Lucy Letby’s boss issues ‘verdict’ on case with 9-word comment

Lucy Letby’s former boss has said that she believes that Britain’s most prolific child serial killer is innocent.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Karen Rees, who supported the neo-natal nurse when she was removed from clinical duties, says that if Letby was acting “she deserves an Oscar because she was so convincing.”

Rees says that she first became aware of an abnormal mortality rate on the ward in 2016 and met Letby shortly after when she had to inform her that she was being removed over concerns surrounding her “clinical practice”.

She told the Sunday Times: “What I saw was a very frightened young woman who was shocked and bewildered.”

Over the next two years, as investigations into the deaths took place, Rees was tasked with supporting Letby and she remains convinced that she is innocent, despite being convicted of the murder of seven babies and attempted murder of seven more in 2023.

At their first meeting, Rees told Letby: “I’ve been given a management instruction that I have to remove you from your clinical practice.

“This is a neutral act. It’s to protect you as well as the babies. But until this is investigated, you’re going to do a non-clinical role.”

At around this time, the neo-natal unit at the Countess of Chester hospital was downgraded from a Level 2 to a Level 1 meaning that the most severely ill babies were sent to nearby hospitals.

Rees believes that the deaths and the ensuing investigations had a devastating impact on Letby and says that she often broke down during their meetings.

She added: “People say she’s not emotional. Trust me, she is emotional. I know that they say psychopaths are clever.

But if she was acting she deserves an Oscar because she was so convincing. She was really hurt when she was told about the consultants’ allegations because she thought they were friends, not just colleagues, and she could not understand why they were doing this to her.”

Rees publicly denounced Letby in 2023 following her conviction, something she now regrets.

Speaking after Letby was given 15 whole life orders, Rees said: “Letby was very convincing. I now know that this was a calculated and successful attempt to make me believe her story, and I was deceived, as were so many others.”

She has since reached out to Letby and requested visitor access which has yet to be accepted by the former nurse.

Since then, Rees has altered her viewpoint and now believes that one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history has taken place.

She added: “The one person that knows her nursing team is the manager or the unit manager — not a consultant that visits a couple of times a week. They know the strengths and weaknesses. I trusted Lucy’s ward manager when she looked me in the eye and said ‘she’s fantastic and she’s right by the book, she does everything right.

“And I believed Lucy when she told me she had done nothing wrong. I will always recall her saying to me, ‘you’re the only person, Karen, that hasn’t asked me if I did it?’ Because I didn’t think she had.”

Last week, Letby’s legal team confirmed that they had sent her case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. On the same day, a panel of legal experts held a press conference in which they stated their belief that there was no evidence that Letby had murdered or injured any of the babies she was convicted of attacking.