UK police fear killer Lucy Letby attacked 30 more babies

Police are reviewing all 4,000 neonatal unit admissions at the hospital where Lucy Letby worked and probing the cases of infants who may have been harmed by her, but survived.

Lucy Letby was arrested at home in Chester in, 2018. Picture: AFP.

Detectives believe Lucy Letby may have attacked 30 more babies after officers identified “suspicious” incidents while she was on duty at the hospital where she murdered seven infants.

Police are reviewing all 4,000 admissions to neonatal units at the Countess of Chester, where the nurse worked between January 2012 and June 2016, and at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, where she completed placements.

They are understood to be closely examining the cases of 30 infants who may have been harmed by Letby, but survived. These cases are separate to the 17 babies involved in the nurse’s ten-month trial at Manchester crown court.

The disclosure, first made in The Guardian, comes before the nurse’s sentencing hearing on Monday local time. Letby, 33, faces joining only two other women serving whole life orders after she was convicted of seven charges of murder and seven of attempted murder against six babies between June 2015 and June 2016. She was cleared of two attempted murders and the jury was unable to reach a verdict on six charges of attempted murder.

Lucy Letby‘s police mugshot. Picture: Getty Images.

Other developments:

– Calls were made for the inquiry into the murders to appoint a foreign medical expert to avoid it being influenced by pro-NHS bias and for it to be on a statutory footing to compel witnesses to give evidence.

– An executive from the Countess of Chester said that she was considering legal action against a whistleblower at the hospital.

– An expert witness in the Letby trial called on the NHS to implement a mechanism to detect abnormal test results after insulin poisonings went unnoticed.

– Doctors were seen as “a nuisance” by executives at the trust, a former chief executive claimed.

Yesterday executives at the Countess of Chester went on the offensive against whistleblower doctors who claim that babies would have survived had managers acted on their warnings sooner. One senior manager said she was considering legal action.

Karen Moore, former deputy director of nursing at the hospital, and Ian Harvey, the former medical director, both hit out at the consultants as they responded to allegations about their responsibility for Letby’s continued employment on the unit.

The trial was told that doctors raised concerns about Letby’s connection to a series of unexplained collapses on at least five separate occasions before she was eventually removed from the ward more than a year after she began killing.

Moore was said in court to have declined a desperate request from Dr Stephen Brearey, a consultant paediatrician, to have Letby taken off the ward, only for a baby to collapse the following day.

The medical director at Countess of Chester Hospital, Dr Nigel Scawn, reads a statement outside the hospital after Lucy Letby was found guilty. Picture: Getty Images.

Dr Ravi Jayaram said that when he and other consultants raised their concerns about Letby with Alison Kelly, the director of nursing, in October 2015 they were “fobbed off” and told to “carry on and see what happens”. Letby would go on to kill two more babies and harm three others.

By February 2016, Harvey had been made aware of doctors’ fears about Letby after Brearey emailed him a table of deaths, showing Letby on shift for each one. A meeting was requested but it did not take place until May.

Harvey, who retired in August 2018 and lives in France, rejected this version of events last night (Sunday), saying that at no time before the eventual meeting in May 2016 “did a consultant paediatrician come to my office to express or discuss their concerns”.

“It is surprising, given the level of concern that some of the paediatricians professed having had at the time, that there was no follow-up to chase a response, either with my secretary, or directly with me,” he said.

He denied that executives had been reluctant to involve the police, saying that the only evidence they had for criminal activity was “limited and circumstantial”.

Moore, who retired in March 2018 and lives in north Wales with her husband, said she was not aware of consultants’ complaints against Letby before June 2016 when Brearey demanded the nurse be removed after the deaths of Babies O and P. She refused and the following day Baby Q suffered an unexplained collapse. No verdict was reached on the charge of Baby Q’s attempted murder.

In a statement provided to The Times, Moore said that Brearey had made the demand for Letby’s removal without providing any reason or evidence. She said: “At no point did he say he suspected [Letby] had been purposely harming babies. If he did say there had been seven deaths and she had been present for all of them, then my actions may well have differed.”

Brearey claimed in court that he asked Moore whether she would be “happy” to take responsibility if anything were to happen to a baby on the unit the following day, to which she responded: “Yes.” Moore said she had no recollection of this exchange and said she was now “taking legal advice about the untrue allegations that Mr Brearey has made against me”.

Powell and Kelly did not respond to a request for comment.

The Times