Before moving to her current prison home, ‘Deadly Nurse’ Lucy Letby was housed in Low Newton jail, which had some surprisingly comfortable features.
The inmates can decorate their cells with pink bedding and towels, are able to pet animals to keep themselves calm, visit a stocked library and even go shopping for snacks and clothes.
Letby’s new cell at the privately run HMP Bronzefield near Ashford, Surrey, is even better, with an ensuite bathroom, phone and TV, reports The Sun.
She has also been able to dye her hair brown and, unlike other inmates, doesn’t have a full-time job.
“She is in a nice cell and on her own. [It’s] no wonder she’s been looking so happy,” says a source.
INSIDE LETBY’S PINK CELL
Former neonatal nurse Lucy Letby has been denied permission to appeal her convictions nine months after being found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill another six.
In a case that shocked the world, the former neonatal nurse was found to have killed five boys and two girls in her care while working at the Countess of Chester hospital in 2015 and 2016.
Last August, when she was found guilty, Letby became the third woman alive in the UK to be handed a whole-life order, meaning she can never be paroled. Her application to appeal, already rejected in January, was based on a claim that the original judge for her case had wrongly refused applications made on her behalf during the trial.
Letby, 34, is also due to face a retrial later this month on a single count of attempted murder of a newborn girl.
Despite this, the serial killer nurse – described as “beige” and “average” by police – maintains her innocence.
In December, when she was officially struck off the nursing register, the deciding panel heard that she did not accept that she was “guilty of any of the allegations” in the submitted paperwork.
Letby’s parents John, 77, and Susan, 63, and her best friend Dawn Howe are still convinced of her innocence.
CONVICTED MURDERER
Throughout their daughter’s 10-month trial, the Letbys were a constant presence in court, while neighbours on the comfortable cul-de-sac, where they’ve lived since the convicted murderer was little, said they had become virtual recluses from the moment of her shocking arrest in July 2018.
“I did it, take me instead!” Letby’s mother is reported to have wailed at the arresting officers at the time in a last desperate bid to protect her only child.
Dawn, too, refuses to believe Letby committed the crimes, saying, “Unless Lucy turned around and said I’m guilty, I’ll never believe that she’s guilty.”
Support for the serial killer nurse has come from outside her close circle too. Statistics professor and academic Richard Gill has made repeated claims that the criminal investigation into Letby made mistakes in handling statistical evidence, and on his website he writes that he believes her case was a “major miscarriage of justice”.
Last week UK MP David Davis spoke in parliament about a recent piece in the New Yorker, which challenged Letby’s verdict but was blocked from publication in the UK, reportedly due to a court order.
CHILLING NOTES FROM LETBY
It was Letby’s colleagues who initially voiced concern that she might be behind the unusually high number of deaths on the neonatal ward where she worked.
During police searches of her three-bedroom house – where her bedroom was decorated with multiple fluffy toys and fairy lights – a number of tiny chilling notes were discovered.
On one was written, “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them.”
In another, she admitted, “I am evil I did this.”
Letby was not present at her sentencing, with the judge noting this was “one final act of wickedness from a coward”.
She is reportedly now being housed in the women’s-only Bronzefield prison, once home to serial killers Rose West and Joanna Dennehy.
According to The Sun, Letby is receiving around-the-clock protection, with an insider revealing that, “She seems to be being treated with kid gloves because of who she is.”
