The worst serial child killer in modern British history. This is how the Guardian has describes Lucy Letby after her trial. After long weeks of deliberation, this 33-year-old English nurse was found guilty on Friday of the murders of seven newborn babies and the attempted murders of six others.
Tried for nine months during a difficult trial for jurors and civil parties, Lucy Letby was found guilty by the jury of a Manchester court (north) of the murders committed between 2015 and 2016. Her sentence will be pronounced on Monday. After the BBC.
Premeditated lethal injections
The nurse, 25 years old at the time of the events, said she was innocent. She was accused of injecting air intravenously into newborn babies, using their nasogastric tubes to send air, or an overdose of milk, into their stomachs. According to the account of our colleagues from Guardianthe nurse happened to break the children’s diaphragm. She was also accused of adding insulin to pouches of food solution. Sometimes she combined several attacks.
Nicola Evans, one of the police officers who investigated the case, described the nurse as a “calculated and callous” killer. In a courtroom full of the victims’ relatives, the English prosecution described the murders of the young woman as “persistent, calculated and cold-blooded”.
She was the only member of the medical staff still on duty during the brutal deterioration of the newborn babies, Judge James Goss had pointed out, before the 12 jurors began to deliberate on July 10. The trial started on October 10, 2022 in Manchester. The babies were only identified by letters, from A to Q, to protect the families.
“She thought she was God”
The defense described Lucy Letby as a “dedicated” professional. “My work was my life,” she insisted. Prosecutor Nick Johnson painstakingly pieced together his schedule and the similarities between the deaths. He explained that Lucy Letby would attack babies after their parents left, when the charge nurse walked away, or at night when she was alone. She would then sometimes join collective efforts to save newborn babies, or even assist desperate parents.
Among the victims, twins and even triplets, two of whom will die within 24 hours of each other after returning from vacation in June 2016. The third will be spared, his parents having begged that he be transferred to another hospital.
At the time, having killed without attracting attention, she had become “uncontrollable”, said the prosecutor. “She thought she was God.” A very premature baby, attacked three times in September 2015, remains severely handicapped.
Damning personal notes
“I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to take care of them. I am a horrible person, ”wrote the nurse on a post-it found at her home in 2018. In other documents, however, she claimed her innocence.
His lawyer Ben Myers argued that the neonatology department had in 2015-2016 “welcomed more babies than normal, with greater care needs”, and had “failed” to meet them. He had denounced the lack of evidence against his client, saying that incompetent doctors had blamed her. In his final argument, he denounced a “presumption of guilt”.
According to the prosecutor, Lucy Letby had also falsified certain medical notes, to cover the tracks.
During the trial, a mother recounted how, returning to deliver milk to one of her premature twins at 9 p.m. in August 2015, she heard him scream and discovered he had blood around his mouth. She had been reassured by Lucy Letby who had advised her to go up to her room.
According to the prosecution, the nurse had just pushed medical equipment down the tiny baby’s throat, and also injected him with air. He was dead a few hours later, having lost a quarter of his blood.
Transferred in June 2016 to an administrative service, arrested for the first time in 2018, then in 2019, Lucy Letby was finally imprisoned in November 2020.