Little has been known about her until now, but giving evidence for the first time at her murder trial, Lucy Letby painted a picture of a dedicated nurse who enjoyed a busy social life when she was off-duty at the Countess of Chester hospital.
During nearly four hours of testimony, the neonatal nurse became emotional whenever she was asked about the impact of being accused of murdering the babies in her care.
But she also became distressed at almost any mention of her life before she was removed from the neonatal unit where she worked in July 2016.
A mention of her two cats, Tigger and Smudge, reduced the nurse to tears. As did a picture of her unkempt bedroom, with a Winnie-the-Pooh teddy bear and clothes strewn over her unmade bed.
“That’s how they left it,” she said tearfully, referring to the police officers who took her into custody in her pyjamas on 4 July 2018. Letby’s father, who had stayed at her home that night, had made her bed after the police left, jurors were told.
Letby, an only child, described how she was the first in her family to go to university and how she prided herself on being “very competent” in her job.
She lived alone in a semi-detached house she bought in Chester in April 2016, just three months before her “world stopped” when she was removed from the neonatal unit on suspicion of being involved in a high number of baby deaths.
A handwritten certificate that read “No 1 godmother awarded to Lucy Letby” was pinned to a message board in Letby’s kitchen, along with a “Happy Birthday Mummy” note from Tigger and Smudge.
Letby, originally from Hereford, said she had an “active social life” before her arrest, telling jurors: “I used to regularly attend salsa classes. I used to go out with friends, meet up for lunch, been on quite a few holidays with friends, gym.”
Letby denies murdering seven babies and attempting to murder 10 others by injecting them with insulin, air or milk.
