Nursing colleagues of Lucy Letby insist that she is innocent – and they are still working in hospital’s baby unit

Colleagues of murderous nurse Lucy Letby continue to insist she is innocent – even after the baby killer was sentenced to life in prison earlier this week.

Nurses who worked at Countess of Chester Hospital with 33-year-old Letby and now reside there are reportedly struggling to accept that she killed seven babies and tried to kill another six.

Jurors listened to ten months of evidence linking Letby to the deaths, which saw youths injected with air, poisoned with insulin and overfed, and found her guilty of 14 of the 21 charges.

Mr Justice Goss denounced the NHS nurse – who failed to appear in court to hear statements from her victims’ families – for being “completely at odds with the normal human instincts of caring for and caring for babies” during her time in the neonatal ward at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

But some of those who grew up with and worked with Letby refuse to accept that the nurse is guilty, despite insurmountable evidence of her crimes.

“There are still a small number of people in the Countess of Chester’s neonatal unit who believe she is innocent,” a source said. The times.

“They find it hard to believe she could have done it because they got the story for so long that Letby was blamed on consultants making excuses for their own mistakes.”

An old friend of Letby’s, Dawn Howe, is among those who refuse to accept the jury’s decision that Letby is a baby killer.

On the BBC’s Panorama programme, Mrs Howe, 33, said: ‘Unless Lucy turned around and said ‘I am guilty’ I will never believe she is guilty.

“We know she couldn’t have done anything she’s been accused of, so we stand by her without a doubt.

“I grew up with Lucy and nothing I’ve ever seen or seen from Lucy has made me believe for a moment that she’s capable of what she’s accused of doing.

“It’s the most deviant accusation you could ever make against Lucy.

“Think of your most kind, gentle, gentle friend and think he’s accused of harming babies.”

She also accused the police of “trying to build a case, find someone guilty to blame someone,” while maintaining Letby’s innocence.

The idea of ​​a conspiracy against Letby by bitter colleagues and mismanagement at the hospital was the center of her counsel’s case against the charges.

Letby’s lawyers had suggested that there was no evidence that Letby had harmed a baby, citing “sub-optimal care” by the hospital, problems with poor hygiene and a hostile campaign against the defendant by a number of senior doctors as reasons. for the deaths and non-fatal collapses.

But jurors overwhelmingly rejected this claim, finding her guilty of 14 of the 21 charges against her. She was given a life sentence on Monday, meaning she will never be released from prison again.

Despite this, conspirators who believe Letby has been wrongly convicted have launched a campaign to have her released.

Sarrita Adams, a US scientific adviser who has followed the trial, will soon launch a fundraising campaign aimed at undoing what she has labeled “the greatest miscarriage of justice Britain has ever witnessed”.

But following Letby’s conviction for offenses between June 2015 and June 2016, parents of other children who had been in Letby’s care came forward, fearing that their little ones were also victims of her homicidal tendencies.

Mike and Victoria Whitfield claimed that in 2013 Letby was caring for daughter Felicity at Countess of Chester Hospital after she was born prematurely.

Victoria claims that Letby stood by Felicity’s bedside with an ’empty’ expression on her face – before walking away when ‘all hell broke loose’ when the boy’s lung collapsed.

Felicity, now nine, was so close to death that a chaplain was called to perform an emergency baptism.

Victoria recalled, “I have a constant and permanent image in my mind of when she (Letby) was over the bed.

“There was no smile when she looked up—her face was just blank, and then she walked away.”

In his sentencing statements – which the cowardly Letby was unable to hear in court after telling her lawyers she did not want to go – Judge Goss said colleagues at the Countess of Chester Hospital were forced to “think the unthinkable” when they realized that Letby was deliberately hurting babies.

Police searches of Letby’s home revealed grim memories of her victims: mountains of transfer notes stolen from the hospital, a diary listing the dates babies died, a post-it note reading “I am bad, I did this’.

Mr Justice Goss said: ‘I am convinced that you started keeping these documents after the first offenses in June 2015 as morbid accounts of the horrific events surrounding your victims’ collapses and what you had done to them.

“Some of your victims were only a day or a few days old. They were all extremely vulnerable.

“By their nature and number, such murders and attempted murders by a neonatal nurse entrusted to care for them are offenses of very exceptional severity.

“This was a cruel, calculated and cynical campaign of infanticide involving the tiniest and most vulnerable children, knowing that your actions caused considerable physical suffering and would cause untold mental suffering.

“You showed no remorse. There are no mitigating factors.’