Baby killer Lucy Letby led a “vanilla” personal life before her crimes were exposed sleeping with teddies and going on regular seaside holidays with her mum and dad, it has been revealed.
Letby, who was convicted of the murder of seven babies in her care and the attempted murder of six more at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and 2016, was known as the “innocent one” by her friends and even described as “vanilla” and “beige” by police officers investigating her case.
She was sentenced to life in September and became the fourth woman in the UK to receive the sentence.
The revelations about her personal life are to be examined in a new ITV documentary tonight called After Lucy Letby: Silence on the Wards?, where journalist Paul Brand and Dr Ravi Jayaram, the medical professional who helped catch Letby, will investigate the estimated 11,000 avoidable NHS deaths a year.
In it, detective chief inspector Nicola Evans, who spent six years analysing the Letby case said: “There isn’t anything outstanding or outrageous that we found out about her as a person.”
Letby was a regular gym-goer, who had “quite an active” social life, as she told jurors.
Her childhood friend, Dawn Howe, told BBC’s Panorama after she was found guilty: “It is the most out-of-character accusation that you could ever put against Lucy. Think of your most kind, gentle, soft friend and think that they’re being accused of harming babies.”
When Letby was arrested she had been reading two books, one was Never Greener by Ruth Jones, a novel about two adults having an affair, and the other was In Shock by Dr Rana Awdish, a memoir about a pregnant doctor who lost her first unborn child.
A few years before her killing spree she was even chosen as the face of a fundraising campaign for the neonatal unit and appeared on a poster holding up a baby grow.
Letby called her close circle of friends at the hospital her “little family”.
She had a close relationship with a married doctor at the hospital, who the prosecution claimed was her ‘boyfriend’.
Known as Doctor A, the man who cannot be identified for legal reasons, would meet the nurse outside of work for coffee and restaurant dates, shopping trips, and a visit to her home.
Letby lived alone in a semi-detached, three-bedroom home in Westbourne Road, Chester which was bought with help from her parents for £179,000 in April 2016.
Neighbours say Letby was always a ‘delight’ to her parents, with one telling the BBC: “Her parents absolutely doted on her, it’ll be the end of them. I feel so sorry for them, but I also feel so sorry for all those parents who have lost their babies.”
