‘Treasure trove’ from her killing spree found at home
POLICE found a ‘treasure trove’ of souvenirs from Letby’s killings stashed at her home.
More than 250 nursing handover sheets, a blood test result and resuscitation notes relating to some of the babies who collapsed or died were discovered.
A photograph of a condolence card Letby sent to the parents of a baby girl on the day of her funeral after she murdered her in October 2015 was also found on her mobile phone.
Another image, of a thank-you card sent to all nurses on the neo-natal unit from the parents of twin babies whom Letby attacked was also discovered on her handset. The parents had no idea Letby had murdered one of their sons, Child E, and poisoned his brother, Child F, with insulin.
Twenty-one of the handover sheets, which include confidential details of a baby’s condition and are given to nurses at the start of each new shift, related to 13 of the children she was convicted of killing or harming. Ninety-nine of them related to babies she had treated while a student nurse, including the handover sheet she received on June 1, 2010 – her first shift at the Countess.
This was found in a keepsake box in her bedroom. Others were in a bin bag in her garage or in a box marked ‘keep’ in her bedroom at her parents’ home. Handwritten resuscitation notes, including one written on a paper towel that related to Baby M, whom Letby almost murdered by injecting with air, were also found in a bag under her bed. Baby M only survived after more than 30 minutes of CPR.
Letby claimed the handover sheets and
documents were not important to her. She told the jury they were at her home simply because she ‘collected paper’.
But prosecutor Nick Johnson KC said she had taken the sheets with her when she moved home – and suggested she used them as ‘crib’ sheets to help her remember the names of her victims, so she could look them up on Facebook weeks, months or even years later, and revel in their parents’ grief.
In the six months after killing Baby E, she looked up his mother nine times and his father once, even searching for their names on Facebook on Christmas Day.
She also searched for the triplets’ mother on the anniversary of their deaths and the surname of Baby K, whom she allegedly tried to kill, more than two years later. The jury was unable to reach a verdict.
Letby admitted making the searches, saying she looked up almost everyone she met ‘out of curiosity’. But she denied getting a kick out of searching for the babies’ parents, claiming only that they were ‘often on my mind’.