaram and Brearey wanted Letby removed from the ward. Rees went to find the consultants who declined to elaborate.

Rees says that Brearey told her: “It’s called gut feeling and the drawer of doom” and pointed to a drawer in his desk. She claims he refused to open it.

Despite failing to obtain any evidence against Letby, Rees was sufficiently concerned to escalate the issue to the hospital’s executive team. She was told to await a directive. It never came.

By now Rees was approaching others to find out what was going on, including the deputy unit manager. Her colleague backed Letby, telling Rees: “Karen, she’s so by the book, it’s untrue.”

A general view of the Women and Children's Building at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, England, where Letby worked as a nurse. Picture: Getty

Later that evening Brearey called Rees at home to tell her that baby P, the second triplet, had died. His brother, baby O, had died the day before. Rees told him she had escalated his concerns and advised him to contact Alison Kelly, the chief nurse, or Ian Harvey, the medical director.

At the start of July, Rees came back from holiday to find the human resources manager waiting for her. She was not told what had happened but was ordered to remove Letby from the ward and put her on “non-clinical” duties.

At her first meeting with Letby, Rees claims to have been shocked and sympathetic to see the broken woman before her but she had a job to do. “I’ve been given a management instruction that I have to remove you from your clinical practice,” she told Letby. “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.”

The board agreed to downgrade the unit from a Level 2 to a Level 1, so the sickest babies were sent to neighbouring hospitals. The number of deaths fell. As the investigation continued, Rees was given a “management instruction” to meet the nurse weekly to check on her wellbeing.

Rees described the meetings as “shocking”. “She was crying ... very distressed every time we met her, saying, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ She kept saying to me, ‘I am not going to let them drive me out of the job that I love. I worked hard. I’ve done nothing wrong.’ That’s what she kept repeating to me. She cried in my arms on a weekly basis. It was harrowing.”

Rees added: “People say she’s not emotional. Trust me, she is emotional. I know that they say psychopaths are clever. But if she was acting she deserves an Oscar because she was so convincing. She was really hurt when she was told about the consultants’ allegations because she thought they were friends, not just colleagues, and she could not understand why they were doing this to her.”

A projection of the conclusions are shown during a press conference to present new evidence regarding the safety of the convictions of the former nurse. Picture: Getty

Rees said she was worried Letby was suicidal. She and others set up a WhatsApp group in support. Texts emerged of Rees telling Letby to “hang on in there girl ... your nursing team are fully behind you. We will get through this.”

Letby was also having counselling and was encouraged to “write down stressful thoughts”. These notes were relied on by the prosecution as amounting to a confession during her first trial. Densely written on Post-it notes and a torn sheet of paper, they included: “I am evil I did this”, “I killed them on purpose because I am not good enough to care for them and I am a horrible evil person”, and “hate”.

A handwritten note alongside the 2016 Diary of nurse Lucy Letby. Picture: AFP

Letby was found guilty of attacking babies in her care often moments after their parents or other nurses left their sides, fatally injecting seven babies with air, trying to kill two others by lacing feed bags with insulin and the attempted murder of another by thrusting a nasogastric tube down the baby’s throat. She was found to have hoarded dozens of medical documents belonging to her victims in her home, as well as carrying out Facebook searches on the babies’ parents.

Rees, who lives with her husband on a farm in Flintshire, retired in March 2018 - four months before police first arrested Letby. She wanted to attend Letby’s trial at Manchester crown court but was prevented because she was a potential witness. “I wanted to go in the court just so Lucy could see me,” she said. Rees, who offered to give evidence for Letby’s defence but was never called, says she always believed her to be innocent.

However, Rees’s lawyers advised her to publicly denounce the nurse after she was besieged by press in the wake of Letby’s conviction in August 2023: “[Letby] was very convincing. I now know that this was a calculated and successful attempt to make me believe her story, and I was deceived ...”

This month Letby’s lawyers said they had sent her case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Challenged on why she believes Letby is innocent, Rees said: “The one person that knows her nursing team is the manager or the unit manager - not a consultant that visits a couple of times a week. They know the strengths and weaknesses. I trusted Lucy’s ward manager when she looked me in the eye and said, ‘She’s [Letby] fantastic and she’s right by the book, she does everything right.’

“And I believed Lucy when she told me she had done nothing wrong. I will always recall her saying to me, ‘You’re the only person, Karen, that hasn’t asked me if I did it?’ Because I didn’t think she had.”

The Times