Lucy Letby smiled as grieving mother bathed baby’s body, court told

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A “cold-blooded” nurse smiled as a grieving mother bathed her dead baby daughter after she had been fatally poisoned on a neo-natal ward, a court has heard.

Lucy Letby allegedly murdered the 11-week-old newborn on her fourth attempt and then sent a sympathy card to her parents, jurors were told.

The baby’s mother said that as she bathed her dead daughter, Letby, 32, was “smiling and kept going on” about how she was present at the girl’s first bath “and how much [the baby] had loved it”, the trial at Manchester crown court heard.

The girl, who can only be named as Baby I, was the ninth infant Letby had killed or tried to kill in four months at the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester hospital, the prosecution alleges.

Letby is accused of going on to murder or attempt to murder another eight newborns over the next eight months. She denies all 22 counts against her.

Nick Johnson KC, prosecuting, told the jury that Letby’s attempts to kill Baby I were “persistent, calculated and cold-blooded” and “extreme … even by the standards of this overall case”.

He said: “This is a case where we allege Lucy Letby tried four times and succeeded on the fourth attempt. [Baby I] was resilient but ultimately at the fourth attempt Lucy Letby succeeded in killing her.”

Jurors were told that although Baby I was born 10 weeks premature, weighing 970 grams (just over 2lbs), she was was progressing well until she arrived on Letby’s ward from Liverpool Women’s hospital, where she was born.

Letby’s first alleged attempt to kill Baby I was in September 2015, three days after she had tried to murder another newborn girl, and days after two attempts to kill another baby girl, the court heard.

The infant rapidly deteriorated 30 minutes after Letby had fed her, the jury was told, and a subsequent X-ray found a “massive” amount of gas in her stomach that had “squashed” her lungs and bowels.

Shortly before this Letby had allegedly expressed concern to Baby I’s mother about her daughter’s condition – but Letby recorded in the medical notes that it was the mother who had raised these worries.

Johnson said Letby had “reversed the concern” – a ruse, he suggested, “to cover what she planned to do”.

Several days later Letby allegedly tried to kill Baby I again when the infant’s designated nurse had temporarily left her room, the jury of eight women and four men was told.

When the nurse returned, she found Letby “stood in the doorway of the darkened room” saying that the child “looked pale”. She was, said Johnson, “coolly watching [a baby] who was in crisis”.

Letby’s colleague turned on the light to see the baby “appeared to be at the point of death and wasn’t breathing,” the court heard.

Baby I was resuscitated for a second time and Letby was assigned to be her nurse because she was more qualified to deal with the sickest children.

The following day, the prosecution said, came a third murder attempt which led to her being “brought back from the brink of death” by doctors.

The nine-week-old girl made a “speedy recovery” after being taken to another hospital, the court heard, before she was returned to Letby’s ward.

The final, successful, murder attempt came during October 2015 when Baby I’s nurse had stepped out of her room, the jury was told.

As Baby I’s alarm sounded, Letby was seen standing over her incubator, the court heard. Another nurse wanted to help the “distressed” infant but Letby, the prosecutor said, told her that “they would be able to sort it out”.

Jurors were told that as Baby I’s mother bathed her recently departed child, Letby “came into the room and in the words of [the mother’], ‘was smiling and kept going on about how she was present at [Baby I’s] first bath and how much [Baby I] had loved it’.”

During a police interview four years later, Letby was asked about a sympathy card she had sent to the girl’s parents, the court heard.

Letby apparently agreed that it was “not normal” for a nurse to send a card and that this was the only time she had done it, but she said “it was not often the nurses got to know a family as well as they had known [Baby I’s family]”.

Letby accepted that she had kept an image of that card on her phone, the jury was told.

Johnson said: “[Baby I] was born very early and very small but she survived the first 2 months of her life and was doing well by the time Lucy Letby got her hands on her.

“What happened to [Baby I] followed the pattern of what had happened to others before, and what was yet to happen to others … All of a sudden out of nowhere came vomiting, breathing problems and critical desaturations.

He added: “It was persistent, it was calculated and it was cold-blooded.”

Letby, from Hereford, denies seven counts of murder and 15 counts of attempted murder, relating to 17 babies in total. The trial continues.