Lucy Letby used NHS email to ask police about interview: Nurse’s plea came three months BEFORE her arrest over killings
Lucy Letby emailed police asking when she could be interviewed three months before her arrest, a new documentary has revealed.
The former nurse said she knew colleagues at the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal unit were being questioned by detectives about a spike in baby deaths and wanted to ‘allay their concerns’.
Cheshire Constabulary’s senior investigating officer, Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes, told the Netflix documentary that Letby, 36, emailed him directly from his NHS email address, stating the non-public name of the investigation – Operation Hummingbird.
‘He wanted to know when we would talk to him,’ he said. ‘I found it interesting, I thought maybe he had something to tell us.’
In the email, sent around April 2018, the convicted child killer asked her about ‘time frames’ and appeared to speculate that she would need to ‘manage’ time off work to speak to officers.
‘It would also be useful for me to be able to share these potential time periods with my manager at work, as colleagues in the area I am redeployed to do not know about my circumstances or that I will be part of the investigation and a message within the team will need to be managed to take into account the time I am on leave,’ he wrote.
His email ended: ‘I would be very grateful for any information that would help alleviate my concerns.’
Senior managers moved Letby from the neonatal unit to an administrative position at the hospital two years ago, in July 2016, following doctors’ concerns.
A new Netflix documentary tells how Lucy Letby emailed police asking when she could be interviewed three months before her arrest
The Lucy Letby Inquiry, published on Wednesday, looks at emails, arrest and public inquiry into convicted child killer
Bodycam footage shows officers waking Letby in her childhood room, decorated with fairy lights and snow globes, and then telling her she was being arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.
But the public inquiry into Letby’s crimes heard bosses kept nursing colleagues in the dark about the exact reason for his reinstatement – namely that he was suspected of harming and killing babies in his care.
Letby was arrested at his home in Blacon, Chester (just a mile from the hospital) on July 3, 2018, nearly three months after he wrote the email.
She was arrested twice more before being charged, and extensive footage of the three arrests is included in the 90-minute documentary The Investigation of Lucy Letby, released today.
During the second arrest, Letby’s mother Susan, 65, can be heard crying and wailing: “Please, no, not again, no,” as officers arrived at dawn at her home in the quiet cul-de-sac in Hereford where she and her husband, 80-year-old John, have lived for more than four decades.
Bodycam footage shows police officers waking Letby in her childhood bedroom decorated with fairy lights and snow globes, then telling her she was being arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.
Letby wants to say goodbye to one of her cats and then says to her family: ‘Do you know I didn’t do this?’
‘We know that,’ they reply. Letby can then be seen telling her crying mother ‘it’s okay’ and then saying ‘Go in, mum, don’t look at your mum, just come in, just go in’ as she is handcuffed and taken to a police car.
On Sunday, Letby’s parents criticized the documentary as a ‘complete invasion of privacy’ and claimed they would not watch it because ‘it would probably kill us if we did’.
Letby wants to say goodbye to one of her cats and then says to her family: ‘Do you know I didn’t do this?’
Letby was arrested multiple times before being charged, and the 90-minute documentary includes extensive footage of three arrests
The documentary also shows text messages and emails sent by Letby.
Produced by ITN Productions, the film tells the story of ‘Zoe’, a full-term baby girl whose name has been changed for legal reasons. He was the third child killed at the Countess of Chester Hospital within two weeks in June 2015.
Speaking for the first time, Zoe’s mother describes the “panic, disbelief and confusion” she and her husband felt after their daughter died unexpectedly shortly after birth, and how she felt “relieved” but “instantly hurt” when Letby was found guilty of killing her by air injection after a ten-month trial in August 2023.
The mother, whose identity has been digitally concealed to protect her anonymity, also lashes out at ‘disgusting’ attempts by campaigners, including Tory MP David Davis, to free Letby.
In February last year, Mr. Davis was prosecuted by Letby’s new legal team, including a Canadian neonatologist, Dr. Introducing Shoo Lee as the ‘star of today’s show’, he opened a press conference to trash the medical science behind his convictions.
The mother said: ‘This is not a show, there are no stars, it’s no laughing matter. It’s disgusting that a politician would have the audacity to promote someone like this.’
Letby is serving 15 life sentences after being found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill a further seven (one of whom he assaulted twice) at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.
In April last year his legal team submitted a dossier of new ‘expert’ evidence to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the body that examines potential miscarriages of justice, in the hope that his case will be referred to the Court of Appeal for a third time.
An inquest into the deaths of Letby’s five victims, known as Baby C, E, I, O and P, is due to open on Wednesday.
An investigation was opened into the death of Baby A in October 2016. The hearing regarding Baby D’s death was previously opened in January 2016 and postponed.
