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UK 33-Year-Old Nurse Convicted of Murdering Infants
UK 33-Year-Old Nurse Convicted of Murdering Infants
Lucy Letby has been found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder six others while working as a nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital in England.
The verdicts confirm the 33-year-old from Hereford as Britain’s worst serial child killer.
But Cheshire Police have already said they believe she may be responsible for other attacks, and detectives are currently pursuing several active investigations.
Letby was convicted of murdering five baby boys and two baby girls between June 2015 and June 2016 using a variety of methods.
During the same period, she also attacked and tried to kill four boys and two girls.
In a statement, the Crown Prosecution Service said she had “perverted her learning and weaponized her craft to inflict harm, grief, and death”.
Among her murder victims were two babies from a set of identical triplets. She also attacked three sets of twins, killing two of the infants.
The jury, made up of four men and seven women, spent more than 110 hours deliberating and delivered their verdicts on the 22 charges in stages, the details of which could not be reported until now.
On August 8, Letby was found guilty of two counts of attempted murder for the poisoning of two infants with insulin.
As those verdicts were handed down, the neonatal nurse broke down and sobbed uncontrollably.
Three days later, on Friday, August 11, six more guilty verdicts were handed down, including four counts of murder.
This time Letby kept her head bowed throughout, but her mother, Susan, who has attended everyday of the trial with her husband John, cried out “This can’t be right, this can’t be right”, before breaking down.
On August 16, the jury returned seven more verdicts, and it was confirmed that she had been found guilty of all the murders with which she had been charged.
Some of the parents of the victims sobbed quietly, comforting one another as the verdicts were delivered.
On this occasion, Letby refused to leave her cell, informing the judge she was not willing to take part in the rest of the proceedings.
Just before lunchtime on Friday (local time), the jury informed the judge they were unable to reach verdicts on the six outstanding charges, and they were discharged.
Lucy Letby, 33, is the UK’s most prolific killer of babies in modern times
UK 33-Year-Old Nurse Convicted of Murdering Infants
Letby was acquitted of two counts of attempted murder.
Her unimaginable crimes, which have shocked the nation, mean she is likely to spend the rest of her life in prison.
She is due to be sentenced next week at Manchester Crown Court in front of Mr. Justice Goss.
Her offending period spanned 12 months, but Cheshire Police are currently looking at her entire nursing career, which began in September 2011.
As part of their work, they are reviewing all 4000 admissions of babies into neonatal units at the two hospitals where Letby worked, the Countess of Chester and Liverpool Women’s Hospital.
The marathon trial, which began on October 10 last year, heard how Letby had used a variety of methods to attack vulnerable, premature, and sick babies while her colleagues’ backs were turned.
She injected some with air into their stomachs or bloodstreams, deliberately overfed others, and poisoned two babies with insulin.
She carefully covered her tracks to make it appear as if their deaths and collapses were naturally occurring, but later stalked the families of her victims on social media.
Pascale Jones, from the CPS, said: “Lucy Letby was entrusted to protect some of the most vulnerable babies. Little did those working alongside her know that there was a murderer in their midst.
“She did her utmost to conceal her crimes by varying how she repeatedly harmed babies in her care.
“She sought to deceive her colleagues and pass off the harm she caused as nothing more than a worsening of each baby’s existing vulnerability.
“In her hands, innocuous substances like air, milk, fluids, or medication like insulin would become lethal. She perverted her learning and weaponized her craft to inflict harm, grief, and death.
“Time and again, she harmed babies in an environment that should have been safe for them and their families.
“Parents were exposed to her morbid curiosity and her fake compassion. Too many of them returned home to empty baby rooms. Many surviving children live with the permanent consequences of her assaults on their lives.
“Her attacks were a complete betrayal of the trust placed in her.”
UK 33-Year-Old Nurse Convicted of Murdering Infants
Letby was described during the trial as a “constant malevolent presence”, but police remain baffled as to why she started targeting the infants.
One theory put forward by the prosecution was that she was infatuated with a married male doctor on the unit and enjoyed being at the center of the drama as they battled to revive the babies she had attacked.
Prosecutors also claimed she enjoyed playing God and having the power of life and death over the infants in her care.
In his closing speech, Nick Johnson said, “She reveled in what she had done and enjoyed the anguish and distress she had caused.”
The investigation into Letby began in 2016, when concern was raised over the spike in deaths and unexpected collapses among babies at the Countess of Chester hospital.
Colleagues of the nurse who tried to raise the alarm claimed hospital managers dismissed their concerns and even tried to reinstate her after she was initially suspended.
The Department of Health is now expected to announce an inquiry into what happened at the hospital in a bid to determine how Letby was able to get away with her crimes and what could have been done to stop her.
When asked during the trial whether she had ever intentionally killed or hurt any babies, she said, “No, that is completely against everything that being a nurse is. I’m here to help and to care, not to harm.”
But jurors, who have sat in on one of the longest criminal trials in many years, saw through her lies.
