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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Gaby Hinsliff

A Lucy Letby inquiry must answer this: why was she seen as a victim, not a killer?

Women and Children’s Building at the Countess of Chester hospital.
‘Two doctors warned that the ward might have a killer in its midst, but were seemingly met with disbelief from executives.’ The women and children’s building at the Countess of Chester hospital. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Grief can be an unspeakably intimate thing.

To be with a parent in the immediate aftermath of losing their child is to see them at their most utterly vulnerable; broken, and undone. But families trusted Lucy Letby, the intensive care nurse who seemingly cared so diligently for their sick babies, to be with them through the worst. She sobbed with the unsuspecting parents of the newborns she had secretly murdered in their hospital cots, helped them take hand and footprints as keepsakes or bathe a tiny lifeless body one last time. Sometimes, months later, she would ghoulishly trawl their Facebook accounts as if hungry for more.

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