Lucy Letby Chester neonatal nurse found guilty of murdering 7 babies & trying to kill 6 others as she attempted to play God over the course of one year. How the crimes unfolded and how one woman was able to deceive parents, fellow doctors and nurses and hospital administrators as an inquiry is now likely to be held.
‘I am evil. I did this!’ A former neonatal nurse at a UK hospital has been found guilty of murdering seven premature babies, along with trying to take the lives of six more during a year-long hospital killing spree.
The killings all took place at the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwest England, between June 2015 and June 2016, making Lucy Letby, 33, the UK’s most prolific child serial killer in modern history.
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 girl born 10 weeks premature who was murdered on the fourth attempt.
Incredulity and relief as the verdicts are announced
Bereaved parents gasped and wept in the public gallery as the verdicts were delivered over several days at Manchester crown court, after one of the longest-running murder trials in recent times.
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 girl born 10 weeks premature who was murdered on the fourth attempt.
Letby, who qualified in September 2011 after graduating from university, used a variety of methods to target her victims – injecting the premature babies with air and poisoning them with insulin as well as force feeding them with milk.
Letby who is to be sentenced on Monday will likely spend the rest of her life in prison.
Letby broke down in tears as the first guilty verdicts were read out by the jury’s foreman. Letby’s mother broke down at one point, crying out from the court, ‘You can’t be serious. This cannot be right’.
‘I am evil, I did this.’
Letby later refused to return to the dock to hear the last of the verdicts – with the judge saying he had no power to force her to come up from the cells. The victims’ families said her conviction will not take away the ‘extreme hurt, anger and distress’ they have suffered.
After each of her murders, Letby appeared ‘animated and excited’, offering to bathe, dress and take photographs of her victims’ bodies. Although her motive remains unclear, the prosecution suggested she got a ‘thrill’ out of ‘playing God’. They also suggested she had been trying to impress a married doctor.
Inside her home, police found a Post-it note on which she had scrawled: ‘I am evil, I did this.’
Letby got away with her killing spree despite consultants repeatedly trying to blow the whistle to managers about the spate of deaths on her watch until police were eventually called in following an alarming rate of death in the neonatal unit, with suspicions that the deaths were the result of inside malice.
During the trial, which started in October 2022, the prosecution labelled Letby as a ‘calculating and devious’ opportunist who ‘gaslighted’ colleagues to cover her ‘murderous assaults’.
A competent nurse who knew exactly what she was doing
In court, the prosecution had claimed that Letby was a competent nurse who knew exactly what she was doing when she deliberately harmed the babies in her care.
She was convicted following a two-year investigation by Cheshire Police into the alarming and unexplained rise in deaths and near-fatal collapses of premature babies at the hospital.
Before June 2015, there were fewer than three baby deaths per year on the neonatal unit.
Her defence team argued the deaths and collapses were the result of ‘serial failures in care’ in the unit and she was the victim of a ‘system that wanted to apportion blame when it failed’.
After 10 months and 110 hours of deliberating the jury dismissed Letby’s version of events and agreed that she was responsible.
‘Her attacks were a complete betrayal of the trust placed in her.’
The trial which lasted for more than 10 months is believed to be the longest murder trial in the UK.
Senior Crown Prosecutor Pascale Jones said the nurse ‘did her utmost to conceal her crimes, by varying the ways in which she repeatedly harmed babies in her care’.
She said Letby ‘sought to deceive her colleagues and pass off the harm she caused as nothing more than a worsening of each baby’s existing vulnerability’.
‘She perverted her learning and weaponised her craft to inflict harm, grief and death.’
‘Time and again, she harmed babies, in an environment which should have been safe for them and their families.
‘Her attacks were a complete betrayal of the trust placed in her. ’
How was one nurse able to play the system for so long?
Families of the babies killed and harmed have demanded a public inquiry into how Letby was able to murder and maim babies for so long. None of the parents had any idea their children had been the victims of foul play until they were visited by police up to three years later.
Detectives are continuing to review the care of some 4,000 babies admitted to hospital while Letby was working as a neonatal nurse.
The period covers her spell at the Countess of Chester Hospital from January 2012 to the end of June 2016, and includes two work placements at Liverpool Women’s Hospital in 2012 and 2015.
Cheshire Police emphasised that only those cases highlighted as medically concerning would be investigated further.
They added that the review at Liverpool Women’s Hospital did not involve any deaths.
The lead consultant at the neonatal unit where Letby worked told the BBC that hospital bosses failed to investigate allegations against the nurse and tried to silence doctors.
Dr Stephen Brearey first raised concerns about Letby in October 2015 but he said no action was taken and she went on to attack five more babies, killing two.
Tony Chambers, a former chief executive of the hospital, said he was ‘truly sorry’ for what the families had gone through and he would ‘co-operate fully and openly’ with any post-trial inquiry.
‘The crimes that have been committed are appalling and I am deeply saddened by what has come to light,’ he said.
Cheshire Police’s Deputy Senior Investigating Officer Nicola Evans described the case as ‘truly crushing’, adding there were ‘no winners’.
Senior Investigating Officer Paul Hughes added that it had ‘been an investigation like no other – in scope, complexity and magnitude’.
