A second mother whose two-day-old baby died on the unit in 2015 has also called for detectives to re-examine her daughter’s case.
Police investigating Letby contacted the couple in 2017, but the investigation did not progress. But the baby’s father said he recognised Letby’s face during coverage of the trial, fuelling their concerns that she could have been involved.
The little girl, described only as M at the parents’ request, was born at just over 40 weeks after a healthy pregnancy. Her mother said the delivery did not go to plan and her daughter was born during an emergency Caesarean on Sept 2 2015.
However, doctors were concerned that the baby could pick up an infection and moved her to an incubator in the neonatal unit to be treated with antibiotics and monitored.
Soon, they said the baby was “already improving”. But in the early hours of Sept 4, staff woke the mother in the middle of the night to inform her that her baby had become seriously unwell. She walked into the unit to see doctors attempting resuscitation, but the baby died.
The mother said that the first post-mortem examination results showed nothing, but a second carried out by a hospital in Liverpool found the infant had a rare heart defect and lung failure.
During the trial, the jury heard how some of the babies Letby has now been convicted of harming had damage to their heart or lungs. The mother also said she had noticed “dark spots” on her daughter’s chest, another symptom the court was told emerged on many of Letby’s victims.
She urged police to reinvestigate, saying: “I cannot say for certain if she is responsible, but the entire situation always seemed weird to me because the entire pregnancy was fine and no one said anything was wrong with my daughter. The first day that my baby was born, they told me everything is fine with her.”
The revelations come as executives running the trust during the period Letby killed babies are facing increased questions about their handling of the scandal.
In a statement, Jane Tomkinson, the acting chief executive officer at the Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said it “will be supporting the ongoing investigation by Cheshire police”.
“Due to ongoing legal considerations, it would not be appropriate for the trust to make any further comment at this time,” she added.
Cheshire Constabulary said the operation is “committed to a complete and thorough investigation into the full period of time that Lucy Letby was employed as a nurse” and that “the families of all babies, who are part of this investigation, have been informed and are supported”.
‘I still think in my heart that she did something to him’
Emily Morris, from Deeside in north Wales, said “it just makes me feel sick, looking at that page” when she discovered that Letby appeared to have written in her son’s christening book.
At the top of an inside page, a message in neat cursive style, reads: “To, Alvin, with love on your special day, Lucy x.”
The writing appears identical to that seen during the trial in Letby’s diaries in which she made notes of her crimes using a “coded system”, according to detectives.