Deeside mum ‘sickened’ after finding photo of convicted nurse Lucy Letby with her late son

A Deeside mum whose baby died in the neonatal unit where Lucy Letby said she felt “sick” after finding a photograph of the nurse with her child.

Emily Morris’s son, Alvin, died in 2013 at the Countess of Chester Hospital, where Letby worked.

Emily and Alvin’s stepdad, Mark Lewis, saw the picture for the first time on Thursday, which was on a disc included in a memory box. They did not have a laptop to download the images until recently.

Emily said police investigating Letby told her in 2018 that they had not found any suspicious circumstances in Alvin’s case, but she has called on them to re-examine the evidence.

Speaking to the BBC, Emily said, “It shocked us. It’s really hard to see a person who has done that to those babies next to you. It makes you sick.”

She said, “You can see she is grabbing his blanket. I have told everybody that she did that, and now there’s proof. That’s proof that she was with him.”

Alvin was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy and was cared for on the neonatal unit following his birth. Emily became concerned about Letby’s behaviour when she attended her son’s christening at the hospital.

“She wanted to touch him and change the bedding and constantly wanted to lean over him,” Emily said.

“You just think, ‘that’s weird for a nurse… all the other nurses were absolutely fine with him.”

Letby was found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six others at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.

She was given a whole-life sentence, meaning she will spend the rest of her life in prison.

The UK government’s Department of Health and Social Care has ordered an independent inquiry to look at the wider circumstances surrounding what happened, including the handling of clinicians’ concerns.

Letby wrote a message in Alvin’s christening book, which read: “To Alvin, with love on your special day.”

Emily said, “It was heartbreaking, seeing her name in the book, because of all the things we read in the news saying the kids that got targeted were the ones she wrote to. So I think in my heart Alvin might have been targeted.”

“I would feel sick to my stomach knowing that she hurt my boy because he was the happiest baby in the world, giggling and laughing, loving life,” she told the BBC.

Speaking to BBC Wales Breakfast this morning, Alyn and Deeside MP Mark Tami said he was pleased the Secretary of State has finally accepted that we need a statutory inquiry, “because we do need to leave no stone unturned and find exactly what happened and learn the lessons from it.”

He said in Emily’s case, “and there will be others, people will understandably have doubts how their child sadly passed away whether Letby was anything to do with that.”

Mr Tami said he was not aware of any other parents in Flintshire with concerns like Emily, “I’m obviously relying on people approaching me and discussing the worries that they have. I have been reassured by Cheshire Police that they will investigate all cases when Letby was working at the Countess of Chester Hospital and her time in Liverpool.”

He said, “It’s very important that if anyone has any concerns whatsoever, that they are fully investigated, and the parents get the answers that they fully deserve.”

Det Supt Paul Hughes of Cheshire Police said the force was “committed to a complete and thorough investigation into the full period of time that Lucy Letby was employed as a nurse”.

“This investigation remains ongoing, through a transparent and open-minded process,” he said.

Cheshire Police say they are continuing to review the care of 4,000 babies who were admitted to the Countess of Chester – and also at Liverpool Women’s Hospital when Letby had two work placements – during her employment from 2012.

Mr Tami said it was “extremely important” that police look into concerns raised by parents and “if they feel that that isn’t the case, then they need to approach their elected representative whether it is me or other MPs.”

He said, “I think the police have been very clear that they do intend to really try to get answers, any parent suffering one of the worst losses that we can think of, they need answers. They need to be reassured about what actually happened during that traumatic time.”