A former prison officer whose job it was to watch Lucy Letby during her first night in prison has opened up about his experience.
Dave, who used to work at HMP STyal in Cheshire, revealed he thought she was a ‘very, very strange character’.
Letby was convicted of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.
The former neonatal nurse, from Hereford, was arrested in July 2018 and later sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole-life order. Her trial revealed a disturbing pattern of harm inflicted on vulnerable babies under her care.
Speaking on the Shaun Attwood True Crime podcast, Dave revealed Letby was kept in a segregation unit and he was tasked with ‘constant watch’.
He said: ‘It was her first night and she has got her whole-life tariff now but it was her first night on remand. She had come from court that day and had been charged.
‘I turned up, sat down on the segregation and the first thing that sort of hit me, you see her in all these photographs, this normal-looking blonde woman, and I was surprised at how sort of dishevelled she looked.
‘She didn’t have blonde hair, brown hair, she just looked sort of drained. It was night time, I think she might have asked me what time it was at one point. There might have been a few words exchanged, not much.’
Dave later noted that he was struck by how calm she appeared on her first night in prison.
He explained: ‘I was sat watching, thinking if I had have been accused of this I’d be climbing the walls I’d be saying, “Let me out I’ve not done this.”
‘But it was almost as if it was just a bit of a burden to her, just a bit like, “I’m here, what time is it? What’s happening?”
‘She was a very, very strange character, [that] is my opinion of her,’ he added.
He revealed Lucy was only kept in the prison he worked in for a matter of days before she was moved elsewhere, adding he wasn’t sure if the other inmates knew Letby was even in the same prison with them.
He claimed the female offenders would ‘not have treated her well’ if they had been aware of her presence, given that her crimes involved infants.
Letby still maintains her innocence of the crimes that she has previously been found guilty of. She insists she has never harmed any baby in her care.
Last month, a leading barrister called for the Lucy Letby case to be referred back to the Court of Appeal because her convictions are ‘almost certainly’ unsafe.
Adam King, who prosecuted the Just Stop Oil climate protesters, is the latest respected figure to raise questions about the case against Letby.
Since the nurse lost her appeal last year, a mass of evidence undermining the prosecution’s case has been gathered by her new legal team, raising questions about the claim she was on duty for every suspicious incident and about the testimony of the main prosecution witness, Dewi Evans.
Doubts have also been raised about the tests which purported to show Letby used various techniques – including insulin poisoning and injecting air into veins – to murder already sickly babies.
Contradictory and incoherent notes written by Letby in post-arrest therapy sessions were also presented as a confession – even though she strongly denies murder.
Letby’s barrister Mark McDonald presented a 698-page report from 14 world-leading experts to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which deals with potential miscarriages of justice.
The report concluded that the babies died from poor care, prematurity and natural causes.
Since her conviction, dozens of doctors, nurses, statisticians, law experts and scientists have come forward to criticise the way in which evidence was presented to the jury.
They include Lord Sumption, a former judge at the Supreme Court, who said he believes Letby is ‘probably innocent’.
Last week, Nigel Farage added his voice to growing concerns about the safety of Lucy Letby’s murder convictions, saying that he is ‘getting more and more doubts’.
The Reform UK leader was responding to an article in the Daily Mail by Sir Jeremy Hunt, who was Health Secretary when the babies died at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Sir Jeremy called for an urgent re-examination of the case, saying: ‘If Letby really did kill seven babies in their cots and attempted to kill seven more, no punishment short of the death penalty is too harsh.
‘But if they were caused by professional shortcomings, we need to know why.
‘More than anything else, we need to make sure other families don’t have to go through the same tragedy.’
He added that he had noted the findings of the international panel of paediatric specialists and neonatologists, and had also read a ‘wide range of expert concerns about the conduct of the criminal case’.
Sir Jeremy said: ‘Taken together… this analysis raises serious and credible questions about the evidence presented in court, the robustness of expert testimony and the interpretation of statistical data.’
Mr Farage told GB News: ‘I’m just beginning to get more and more doubts about that issue.’
