Former head of nursing claims convicted killer Lucy Letby is "innocent"
Karen Rees said that Letby would "cry into her arms on a weekly basis"
The former head of nursing at the Countess of Chester Hospital has said that Lucy Letby is innocent of her crimes.
Karen Rees said that she first met convicted child killer Letby in the summer of 2016, where she had to tell Letby she was being removed from the neonatal ward of the hospital.
After having received multiple complaints on her "clinical practice", Rees was told to remove Letby from the ward, but said that she found a "frightened young woman" who was left "shocked and bewildered".
She allegedly told Letby: "I've been given a management instruction that I have to remove you from your clinical practice.
"This is a neutral act. It's to protect you as well as the babies. But until this is investigated, you're going to do a non-clinical role."
Over the years, Rees and Letby would go on to form a close bond, and would eventually meet on a regular basis.
Describing the meetings as "shocking", Rees said that Letby was bursting into tears during every meeting, confused as to why she had been removed from her post.
"She cried in my arms on a weekly basis," Rees went on to recall. "It was harrowing."
A WhatsApp group was eventually set up by Rees, along with others from the neonatal ward to help support Letby, with nurses telling the convicted killer to "hang in there".
Lucy Letby is currently serving 15 whole-life terms in jail for the murder of seven babies during her time at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
She was also convicted of attempting to murder seven other babies during June of 2015 and June of 2016.
Rees now says that Letby is innocent, telling reporters: "The one person that knows her nursing team is the manager or the unit manager - not a consultant that visits a couple of times a week.
"They know the strengths and weaknesses. I trusted Lucy's ward manager when she looked me in the eye and said, 'she's (Letby) fantastic and she's right by the book, she does everything right'.
"I believed Lucy when she told me she had done nothing wrong. I will always recall her saying to me, 'you're the only person, Karen, that hasn't asked me if I did it?' Because I didn't think she had."