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