From 2023- Lucy Letby detective: Nurse ‘had ability to mentally switch off’
Lucy Letby detective: Nurse ‘had ability to mentally switch off’
Officer said there was no emotional reaction by Letby when she was questioned about the murder of seven babies
new
The Times
Lucy Letby was interviewed over several days
CHESHIRE POLICE
The detective who questioned Lucy Letby for 20 hours after her arrests said she was so emotionless that “there was nothing from her”, even when she was presented with graphic evidence and “horrendous” charges.
Letby was arrested three times between July 2018 and November 2020, when she was charged, and was interviewed over several days.
Detective Constable Danielle Stonier of Cheshire police, who has questioned several high-profile killers and sex offenders, said that the intense interviews “were like nothing I’ve ever done” and that she felt the pressure.
“I’d provided evidence and discussed her potential involvement in murder and attempted murders. There was just nothing there from her,” she told The Trial of Lucy Letby podcast. “She knew the severity of what she’s been alleged of doing. For me, you’d then start to feel the walls closing in a little bit.”
At the third interview Letby was charged. Officers read all 22 charges in full and Letby was asked to stand up and acknowledge each one.
“The natural thing to do is to cry and then it becomes uncontrollable. There are people who almost just put their fingers in their ears and just completely ignore it,” Stonier said.
With Letby “it was the same weapon we’ve seen. Lucy Letby has this ability to mentally switch off”, she added.
Stonier, who also acted as a family liaison officer in the case, said some of Letby’s victims blamed themselves for what happened to their children.
“These families were initially thinking, ‘Well, is it me?’ They were thinking, ‘Have I said something to upset her, or have I been overbearing, or have I been [too] challenging?’ ”
She added: “Parents are just completely racking their brains to think, ‘Why? Why would anybody, another human being, do
that to a baby?’ ”
• ‘You are nothing’: what the victims’ parents think of Lucy Letby
Police were called in by bosses at the Countess of Chester NHS Trust in May 2017, years after Letby had begun killing babies. By 2018, when Letby was arrested for a second time, the police had widened their investigation to 17 deaths and 15 non-fatal
investigation to 17 deaths and 15 non-fatal collapses between March 2015 and July 2016.
Ultimately 22 charges, pertaining to seven murdered babies and ten infants who were harmed, were put to the jury. They found her guilty of seven killings and seven attempted murders.
Letby was convicted of seven murders and seven attempted murders
Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes, also of Cheshire police, the senior investigating officer in the case, said that he initially placed a different detective on every allegation to avoid group-think.
He told The Trial of Lucy Letby podcast that the “sterile corridor of evidence” allowed each detective to come to a conclusion about their findings on their own.
He added: “It was chilling really, at times, to see it drop into effect . . . that realism of saying, ‘I got somebody independently, this has been investigated in isolation’. And now people are saying, ‘Oh my god, that is exactly what I’ve seen’.”
Paul Hughes, a detective, said there were outbursts of emotion at the trial and that Letby “clearly does love the attention”
ELIZABETH COOK/PA
Hughes agreed that Letby was emotionless in her interviews. He said: “She asked questions, she was clinical. This is somebody who’s never been involved with the police before in her life and she’s arrested for murder, and at no point did she appear to be struggling with anything, she was quiet. She wasn’t obstructive, she answered the question. She dealt with everything, [she was] in control.”
He said he had asked himself, “Why isn’t she screaming and shouting and close to banging on the table saying, ‘Well, if you’re saying these babies have been killed, I’ve cared for these babies, go and find the killer. It’s not me’.
Handwritten notes were found in Letby’s home
CPS/PA
“There was none of that. It was very much an acceptance of, ‘You’re going to come and knock on my door at some point’.”
He added: “She clearly does love the attention. I think we’ve seen the spurious outbursts of emotion at trial, which shows that she likes the attention, but I think overall . . . Just to reuse her own words, because she is evil and she did this without telling us why.
“If we’re looking for why then, well, she wrote it down. In my view, she wrote it down and left it for us to find.”
Comments
Post a Comment