Serial child killer Lucy Letby has insisted in court she has ‘no recollection’ of a baby girl’s near-fatal collapse.
The convicted murderer was accused today of ‘trying to hedge her bets’ in police interviews because she knew she had been ‘caught cold’ by the senior consultant on her neonatal unit.
She maintained throughout almost an hour of intense cross-examination her insistence that she could not recall the collapse of Baby K on February 17, 2016.
Letby, 34, from Hereford, is currently serving 14 whole life orders after being convicted last August of murdering seven babies in her care and attempting to murder a further six between June 2015 and June 2016.
She is now on trial at Manchester Crown Court accused of the attempted murder of Baby K and has pleaded not guilty.
Serial child killer Lucy Letby insisted at Manchester Crown Court today she has ‘no recollection’ of a baby girl’s near-fatal collapse (picture by court artist)
Letby, 34, is currently serving 14 whole life orders after being convicted last August of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder a further six while working as a neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital
The jury in her original trial could not reach a verdict on the case.
After spending almost a full day in the witness box yesterday. she returned to her seat in the well of Court 7 to field more questions from prosecutor Nick Johnson.
Lerby maintains that she never harmed a baby during her time at the Countess of Chester Hospital – including the infants whose deaths form part of her convictions.
For her latest appearance Letby had tied up her hair and changed her outfit to a navy jacket and blue blouse with white spots. As before, she was sat next to a woman prison officer.
She told Mr Johnson she had ‘no recollection’ of Baby K’s collapse, nor of Ravi Jayaram walking in to Nursery 1 and seeing her ‘doing nothing’ as the infant desaturated to a critical level.
Officers referred to the consultant’s allegation during police interviews, and in response she had tried to ‘fill in the gaps’, adding: ‘I was relying on what Dr Jayaram was saying.’
Mr Johnson suggested she was ‘filling in the gaps’ for an infant whose name she had been searching for on Facebook 10 months before the first police interview.
He also highlighted the agreed evidence of an expert nurse Elizabeth Morgan, who said normal practice with a baby of 25-week gestation would have been to intervene in such a situation rather than wait to see if she self-corrected.
Letby told the jury: ‘That’s her opinion. I just know what our policy was in Chester for any baby.’
Mr Johnson said: ‘But we’re talking about a 25-week gestation baby’.
Letby was questioned today in the dock at Manchester Crown Court by prosecutor Nick Johnson (both pictured here court artist drawing by Elizabeth Cook)
Letby, formerly of Hereford, denies attempted murder of a premature newborn, Baby K
Letby replied: ‘There isn’t a full policy, but I’d worked at Liverpool Women’s Hospital and we would want to see if a baby self-corrected’.
When Mr Johnson told her, ‘You’re lying, aren’t you?’, she said: ‘No.’
She repeated the same answer when he went on: ‘You’re lying because you know you were caught cold by Dr Jayaram.’
She also rejected the barrister’s suggestion that this ‘fundamental’ part of her case had not featured in her 28-page defence statement and that in police interviews she had been ‘hedging your bets’ to see what emerged.
He put it to her, ‘You dislodged the tube’, to which she answered: ‘No.’
Mr Johnson said, ‘You silenced the alarms and you intended to kill her’, and she replied: ‘No, I did not.’
Mr Johnson went on, ‘Thereafter you tried to create the impression that she was habitually desaturating and dislodging her tube’, to which she again said ‘No’.
Letby and the prosecutor clashed again on the issue of whether, in the lead-up to her collapse at 3.50am, Baby K had been active or inactive while being handled.
Mr Johnson asked: ‘She wasn’t active at 3.30am, was she?’
Letby did not reply, so he repeated the question and this time she replied, ‘No’, before repeating it when he followed with: ‘Not at 3.45am?’
Mr Johnson questioned: ‘Or were you handling her, and were you moving the tube?’
Letby was 26 at the time the alleged murder attempt in February 2016 (court artist drawing)
She was accused today in court of ‘trying to hedge her bets’ in police interviews because she knew she had been ‘caught cold’ by the senior consultant on her neonatal unit
Letby replied: ‘I can’t recall the events of that night’.
The barrister then moved on to the baby’s third collapse that night, referring to nursing colleagues saying Letby had been in Nursery 1 at the time, performing certain duties.
Letby said: ‘I have no recollection of it myself.’
Mr Johnson asked: ‘Do you accept that they are telling the truth?’
Letby said: ‘That sounds like actions I would have been taking, if it was happening. I don’t think I can comment on whether someone is telling the truth or not. I only know what I know.’
She denied being anxious to extend the time she says it took her to feed a baby in her care so it created the impression she had not been in Nursery 1 when Baby K collapsed.
Referring to one of her own medical notes, the killer said: ‘I wouldn’t write something that didn’t happen’.
Mr Johnson asked: ‘Like you wouldn’t kill babies?’ Letby said: ‘No’.
She denied the barrister’s allegation that she had been trying to attack Baby K at the time she desaturated for a third time.
Mr Johnson reminded her that it was not an alarm that had alerted a fellow nurse, but a call for help from Letby, and asked whether she accepted that.
A doctor at the Countess of Chester Hospital (pictured) has said he had caught Letby ‘virtually red-handed’ attempting to murder a very premature baby known as Baby K
She replied: ‘I don’t know how I can accept it. It could have happened, but I don’t have any direct memory’.
Mr Johnson said: ‘K was well sedated by this stage, wasn’t she?’
Letby said: ‘She was on morphine, yes.’
The barrister said the infant’s ET tube had gone in a further 20 per cent – adding: ‘Relatively speaking a long way, and that’s because you pushed it in, didn’t you?’
She said, ‘No’, as she did to the prosecutor’s final questions: ‘You tried to kill Baby K, didn’t you? Like you tried to kill six other babies and succeeded in killing seven?’
In re-examination Letby’s barrister Ben Myers asked her to read out some of the content of her defence statement.
This included her observation that she did not accept the ‘good faith’ of either Dr Jayaram or his fellow consultant Stephen Brearey.
She said both men had been ‘set against me for some time, adding: ‘That’s obvious from their witness statements, as well as some of their conduct towards me in 2015 and 2016 and after.’
She again told Mr Myers that she did not recall the events of February 17 and would have said so if she had remembered.
Letby was the only witness to be called in her defence, with Mr Myers telling the court: ‘That will be the case for Miss Letby.’
The trial resumes on Monday when the prosecution and defence are expected to give their closing speeches.
Listen to The Trial of Lucy Letby: Baby K, wherever you get your podcasts now.
