Lucy Letby convicted of murder of seven babies
A neonatal nurse has been named as the worst child serial killer in modern UK history, after being convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder six more.
Lucy Letby carried out the killings between June 2015 and June 2016 on the unit where she worked in the Countess of Chester hospital.
The 33-year-old has been convicted at Manchester crown court of what prosecutors called the “persistent, calculated and cold-blooded” murders of premature infants, after one of the longest-running murder trials in recent times.
Bereaved parents gasped and wept in the public gallery as the verdicts were delivered over several dramatic days.
Letby was found guilty on seven counts of attempted murder of six children – two counts related to two attempts to murder the same child.
Key events
A note of medications given to a baby boy as he fought back from the brink of death was among items found under Letby’s bed.
The record of emergency drugs provided to the infant was written on a paper towel during his 30-minute resuscitation. Letby gave rescue breaths to Child M after she responded to his cot monitor alarm.
Earlier, she had injected air into his bloodstream and also poisoned his twin brother, Child L, with insulin. She denied she kept it as a souvenir of her attack.
The paper towel and a blood gas reading for Child M were both found in a Morrisons bag in Letby’s bedroom following her arrest.
Josh Halliday
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. She was finally reported to police in 2017 and arrested in 2018. DCI 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.
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.
Josh Halliday
The prosecutor Nick Johnson KC told the court the CPS would need 28 days to decide whether to seek a retrial on the six counts of attempted murder on which jurors were unable to reach verdicts. They relate to three baby girls and two newborn boys.
The judge has told the court Letby will be sentenced on the counts on which she has been found guilty on Monday.
Pascale Jones, a senior prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service, said Letby’s attacks were a “complete betrayal” of the trust placed in her.
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 the ways in which 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 weaponised her craft to inflict harm, grief and death.
Josh Halliday
Letby’s 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.
After hearing one batch of verdicts, Letby refused to return to court to hear the rest. She had earlier bowed her head and sobbed while her mother, Susan, cried loudly and said: “You cannot be serious. This cannot be right” as verdicts were delivered.
The nurse, who was in her mid-20s when she carried out the attacks, is expected to become only the third woman alive to be handed a whole-life term – meaning she will never be released from prison – when she is sentenced on Monday.
Lucy Letby convicted of murder of seven babies
A neonatal nurse has been named as the worst child serial killer in modern UK history, after being convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder six more.
Lucy Letby carried out the killings between June 2015 and June 2016 on the unit where she worked in the Countess of Chester hospital.
The 33-year-old has been convicted at Manchester crown court of what prosecutors called the “persistent, calculated and cold-blooded” murders of premature infants, after one of the longest-running murder trials in recent times.
Bereaved parents gasped and wept in the public gallery as the verdicts were delivered over several dramatic days.
Letby was found guilty on seven counts of attempted murder of six children – two counts related to two attempts to murder the same child.
Verdicts understood to be imminent in Letby trial
Verdicts are imminent in the trial of Lucy Letby, a nurse accused of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill 10 others.
Letby, 33, has denied harming infants on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester hospital in north-west England, where she worked.
The children’s nurse has been on trial at Manchester crown court for nine months over what the prosecution allege was a “calculated” and “cold-blooded” year-long series of killings from June 2015.
However, the university graduate, originally from Hereford, has consistently denied the allegations. She insisted that a number of the babies were the victims of poor care and that they should have been receiving specialist treatment elsewhere.
The jury of eight women and four men retired to consider their verdicts at 1.02pm on Monday 10 July.
My colleague Josh Halliday is at Manchester crown court and we will bring you updates as soon as we have them.