An English nurse was found guilty on Friday of killing seven premature babies in a year and attempting to murder six others at the hospital where she worked, after a long trial that has appalled Britons.
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This verdict “will not take away the extreme pain, anger and distress we have all felt,” the victims’ families responded in a press release read on the steps of Manchester (north) Court, where he The trial lasted nine months and deliberations for more than a month to reach a verdict. “We may never know why this happened.”
Lucy Letby is now recognized as the most prolific child serial killer in modern UK history, and police continue to review the files of thousands of patients for possible additional victims.
Photo AFP/Cheshire Constabulary/Handout
This 33-year-old woman, who has pleaded innocent, will face her sentence on Monday. She was not present in the courtroom on Friday.
Described by the prosecution as “cold, calculating, cruel and obstinate”, she worked in intensive care at the Countess of Chester Hospital in north-west England.
Between June 2015 and June 2016, seven premature babies died there suddenly and for no apparent reason, some within a few hours.
In particular, she injected newborns with air intravenously and sent air or an overdose of milk into their stomachs via feeding tubes.
Lucy Letby was the only medical worker left on duty during the brutal decay of the newborns, Judge James Goss said.
Given the shock of the affair and questions about the response from health services, the government ordered an independent inquiry to try to learn the lessons.
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The trial began on October 10 in Manchester. The parents testified, sometimes in tears.
A mother shared how in August 2015, when she returned to milk one of her preborn twins, she heard him screaming and realized he had blood around his mouth. Lucy Letby had calmed her down.
According to prosecutors, the nurse had just shoved medical equipment down the little baby’s throat and also injected air into him. He was dead a few hours later, having lost a quarter of his blood.
“The parents were exposed to his pathological curiosity and false sympathy,” prosecutor Pascale Jones said after the verdict. Her actions “represent a total betrayal of the trust placed in her.”
Prosecutors stated that Lucy Letby attacked babies after their parents left, when the nurse in charge left, or at night when she was alone. She would sometimes join in collective efforts to save newborn babies or even help distressed parents.
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Among the victims are triplets, two of whom will die within 24 hours of returning from vacation in June 2016. The third is spared after his parents asked that he be transferred to another hospital.
By that time, after killing quietly, she had become “uncontrollable,” the prosecutor claimed. “She thought she was God.”
“I don’t deserve to live. I killed her on purpose because I’m not good enough to take care of her. I’m a terrible person,” the nurse wrote on a post-it found at her home in 2018. In other documents, however, she protested her innocence.
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His attorney, Ben Myers, argued that in 2015 and 2016 the neonatology department “took in more babies than normal with greater care needs” and “failed to meet” them.
He had claimed incompetent doctors blamed him, but a BBC investigation now accuses the hospital services of covering up the case despite warnings.
Lucy Letby was transferred to administrative service in June 2016, arrested first in 2018 and then in 2019 and finally imprisoned in November 2020. Police continue to investigate at other stages of her career, notably when she was working at a hospital in Liverpool in 2019.