'I guarded Lucy Letby on first night in prison and one thing hit me within seconds'

A prison officer provided a rare insight into whatLucy Letbywas like behind bars – saying she was nothing like what he expected.

The guard, known only as Dave, was given a front row seat after Letby was convicted across two trials of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more. As for what she was like on her first night in jail after being charged, Dave, who used to work in Styal Prison, said she was a “very, very strange character”.

Dave had no idea the child killer, who is from Hereford, was due to appear at the prison and one night, while he was off, he got a text message offering overtime hours.

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He signed up for what is known as “constant watch” and he turned up to the prison in Cheshire to earn some extra money. And speaking on the , he said: “The manager said to me, ‘Oh, you know who it is don’t you? It’s Lucy Letby.’

“It was her first night and she has got her whole-life tariff now but it was her first night on remand. She had come from court that day and had been charged.”

Dave said she was kept in the segregation unit and he went on to describe what she was like in person.

He revealed: “I turned up, sit down on the segregation and the first thing that sort of hit me, you see her in all these photographs, this normal looking blonde woman, and I was surprised at how sort of dishevelled she looked.

“She didn’t have blonde hair, brown hair, she just looked sort of drained. It was night time, I think she might have asked me what time it was at one point. There might have been a few words exchanged, not much.”

He said that Letby, who is 35 and committed her atrocities inside the Countless of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016, was only kept in the prison for a matter of days before she was moved elsewhere.

Dave added that he was not sure whether other inmates knew that she was even there, and said the female offenders would “not have treated her well” if they had been aware of her presence, given her crimes involved infants.

Since being given 15 whole-life sentences, the former neonatal nurse has been serving inside HMP Bronzefield, home to some of the most dangerous female prisoners in Britain.

Last year, Letby lost two attempts to challenge her convictions at theCourt of Appeals, but since then former health secretary Jeremy Hunt called for an “urgent re-examination" after “serious and credible” questions were raised by experts.

He demanded the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, “speed up their normally painfully slow process”.

Lawyers representing the killer nurse also claim they have a report of “fresh” evidence that will prove her innocence.

Cheshire Constabulary meanwhile is reviewing deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies at Countess of Chester and Liverpool Women’s Hospital from 2012 to 2016, at the time Letby was employed as a nurse.