Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 19: An Indian-origin consultant paediatrician born in the United Kingdom was among the few doctors who got the sensational “baby killer” arrested but regrets that lives of at least half-a-dozen other children could have been saved if only the hospital authorities had acted fast when they raised the alarm first.
Dr Ravi Jayaram at the Countess Chester Hospital said he had been raising concerns about nurse Lucy Letby months before the hospital alerted the police. “I do genuinely believe that there are four or five babies who could be going to school now who aren’t,” Dr Jayaram regretted the delayed action by the hospital authorities. Actually he and other doctors raising concern about the well-trained nurse was first told to apologise to her for suspecting her integrity.
In the sensational “baby killer” case, the 33-year old nurse Lucy Letby, who was first arrested in July, 2018, and charged in November 2020, was finally found guilty of the murder of seven new-born babies and the attempted murder of six others by a jury at Manchester Crown Court on Friday. While the real cause of her peculiar behaviour was still under cloud, the jurors were given several possible motives by the prosecution during the 10-month trial, the court will pronounce her sentence on Monday. Her conviction makes her one of the UK’s worst medical serial killers. Her youngest victim was just one-day old.
Dr Jayram said the consultants first began raising concerns after three babies died in June, 2015. As more babies collapsed and died, senior medics like him held several meetings with hospital executives to raise their concerns about Letby. But the doctors were told to “draw a line” under the “Lucy issue” and to apologise to her for alleged ‘victimisation.’
Dr Jayaram alleged that the chief executive at the time, Tony Chambers, had told consultants at the meeting in January 2017, “I’m drawing a line under this, you will draw a line under this, and if you cross that line, there will be consequences for you.” When doctors suggested approaching the police, they were allegedly dissuaded by hospital executives.
The police were contacted almost two years after the first babies had died. Eventually, it was in April 2017 that the National Health Service (NHS) trust allowed doctors to meet with a police officer. The police, after listening to us for less than 10 minutes, realised that this is something that they had to be involved with. I could have punched the air,” said Dr Jayaram.
Shortly afterwards, an investigation was launched that would lead to Letby’s arrest. The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) told the court that Letby used a variety of methods to secretly attack a total of 13 babies in the neonatal ward at the Countess of Chester hospital between 2015 and 2016.
During her trial, which began in October last year, Manchester Crown Court heard that doctors at the hospital began to notice a significant rise in the number of babies who were dying or were unexpectedly collapsing.
The CPS presented evidence of Letby using various methods to attack babies, including the injection of air and insulin into their bloodstream; the infusion of air into their gastrointestinal tract; force feeding an overdose of milk or fluids; impact-type trauma. Her intention was to kill the babies while deceiving her colleagues into believing there was a natural cause, the jury was told.
“Lucy Letby sought to deceive her colleagues and pass off the harm she caused as nothing more than a worsening of each baby’s existing vulnerability. In her hands, innocuous substances like air, milk, fluids – or medication like insulin – would become lethal. She perverted her learning and weaponised her craft to inflict harm, grief and death,” said Pascale Jones of the CPS.
“Time and again, she harmed babies, in an environment which should have been safe for them and their families. Her attacks were a complete betrayal of the trust placed in her,” he said. Jonathan Storer, Chief Crown Prosecutor for CPS Mersey-Cheshire, added: “This is an utterly horrifying case. Like everyone who followed the trial, I have been appalled by Letby’s callous crimes.
“To the families of the victims – I hope your unimaginable suffering is eased in some way by the verdicts. Our thoughts remain with you.” Among the mountain of evidence presented in court were many handwritten notes discovered by police during their investigation. They included phrases such as: “I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them”; “I am evil I did this”; and “today is your birthday and you are not here and I am so sorry for that”. These notes gave an insight into Letby’s mindset following her attacks, the court was told.
The CPS was able to show the jury that Letby was the one common denominator in the series of deaths and sudden collapses in the neonatal unit. Besides, medical documents featuring falsified notes made by the nurse to hide her involvement and social media activity to deceive her colleagues were among the other pieces of evidence presented in court.
The Cheshire Constabulary, which investigated the case, said it had been one of the toughest cases for them. “The details of this case are truly crushing. A trained nurse responsible for caring and protecting tiny, premature babies; a person who was in a position of trust, she abused that trust in the most unthinkable way,” said Detective Chief Inspector Nicola Evans, the Deputy Senior Investigating Officer. “I cannot begin to understand what the families have had to endure over the past seven or eight years but we have been humbled by their composure and resilience throughout this whole process,” she said.
Lucy Letby’s final victims were two triplet boys, referred to in court as babies O and P. Child O died shortly after Letby returned from a holiday in Ibiza in June 2016, while child P died a day after their sibling.
While during the trial Letby kept pleading innocence, the prosecution presented several theories as her possible motive behind the calculated murders. The prosecutors believed that by the time she started killing the babies, she was “completely out of control” and she was “I effect playing God.” The prosecutor suggested that she “played God” by harming a baby and then being the first to alert her colleagues about the deteriorating health.
“She was controlling things. She was enjoying what was going on. She was predicting things that she knew were going to happen. She, in effect, was playing God,” one of the prosecutors said. Perhaps Letby was getting a thrill out of the grief and despair in the room, they suggested.
Another suggestion was that Letby was having a secret relationship with a married doctor at the Countess of Chester Hospital. He was one of the doctors who would be contacted when babies rapidly deteriorated, which was thought to be a crucial aspect of their relationship. It was implied that she hurt them to receive his “personal attention”, but Letby disagreed.
Texts shown to the court revealed the pair messaged regularly, swapping love heart emojis, and met up several times outside work, even after Letby was removed from the neonatal unit in July 2016. The jurors were presented with several notes written by Lucy Letby, one of which said, “I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them.” On another note, she wrote, “I will never have children or marry. I will never know what it’s like to have a family.”
Lucy Letby was a band 5 nurse, meaning that she had the skills and training to tend to the sickest babies in the neonatal unit. At the trial, she agreed that she sometimes found work less stimulating when she was assigned to babies who did not need as much medical attention.
Letby was arrested and released twice. On her third arrest in 2020, she was formally charged and held in custody. During searches at her home, police found hospital paperwork and a handwritten note on which she had written “I am evil, I did this.”