Lucy Letby was told to write letter in which she admitted ‘I am evil’ by counsellors before it was used as evidence of her guilt, reports claim

A note from murderous nurse Lucy Letby reading “I’m bad” is said to have been written on the advice of a therapist.

During her first trial last year, the jury was told the apparent confession should be read “literally.”

In her own statement, the nurse previously said she wrote the message, which police found in her diary, when she was in a “panic” after being taken from the hospital’s neonatal unit.

She said she ‘blamed myself, but not because I had done anything, but because of how people made me feel’. Letby, 34, gave no other background to the notes and prosecutor Nick Johnson KC told Manchester Crown Court it should be seen as a ‘confession’. But a source told The Guardian last night that the note and others like it were written on the advice of professionals as a way to cope with extreme stress.

The source further said the notes were made after therapy sessions as part of a “therapeutic process in which she was advised to write down her disturbing thoughts and feelings.”

Letby is serving a life sentence after being convicted of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six others at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016

During her first trial last year, jurors were told the apparent confession should be read “literally”

The head of occupational health and wellbeing at the Countess of Chester Hospital, Kathryn de Beger, is said to have encouraged Letby to write as a way of coping with extreme stress. Letby’s GP in Chester is also said to have advised her to write down thoughts she was finding difficult to process.

Not only did she write “I am bad, I did this” on the Post-it – covered in scribbled handwriting – but also: “I killed them on purpose because I am not good enough to take care of them and I am a horrible, bad person”, “hate”, “I did nothing wrong” and “Police investigation slander discrimination victimisation”.

Last week, a group of experts called on the government to postpone an inquiry led by Lady Justice Thirlwall, which was due to begin hearing on 10 September.

Letby is serving a life sentence after being convicted of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six others at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016.

In July, she was found guilty by a jury of the attempted murder of a seventh premature baby at the Countess of Chester Hospital, following a retrial.

The letter, sent to ministers and signed by 24 neonatal experts and statistics professors, asks them to postpone the investigation – or to amend its remit to take into account the possibility that “possible deaths due to negligence” are “likely to be homicides”.

The notes – written between July 2016, when she was removed from the department amid mounting suspicions, and July 2018, when she was arrested – were not used in Letby’s request to appeal her conviction, which was denied.

During her first trial, Letby denied killing or abusing babies with her notes, saying she reached out to Ms De Beger for support.

Defense attorney Ben Myers argued that the notes reflected Letby’s anxious state of mind rather than “guilt.”

The Countess of Chester Hospital declined to comment ahead of the investigation.