Nurse Lucy Letby wrote note about baby deaths because ‘everything got on top of me’, court told
Video report by Granada Reports' journalist Mel Barham
A nurse accused of murdering seven babies told police "everything had got on top of me" when she wrote: "I killed them on purpose" on a note.
On a Post-it note Lucy Letby wrote: “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them.”
She added “I am a horrible evil person” and in capital letters “I am evil I did this”.
Letby, 33, is on trial at Manchester Crown Court, where she also faces allegations she attempted to murder 10 other infants at the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal unit.
On Thursday, jurors were read more excerpts from police interviews with the defendant following her arrest.
Asked about the Post-it note – found inside a diary at her home in Chester after her arrest in 2018 – she told detectives: “I just wrote it because everything had got on top of me.
“It was when I’d not long found out I’d been removed from the unit and they were telling me my practice might be wrong, that I needed to read all my competencies – my practice might not have been good enough.
“So I felt like people were blaming my practice, that I might have hurt them without knowing through my practice, and that made me feel guilty and I just felt really isolated.
“I was blaming myself but not because I’d done something (but) because of the way people were making me feel.
“But like I’d only ever done my best for those babies and then people were trying to say that my practice wasn’t good, that I’d done something.
“I just couldn’t cope and I just did not want to be here any more.
“I just felt it was, it was all just spiralling out of control, I just didn’t know how to feel about it or what was going to happen or what to do.”
The detective asked: “What people were they?”
Letby replied: “The Trust and the staff on the unit.”
The detective said: “Did you ever make any mistakes?”
“No,” replied Letby.
Letby, originally from Hereford, denies all the offences said to have taken place between June 2015 and June 2016.