Lucy Letby’s dad and mom requested for assembly with hospital bosses to debate their ‘insupportable anguish’ throughout police investigation into her killing spree, inquiry informed

The parents of Lucy Letby asked hospital bosses for an urgent meeting over their ‘intolerable anguish’ after police began investigating their serial killer daughter, a public inquiry heard today.

John and Susan Letby wrote to the Countess of Chester Hospital’s then board chairman Sir Duncan Nichol two months after Cheshire Constabulary was brought in to probe the increased number of baby deaths on the neonatal unit, in May 2017.

The couple told Sir Duncan: ‘It is now one year since our nightmare began. There is a saying ‘Innocent Until Proven Guilty’ but it doesn’t seem to apply to Lucy.

‘She is still the only one of all the staff on the neonatal unit to be singled out for punishment.’

Requesting an ‘urgent meeting’ with Sir Duncan and chief executive Tony Chambers to discuss matters, they added: ‘We would appreciate the meeting to be as soon as possible as the anguish this situation is causing has become intolerable.’

Sir Duncan told the Thirlwall Inquiry investigating Letby’s crimes that he did not respond to the email sent on July 7 2017 or meet the couple.

Letby was moved off the neo-natal unit a year earlier, in July 2016, into an administrative role after consultant paediatricians voiced fears she may have deliberately harmed infants.

But she was furious two consultants, Dr Stephen Brearey, the lead doctor on the unit, and Dr Ravi Jayaram, the head of children’s services, had ‘orchestrated a campaign’ against her and that some medics had referred to her publicly as ‘angel of death,’ so she lodged an employment grievance against the Trust.

Lucy Letby injected air into the newborns on successive days at the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal unit in June 2016 as part of a series of attacks from a year earlier in which she murdered seven infants and attempted to murder seven more 

Letby, 34, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others

It was upheld and last week the inquiry heard that former retail manager Mr Letby, 78, called for the ‘instant dismissal’ of the two consultants when he and his wife, together with Letby, met Mr Chambers to discuss the grievance outcome in December 2016.

Giving evidence Mr Chambers said Mr Letby was ‘very angry’ and was ‘threatening guns to my head and all sorts of things.’

He denied being manipulated by the serial killer but admitted telling Letby, ‘don’t worry we have got your back’ and that he was ‘astounded’ by her resilience.

Mr Chambers explained he wanted to try to avoid further escalation ‘particularly from her father,’ who had repeatedly rung staff to complain about his daughter’s treatment.

Sir Duncan said he now appreciated there was a ‘huge amount of sympathetic support’ given to Letby by senior managers of which the board was ‘not sufficiently sighted of’.

The inquiry has heard that some senior nurses got ‘too close’ to Letby, who was given information on investigations into the babies’ deaths ahead of some of the consultants and all the families.

Sir Duncan admitted it was a ‘serious failure’ of the hospital not to keep the parents informed.

‘We did not exercise appropriate duty of candour towards the families and that was a failure,’ he said. ‘A serious failure.

A grab from an officer’s body worn camera footage showing the moment Letby was arrested 

‘We were in the middle of a hugely complex process that we had not finished but that should not have meant we could not have kept people informed along the way, and we didn’t do that appropriately.’

Prior to his appointment at the Countess, Sir Duncan was head of the NHS for five years, between 1989 and 1994, which included the period when another nurse, Beverley Allitt, murdered four children and attacked six others at a hospital in Grantham, Lincs.

Although he was responsible for disseminating recommendations following the inquiry into Allitt’s crimes to NHS hospitals across England and Wales, he insisted Allitt was not at the ‘forefront of his mind’ or anyone else’s mind at the Countess in 2015 and 2016.

He also appeared to choke up as he apologised for ‘failing to keep babies safe’ and for the ‘unimaginable grief’ their parents have suffered.

Letby, 34, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016.

The inquiry, sitting at Liverpool Town Hall, is expected to sit until early 2025, with findings published by late autumn of that year.