A neonatal nurse has been found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six more, making her the worst child serial killer in modern British history.
Lucy Letby (33), was convicted of the “persistent, calculated and cold-blooded” murder of premature infants on the unit where she worked at the Countess of Chester hospital in northwest England.
Her victims included two identical triplet brothers, killed within 24 hours of each other, a newborn weighing less than 1kg (2lb) who was fatally injected with air, and a baby girl born 10 weeks premature who was murdered on the fourth attempt.
Bereaved parents gasped and wept in the public gallery as the verdicts were delivered over several dramatic days at Manchester crown court, after one of the longest-running murder trials in recent times.
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Letby refused to return to court to hear the later verdicts but had earlier bowed her head and sobbed while her mother, Susan, cried loudly and said: “You cannot be serious. This cannot be right.”
The nurse, who was in her mid-20s when she carried out the attacks, is expected to become only the third woman alive in the UK to be handed a whole-life term – meaning she will never be released from prison – when she is sentenced on Monday.
The trial heard how Letby murdered newborns by injecting air into their tiny bodies, in some cases shattering their diaphragms, or in one case by pushing a tube down an infant’s throat.
She tried to kill two babies by lacing their feeding bags with insulin on the Countess of Chester’s neonatal unit between June 2015 and June 2016. She was finally reported to police in 2017 and arrested in 2018.
Detective chief inspector Nicola Evans, of Cheshire constabulary, described her as a “calculated and callous” killer who had acted “under a cover of trust” to murder days-old babies in her care.
She said: “Lucy Letby was operating in plain sight. She abused the trust of the people around her. Not just the parents that had entrusted her with their babies but also the nurses she worked with and the people that she regarded as friends.”
One of the babies was the size of an adult hand, weighing just over 535g (1lb), when she was born 15 weeks premature and given a 5 per cent chance of survival. Letby tried to kill the girl twice – the first attempt just hours after she and the family had marked her 100th day of life with a celebratory cake, and the second on what would have been her due date two weeks later. Letby was found not guilty of a third count of attempted murder against her.
The little girl, known as Child G, was diagnosed with quadriplegic cerebral palsy after the attacks. Now eight, she is nil by mouth and requires 24-hour care.
Her parents gasped when the guilty verdicts were returned to a packed and silent courtroom. They handed out tissues, as relatives of the other victims cried and held each other.
The mother of twin boys, who walked in on Letby attacking one of her sons, bent over and sobbed as the nurse was found guilty of murdering one of her six-day-old babies and attempting to kill his brother the following day.
The verdicts were delivered over several days but can only now be reported following the end of jury deliberations lasting more than 100 hours across 20 days and more than four weeks.
Another baby was 24 hours old when Letby injected him with air, killing him just 90 minutes after she had started her shift. She tried to kill his twin sister the next day. None of the victims or their families can be named for legal reasons.
Report from the Lucy Letby trial - what the jury heard
Letby consistently denied the charges, telling jurors she was “devastated” by the allegations and: “I only ever did my best to care for them. I’m here to help and to care, not to harm.”
But after a trial lasting 10 months, the jury of seven women and four men decided she was guilty of attacks that the prosecution described as “persistent, calculated and cold-blooded”.
Parents of two of Letby’s victims said the nurse behaved strangely as they spent their final moments with their murdered babies.
The mother of a newborn girl, who weighed about 1kg at birth, recalled Letby “smiling” and offering to take photographs as they bathed their daughter. She later sent the family a sympathy card and took a photograph of it on her phone.
Another parent told the trial that a nurse he believed to be Letby interrupted their final moments with their little boy by trying to place him in a ventilator basket, meant for dead babies, even though he was still breathing. She allegedly told the grieving parents: “You’ve said your goodbyes. Do you want me to put him in here?”
In total, Letby was found guilty of seven counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder. The attempted murders relate to six babies as multiple counts apply to some of the infants.
She was found not guilty of two counts of attempted murder. The jury was unable to reach verdicts on six further counts of attempted murder, relating to five babies, after deliberating for 110 hours and 26 minutes.
Letby is expected to be handed a whole-life term when she is sentenced.
One other woman serving the maximum prison term is Rosemary West, who tortured and killed at least nine young women in the 1970s and 1980s. West, now 69, is believed to be serving her sentence at HMP New Hall in West Yorkshire, where Letby has been held since October.
British ministers have announced a non-statutory independent inquiry into how Letby was able to murder seven babies and attempt to kill six others before she was reported to police.
The inquiry, announced by the health secretary, Steve Barclay, will be independent from the NHS and government and involve input from families, but it will not be a formal statutory inquiry, under which witnesses can be compelled to give evidence.
The department of health and social care (DHSC) said it had been decided that a non-statutory independent inquiry was the best option, in part so lessons could be learned more quickly.
A key consideration for the inquiry is likely to be how Letby was allowed to continue working at the neonatal unit, and then elsewhere at the hospital, even after consultants raised concerns about her in connection with the unusually high rate of infant deaths.
After concerns were raised in October 2015, Letby subsequently attacked five more babies, killing two. - Guardian