Accused British serial killer nurse Lucy Letby was “interrupted” while murdering a baby by the child’s distraught mother, but tricked her into saying, “Trust me, I’m a nurse,” prosecutors said Tuesday.
The mother had found Letby, 32, with her bloodied son the night before he died in August 2015, and the day before the nurse had also tried to kill the boy’s twin brother, Manchester Crown Court heard.
“We say that [the mom] interrupted Lucy Letby who was attacking [her baby son]though she didn’t realize it at the time,” prosecutor Nick Johnson told the court, according to The Independent.
The baby, identified as Child E, was “very distressed and bleeding from the mouth” after Letby allegedly injected air into his bloodstream at Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, the court heard. However, the nurse told the mother that her blood was only from a stomach tube that was irritating her newborn’s throat, it was heard at trial.
“Trust me, I’m a nurse,” Letby told the mother, according to Johnson.
The mother then left her dying newborn after being “cheated on” by Lucy Letby, she said.
Child E died in the first few hours after losing more blood than a medical official said he had seen in a baby, the trial heard. Letby made “fraudulent” nursing notes that were “false, misleading and designed to cover his tracks,” the prosecutor said.
The next day, he also tried to kill the dead baby’s twin brother, Child F, this time by poisoning him by injecting him with insulin, the court heard.
Negligence was ruled out because no other babies in the room had been prescribed insulin, Johnson said, noting that Letby hung up the bag and was in the room at the time the child was poisoned.
“The only credible candidate” to be the poisoner was Letby, he said, “the same person who was present for all the meltdowns and unexplained deaths at Countess of Chester Hospital in the neonatal unit.”
The nurse also showed an “unusual interest” in the family, repeatedly searching for them on social media, including on Christmas Day, the court heard.
Child E is one of seven children, five boys and two girls, who Letby has been charged with murder. Her twin, Child F, is one of 10 children she is accused of trying to kill between June 2015 and June 2016.
He tried to kill some of them more than once, and at least one was left “severely disabled”, the court heard.
Johnson said all the deaths and collapses “were not natural or random events.”
“These were deliberate attempts to kill using slightly different methods by which Lucy Letby sought to give the appearance of chance events,” he added.
Letby, of Hereford, has denied all charges. His trial is scheduled to continue on Wednesday.
