She is the worst child killer in modern British history. English nurse Lucy Letby, already sentenced in August to life in prison for killing seven newborns, will be retried for attempted murder of another little girl, British justice announced on Monday. The 33-year-old nurse was found guilty in mid-August by the Manchester court (north) of the murder of seven premature newborns and six attempted murders in the hospital where she worked, in 2015 and 2016.
Lucy Letby, who proclaimed her innocence throughout the ten-month trial, was sentenced to irreducible life imprisonment, a very rare sentence in English law. But the jury failed to reach a verdict on six other attempted murders. On Monday, the prosecution announced a new trial for one of these attempted murders, against a little girl in February 2016. This trial should start on June 10, 2024 and last 2 to 3 weeks.
Intravenous air injection
Prosecutor Jonathan Storer explained that this decision on possible new trials had been “extremely complex and difficult to make”. “We met with all the families affected by these decisions to explain to them how we achieved this,” he added. The trial did not shed light on the nurse’s motivations.
Lucy Letby worked in the intensive care unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital in the northwest of England. The murders took place between June 2015 and June 2016. She included injecting air intravenously into premature newborns, using their nasogastric tubes to send air or an overdose of milk into their stomachs.
The nurse sometimes joined the efforts to save the babies
Lucy Letby attacked babies after their parents left, when the nurse in charge walked away, or at night when she was alone. She then sometimes joined collective efforts to save newborns, even assisting desperate parents.
Transferred in June 2016 to an administrative service, arrested for the first time in 2018, then in 2019, Lucy Letby was incarcerated in November 2020.