Lucy Letby told police it was “bad luck” that she was present at the deaths of three babies whom she allegedly murdered in two weeks, a court has heard.
The nurse said it was a “shock for everybody” when the three infants died in 14 days in June 2015 on the neonatal unit where she worked.
Letby, 33, denies murdering seven babies and attempting to kill 10 others between June 2015 and June 2016 at the Countess of Chester hospital.
Jurors in her trial at Manchester crown court were on Thursday read police interviews after her three arrests in July 2018, June 2019 and November 2020. Letby was asked by officers about how she felt when three babies had died and a fourth suffered a life-threatening collapse within two weeks in June 2015.
Philip Astbury, prosecuting, told the jury the nurse was asked what she was thinking. The nurse told officers: “That it was a shock to have that many deaths.”
A detective said it “must have been devastating” for Letby, and she replied: “Yes.” Asked how she coped, Letby said she had to “find a way to deal with it and carry on to provide the job and the care we do give”.
Letby went on to say that she had been concerned about “a spike” in neonatal deaths but that she did not raise concerns with managers, the court heard.
The detective said to the nurse that she was present at all three deaths and the near-death collapse within a fortnight on the ward: “You dealt with all of these. What do you put that down to? Bad luck?”
She replied: “Yes.”
The trial heard that Letby told police she had no recollection of searching for the parents of her alleged victims on Facebook.
Astbury told jurors that Letby had searched for the mother of one baby four times in the space of three months, including twice in the two days after he died. The nurse said she had no explanation for the searches.
The infant, who can only be referred to as Child A, was one day old when he was allegedly murdered. Letby is accused of attempting to murder his twin sister 48 hours later, on 10 June 2015. She denies both charges.
The nurse, originally from Hereford, was asked in the interview why she searched Facebook for the twins’ mother in September that year. She told officers: “To see how maybe the family was doing … because we think about the babies on the unit all the time and we talk about them and what they are doing.”
The jury has previously been told that Letby searched Facebook for parents up until April 2018, three months before she was first arrested. The court has heard that the nurse also carried out social media searches for the parents of children who do not feature in the trial.
In interviews read to the court on Thursday, Letby denied harming any babies in her care.
When told that she had been spotted at Child A’s incubator shortly before his fatal collapse, she said: “I don’t know how this occurred, but I didn’t do anything deliberately … Yes, they quoted me at the incubator, but that doesn’t mean I was doing anything untoward.”
Asked about Child A’s twin sister, who suffered a near-fatal collapse two days after the death of her brother, Letby told officers: “I didn’t do anything deliberately to [Child B] to harm her.”
The trial continues.
