How ‘beige’ graduate nurse from a loving family became UK’s worst child killer in modern times

In 2013, a picture of nurse Lucy Letby appeared in the Chester Standard newspaper to publicise a fundraising appeal for a new neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester hospital.

Blonde-haired and blue-eyed, a smiling Letby held up a babygrow to illustrate what was at stake – the welfare of tiny and vulnerable infants.

She looked exactly as she was perceived by all her knew her at the time.

A fresh-faced, middle-class girl from Hereford who was dedicated to a job that would make any parent proud.

Letby, then aged 23, was quoted as saying how much she enjoyed seeing the babies in her care “progress”.

Indeed, her parents John, a 76-year-old retired retail manager, and Susan, 62, had been so pleased when Letby graduated from university with a nursing qualification in 2011 they posted a picture in the Standard.

The Letbys have supported their daughter from the outset, attending court frequently over the course of the ten month trial.

For the most part, they have stayed quiet and shown little emotion. However, when Letby was first found guilty of poisoning babies her mother burst into tears as she looked towards them from the public gallery.

They appear to be as unable as anyone else to explain how their daughter has become one of the country’s worst serial killers.

Outside of work, Lucy Letby’s life seemed utterly normal. Even the detectives who have spent years securing convictions against her described her as “average”.

She liked going to salsa classes, went on holiday to Ibiza with friends and bought her first house in Chester, a modest three-bed semi that was a short walk from the hospital.

She lived with her two cats Tigger and Smudge.

Pictures shown to the jury revealed a tidy and unremarkable home, with photographs of her godchildren on the fridge and Winnie the Pooh teddies on her bed.

Her father John would help out with DIY jobs around her house and gave her tips for horses to bet on in the Grand National.

“Beige,” was how DCI Nicola Evans, who co-led the investigation described her.

“There isn’t anything outstanding or outrageous that we found about her a person, and I think that has come across in the trial,” the detective said.

“She was an average nurse, she was a normal, 20-something year old doing what she was doing in her career and with her friends, but clearly there was another side of that that nobody saw and that we have unravelled during this investigation and during the trial.”

Detectives may have uncovered Letby’s pattern of offending, but prosecutors were unable to offer much by way of psychological profile that might explain what she did.

Giving evidence in the witness box, Letby denied ever hurting babies saying: “I only ever did my best to care for them. That’s completely against being what being a nurse is. I’m there to help, not to harm.”

Several of the nurses who gave evidence in the trial were clearly close friends with Letby and considered her a caring and competent colleague before the police investigation began.

Some even spoke up in support of her when Letby was first moved away from clinical duties.

She was notably close with a consultant, who cannot be named for legal reasons, with whom she would exchange text messages on a regular basis.

When Letby told him she feared she was being blamed for babies collapsing in June 2016, the consultant said he would write a statement in her defence, adding: “You are one of a few nurses in the region (I’ve worked pretty much everywhere) that I would trust with my own children.”

While giving evidence, Letby denied that she had been in a relationship with the consultant and it is believed she was single.

One of the few insights into Letby’s mind comes from the handwritten Post-It notes police found after she was arrested in 2018.

Letby told the court they were the ramblings of a woman under immense stress and strain because she suspected the hospital was holding her responsible for babies dying.

At one point she wrote: “Not good enough. I will never have children or marry. I will never know what it’s like to have a family.”

On another, she wrote “I am a horrible evil person” and a third: “I am evil I did this”.