Unseen photo shows killer nurse Lucy Letby partying at friend's wedding while on bail for murdering seven babies
The photo was revealed by her friend Dawn, who did not want to use her surname, as part of a new TV documentary about Letby.
Letby was convicted in 2023 of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others.
Her friend Dawn said 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.
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.'
She added: 'My assumption when all of this happened was that perhaps she had inadvertently forgotten bits of procedure or she has made some mistakes.
'There were those dark moments where I thought perhaps has she inadvertently caused harm because she was so newly qualified in such a high pressure environment and perhaps that's why she was being targeted for these accusations.
'Shortly after this she as held in custody, so I don't think she has seen these [photographs].'
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.
'If you're feeling overwhelmed, you write down everything that's going through your mind,' she said. And this is what Letby did when undergoing counselling arranged for her by the hospital.
Dawn was at work when she heard the guilty verdicts and said she could not take them in.
She said: 'I sat there dumbfounded for a while, not really knowing how to process what I was hearing. I didn't think it was real. I immediately switched to thinking what happens next? This can't be it, she can't just spend the rest of her life in prison. I'm living a life that Lucy should be living beside me.
'We should both be having families. We'd both bought our houses, and we were looking forward to the next chapter of our lives – and then all this happens. There's so much guilt that I'm living a life that Lucy should also be living.'
The documentary also hears from Karen Rees, 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.'
Betweeen 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.
The bitter, tearful scenes followed suggestions made by consultants at the hospital that Letby was doing harm. 'She was broken, cried regularly in my arms and in my office, and her mantra to me was, 'Why are they doing this to me? I've done nothing wrong',' said Ms Rees.
Ms Rees, in her first TV interview, revealed she was given the task of breaking the bad news to Letby that she was being removed from the job she was trained for – the care of newborns – and confined to a humiliating desk job in a back office.
Letby had to pretend to colleagues that this was her choice. Ms Rees said: 'I was told just to say that concerns had been raised, and that this was seen as a neutral act.
'She was not being accused of anything at this point. But it seemed safer to take her off clinical practice to protect herself as well as babies on that neonatal unit.'
As she was led away from the unit where she had worked, Letby did not even question the decision. 'She was just looking at me,' added Ms Rees. 'I then had to walk her across the hospital grounds. I was the only one making conversation. She wasn't asking me why. She wasn't crying. She was just shocked.'
But, said Ms Rees, she cried a lot later. Eventually, after police became involved, Letby was prescribed antidepressants which often suppress moods and emotions. 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.
Ms Rees recalled how Letby once told her: 'You're the only person that hasn't asked me, 'Have I purposely harmed anybody?'.'
She said: 'The reason why I never asked her is that I never thought she had. No. I didn't, I don't believe it.' Her revelations are one of several dramatic moments in the documentary Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt? to be shown on ITV this evening.
Letby's new barrister Mark 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.
Mr McDonald 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.
He 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?'
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