Police conducted a lengthy investigation into Lucy Letby. Photo / Supplied
Police conducted a lengthy investigation into Lucy Letby. Photo / Supplied
Lucy Letby did not “bang on the table” to protest her innocence but instead had anticipated her arrest, a leading detective in the case has revealed.
Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes said Letby’s unusual but “controlled” manner during police interviews raised suspicions that she had been expecting a police visit.
TheCheshire Constabulary officer, who led the investigation, said Letby appeared remarkably calm for someone arrested for the first time.
“She was emotionless, she cooperated, she answered the questions,” he said in an interview with The Mail on Sunday. “It was surprising – this was someone who had never been involved with police before in her life.
“She’s arrested for eight murders and six attempted murders and brought into custody. At no point did she appear to be struggling with anything. She was quiet, she wasn’t obstructive, she dealt with everything, she was controlled.
“There was no banging on the table, at no point did she say: ‘You’re saying these babies have been killed. I cared for these babies, go and find the killer, it’s not me’. There was very much an acceptance that we were going to come and knock on her door at some point.”
Lucy Letby at Manchester Crown Court in Manchester, England. Photo / AP
Letby, who worked as a neonatal nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital, was described as “beige” after video footage of her police interviews was played in court.
She spoke quietly and was on occasions barely audible as she insisted it was a mere coincidence that she was the only member of staff present each time a baby collapsed inexplicably on the ward.
Lucy Letby was found guilty of killing seven babies and trying to kill six others. Photo / AP
Det Supt Hughes said that despite her unusual demeanour his team kept an open mind about whether she could have been responsible.
The force was contacted by Tony Chambers, the hospital’s then-chief executive, and asked whether detectives could “put our minds at rest” over the spate of unexplained baby deaths and collapses.
“We were really interested in that first arrest and interviews; could she have told us something that made us go: ‘OK, that makes sense, let’s go and tell the experts that’,” said Det Sup Hughes.
“We were still open-minded as to whether we would find an explanation. We had one expert’s evidence at that point and were waiting for her to fill in the gaps. We were thinking: ‘Go on then, Lucy, you’re a good nurse, you tell us and we can take that back to the experts’.”
Detective Sergeant Danielle Stonier also said that questioning Letby occasionally felt “surreal”, adding that she thought the nurse only agreed to be questioned because she wanted to know what detectives had uncovered.
“Some of the evidence we were putting to her was really graphic in detail, the allegations were horrific,” she told the Mail on Sunday.
“Some people would be throwing the chairs, saying: ‘Look you need to go and speak to such and such. I shouldn’t be here, this is completely wrong.’ But Letby was calm, she was quite cool, she answered the questions, she was confident with the answers. She talked, but there was no emotion.”
Letby, 33, was questioned three times between July 2018 and November 2020, when she was finally charged. She was interviewed for more than 20 hours.
On Friday, she was convicted of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six more during her shifts on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016. She will be sentenced on Monday, but has said she will not attend the hearing at Manchester Crown Court.
