Lucy Letby 'is under 24-hour guard and has to be checked on every 15 minutes'

Daily Mail​

10 hours ago

Lucy Letby is said to be under 24-hour surveillance from prison guards amid fears she may be attacked by her fellow inmates.
The killer nurse is reportedly being checked on every 15 minutes by staff at HMP Bronzefield as part of an enforced Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) order.
Designed to help support 'prisoners identified as being at risk of suicide or self-harm', the alleged measures come amid concerns that fellow prisoners at the high-risk Surrey prison could target Letby.
The serial killer, 35, has allegedly been 'mercilessly mocked' within Bronzefield's Unit Four following the release of documentaries about her sordid crimes.
There are also said to have been concerns raised that the public interest in the case may have 'gone to her head', leading her to believe that she may soon be released.
An alleged source told The Sun: 'It has mostly been comments so far, but bosses are worried it'll escalate, hence the extra checks.
'The other reason is that she appears to have deluded herself she'll be out soon.'
Letby was given 15 life sentences after being found guilty of the murder of seven babies and attempting to murder another eight whilst she worked at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
The jury failed to reach verdicts or cleared her of attempted murder charges relating to another four children following ten months of hearings at Manchester Crown Court.
Her case has received mass interest worldwide and also been scrutinised in recent TV documentaries.
Letby maintains her innocence, and high-profile figures including former health secretary Jeremy Hunt have called for her case to be re-examined. Her barrister has also referred her convictions to the Criminal Cases Review Committee.
The former nurse has twice had applications to challenge her convictions rejected by the Court of Appeal.
She told her trial in May 2023 she was still taking them and that she had considered suicide at the time she was removed from her job.
Sodexo, the private firm which runs Bronzefield, told The Sun that it could not comment on individuals.
Letby has been in custody since November 2020 but was given a 'whole life order' in August 2023.
She is only the fourth female criminal in British history to have no hope of parole following her conviction for killing the babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Letby has been in custody since November 2020 but was given a 'whole life order' in August 2023. The child killer is based in unit four of the 527-inmate prison (pictured) which is solely for enhanced prisoners, who make up roughly 25 per cent of the jail's population
The child killer is based in unit four of the 527-inmate prison which is solely for enhanced prisoners, who make up roughly 25 per cent of the jail's population.
In June, the Daily Mail revealed that the former neo-natal nurse had been fast-tracked to 'enhanced' prisoner status when she arrived, largely for her own protection.
As an enhanced prisoner, Letby is permitted £33 a week to spend in the prison canteen, whereas standard prisoners have £19.80 and those placed on 'basic' as a punishment are allowed just £5.50.
Status reviews take place for prisoners every 28 days but it is understood Letby has remained enhanced since she arrived at Bronzefield.
She is also understood to have struck up a relationship with Beinash Batool, who is serving a 33-year sentence for the murder of her 10-year-old stepdaughter, Sara Sharif.
The two women, both jailed for the most deplorable acts against children, have formed an uneasy alliance and are said to have been spotted playing cards together.
A Bronzefield source said: 'I wouldn't call them friends – I don't think Lucy has any friends – but they mix a lot together.
'There is a bit of unspoken solidarity between them, given they are both in for such horrific crimes. Who else would mix with them?
Letby is also understood to have striked up a relationship with Beinash Batool (pictured), who is serving a 33-year sentence for the murder of her ten-year-old stepdaughter, Sara Sharif
'They both have cushy jobs with Beinash being in charge of the unit library and Lucy doing the cleaning – though this causes a bit of friction with other inmates.'
Following Letby's sentence, the Thirlwall inquiry was launched into how she was able to commit the crimes.
While she was sentenced to die in prison, there has since been a growing clamour among expert doctors, scientists and statistics experts, who say her trial was unfair, that there are serious doubts about prosecution evidence and that the case should be reopened.
Letby's new barrister, Mark McDonald, is submitting 'new evidence' to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the body that investigates potential miscarriages of justice, in the hope she can appeal a third time and be freed.
He gathered a panel of 14 neonatal and paediatric experts, shared the babies' medical notes with them, and held a press conference casting doubt on the prosecution's case.
Lawyers for the families of Letby's victims previously rubbished the panel's findings as 'full of analytical holes' and 'a rehash' of the defence case heard at trial.
In July, Cheshire Police passed evidence of further allegations related to baby deaths and collapses at the hospitals where Letby worked.
Mr McDonald, who is known for making high-profile appeals, previously told the Sunday Times that Letby has 'new hope' regarding her possible release from prison.
