I would imagine it was the defence who didn't want the jury to know that LL had been present at every single death in that one year period. It's not a good look for her! It doesn't mean that there was no way she was involved in those other deaths. There would just need to be enough evidence of her involvement to bring charges.
Also Dr Evans said there were two babies that were were two babies were "born in unsurvivable conditions, with obvious medical diagnoses". LL's colleague also referred to there having been babies who weren't "compatible with life". If LL targeted those babies before their lives ended naturally, nobody would question those deaths and it'd be nigh on impossible to ever prove.
We know that this baby died during the 2015-16 timeframe and police were investigating her death but ultimately didn't bring any charges. Whether this is one of the two babies Dr Evans said had been born in unsurvivable conditions (with an undiagnosed rare heart defect) is not clear. But if she was, it's
possible that she had an undiagnosed rare heart defect (unknown to LL or anyone else) that would have eventually killed her AND that LL killed her before the defect had chance to kill her.
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...
In 2017, a police officer contacted her about the death of her daughter. “He told us that there were suspicions, that this and that could have happened to your baby,” she said. The mother recalls how the officer said they were investigating a nurse, and that “there were many similar events, namely related to the heart and lungs”, prompting suspicion over her daughter. Following this, the couple returned to Lithuania and, while they received several emails from a second officer, “nobody contacted us again”.
ETA link to LL's colleague mention babies not compatible with life:
The same day, Letby messages her nursing colleague: "I've done a timeline of this year."
The colleague responds: "Fab. And how quite a few babies weren't compatable with life anyway. I wonder if midwives get this with amount of stillbirths......"
Letby: "Yeah and some went off within hours/on handover.
"Or were already acutely unwell when I took over.
"And put that when Baby Q went off No other staff able to care for him etc (name of Baby Q redacted)."
The colleague responds: "Not like all behaving fantastically till right into shift."
Letby: "Hoping to get as much info together as possible -if they have nothing or minimal on me they'll look silly, not Me."
LUCY LETBY messaged a nursing colleague: "If they have nothing or minimal on me they'll look silly" during a Countess of Chester Hospital…
www.chesterstandard.co.uk
