A British nurse on trial for the killing of seven babies in 2015 and 2016 again on Friday denied killing or harming children and on the final day of questioning denied she was “a calculator”.
• Also read: ‘I killed her on purpose’: condemnatory letters read in court from British nurse accused of murdering seven babies
• Also read: A British nurse accused of murdering seven babies had sent a card to the parents of one of the victims
• Also read: Nurse suspected of killing seven newborns: ‘There was a poisoner on duty’
Lucy Letby, whose trial began in Manchester, north-west England, in October, is accused of killing those babies while she was a nurse in the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal unit. According to prosecutors, she killed them by injecting air into their veins or injecting insulin.
The exchange on Friday with prosecutor Nick Johnson was particularly tense.
“You’re a very calculating woman, aren’t you?” he asked 33-year-old Lucy Letby. “You’re lying on purpose, aren’t you?” he continued. “You lie to gain people’s sympathy and attention, don’t you?” To these questions, the defendant simply answered “No”.
“You drew attention by killing those children, didn’t you?” the prosecutor asked again. “I didn’t kill the children,” Lucy Letby replied. “I have never killed a child or harmed any of them,” she later reiterated.
At the beginning of her questioning in May, she explained that in 2016 she found it “disgusting” to be under suspicion. “I didn’t believe it,” she explained, “I don’t think anyone could be accused of anything worse.”
Lucy Letby told the court that she “always wanted to work with children”. She was the first in her family to go to college.
She repeatedly defended herself for hurting infants.
On Friday, the prosecutor referred to a note she wrote in 2016 when she was told the allegations against her. “I don’t deserve to live. I killed her on purpose because I’m not good enough to take care of her. I’m a terribly bad person,” she wrote.
“You knew that you had killed or seriously injured these children. (…) Are you a murderer?” said the prosecutor. “No,” the defendant replied again.