A new TV documentary, Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt?, released earlier this month, brought new details surrounding the high-profile case into the public domain. Within the show, new photos emerged of the serial killer partying at her friend's wedding while she was on bail
He said: 'Remember, 12 months ago, she'd lost every argument. She had been saying that she was not guilty right from the beginning and nobody believed her.
'She went through a whole trial and she was convicted. She went to the Court of Appeal and she was convicted.
'She had a retrial; she was convicted. She went to the Court of Appeal again; she was convicted. And that was it.
'There, you have a broken person. But today, after everything that has happened in the last 12 months, she's got new hope.'
The barrister claimed he has never submitted this much evidence to the CCRC and 'if this is not referred back to the Court of Appeal then one has to question the purpose of the CCRC'.
A new TV documentary, Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt?, released earlier this month, brought new details surrounding the high-profile case into the public domain.
Within the show, new photos emerged of the serial killer partying at her friend's wedding while she was on bail for the murder of seven babies.
The images were released by her friend Dawn, who did not want to use her surname, who said that she was so glad she was there' at her wedding. She was so sure of her friend's innocence that she sought permission from the authorities to invite Letby to her wedding while she was on bail.
Dawn (pictured) has stood by Letby despite her conviction and remains convinced of her innocence. She undermined claims that scribbled notes found in Letby's house were any sort of confession
In a clip for the documentary, Dawn was seen looking through pictures of herself and Letby.
The pair met as teenagers and have been friends ever since.
She said: 'There is definitely lots of holiday snaps, birthdays, holidays I forgot we even had.
'The wedding photos are definitely my favourite. There is Lucy at my wedding. I am just so glad she could be there because it was while she was on bail, she had to get special permission to be allowed to come from police.
'I watched it all unfold and at every step of the way I just couldn't believe it, it was just beyond belief that it could be happening.'
Dawn has stood by Letby despite her conviction and remains convinced of her innocence.
She undermined claims that scribbled notes found in Letby's house were any sort of confession.
She reveals that, at sixth form college together, both trained in peer-support counselling and learned of a common method to deal with anxieties – to write down your worst fears and feelings.
The documentary also hears from Karen Rees, former head of urgent care nursing at the Countess of Chester Hospital where Letby worked.
Lucy Letby was devastated by the accusations against her, according to Karen Rees (pictured), former head of urgent care nursing at the Countess of Chester Hospital where Letby worked
Sat in a car outside the hospital, Ms Rees said, 'I loved working here'.
'We were all shocked, really shocked,' she added, 'when I look back to when it all started, I don't think any of us thought that this storyline would ride out the way it has.'
Between 2015 and 2016 nearly three times as many newborn babies had died than the normal numbers.
Ms Rees said: 'I was made aware that the mortality rates appeared to be higher than they had been in the previous years.
'It was tough because everyone was trying, thinking please let us find a reason for this.'
Letby was often accused of being cold and unfeeling during her trial for murder. But according to Ms Rees, she was in fact devastated by the accusations against her.
Ms Rees recalled how Letby once told her: 'You're the only person that hasn't asked me, "Have I purposely harmed anybody?"'
Meanwhile, Mr McDonald is shown in the documentary being questioned outside the CCRC offices in Birmingham by the Daily Mail's Liz Hull, who has covered the case from the beginning.
He admits to camera that, despite the involvement of some of the most distinguished doctors in the world who say no crime was committed, an appeal may yet be refused on a technicality – that the objections to the guilty verdict could have been raised at the original trial, so it was not the court's fault that things went wrong.
Hitchens said he believed the notes were written, as the documentary suggests, on the advice of Letby's counsellors and cannot be taken as sincere admissions of guilt
The Trial of Lucy Letby: We leave no stone unturned in the case. Listen to the Mail's No.1 True Crime podcast everywhere now.
Mr McDonald asks: 'If they dismiss this evidence, to say 'Well, it could have been called at trial... she's innocent but we are not going to take any notice of it because they could have done that, so we will let an innocent person stay in prison' – well, what is the logic of that?'
Earlier this month, Peter Hitchens declared on the Daily Mail's True Crime Podcast that her case must be immediately 'reopened in the courts' following the release of the 'powerful' documentary.
Mr Hitchens told Mail columnist Sarah Vine: 'I would think anybody who watched that documentary, whatever your feelings are, would think now it's time to reopen the case.
'The main thing that emerges in the documentary is how extraordinarily weak the prosecution's case was, containing no actual facts.
'Nobody should be happy that somebody is in prison until their death on the basis of a trial that has attracted so much doubt.'