Lucy Letby guilty: Neonatal nurse murdered seven babies in their hospital cots as they fought for life

Nurse Lucy Letby has been found guilty of murdering seven newborn babies on a neonatal hospital unit, making her one of Britain’s most prolific child serial killers.

After a 10-month trial in which jurors at Manchester Crown Court heard from more than 240 witnesses, Letby was found guilty of seven counts of murder and attempted murder of six others.

The 33-year-old deliberately injected infants with air or poisoned them with insulin between June 2015 and 2016 while working at the Countess of Chester Hospital in the north west. Other babies, who had often been born prematurely or had specific vulnerable needs, were harmed by being fed excessive amounts of milk while one was physically assaulted.

Letby was not in the dock when the jury returned their final verdicts on Friday after 22 days and more than 100 hours of deliberation. Her parents were also absent from the court but families of the victims were in the public gallery.

Verdicts on 16 of the 22 counts she faced were returned by the jury on earlier days but could not be reported until now. The jury could not reach verdicts on six counts of attempted murder. When the first two guilty verdicts were returned, to two counts of attempted murder, on 8 August, Letby fought back tears in the dock and then cried as she left the courtroom.

Hospital bosses and the police conducted an investigation into the “unexplained and inexplicable deaths” but Letby was not arrested until July 2018, before being remanded into custody in 2020.

Letby was “a constant malevolent presence”

The court heard Letby was the “constant malevolent presence” when things took a turn for the worse for her victims, with seemingly healthy babies often deteriorating dramatically while in her care.

Concerns were first raised in June 2015 after three babies died over a period of two weeks, with Letby’s name first mentioned among a group of consultants.

Despite this, she continued to work at the unit for a further 12 months until she was moved to clerical duties in July 2016.

The court heard that on one occasion, a doctor walked into the room while she was suspected of being in the process of trying to kill a premature baby in February 2016.

Having made the association between the deaths, collapses and Letby’s presence, Dr Ravi Jayaram told jurors he was “extremely uncomfortable” at leaving her alone with the infant, and arrived to find the baby’s breathing tube had been dislodged.

After the deaths of two male triplets in June 2016, Letby was named as the “common denominator” and became the subject of a hospital review. Cheshire Police were contacted in mid-2017 to assist with the investigation and upon obtaining expert advice, she was arrested.

Opening the prosecution case last October, Nick Johnson KC said: “It is a hospital like so many others in the UK, but unlike many other hospitals in the UK and unlike many other neonatal units in the UK, within the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital a poisoner was at work.

“Babies who had not been unstable at all suddenly deteriorated. Sometimes babies who had been sick but then been on the mend suddenly deteriorated for no apparent reason.

“Having searched for a cause, which they were unable to find, the consultants noticed that the inexplicable collapses and deaths did have one common denominator. The presence of one of the neonatal nurses and that nurse was Lucy Letby.”

The damning ‘I did this’ notes

Early on in the trial, the court was told of a disturbing discovery at her home.

A search of the property in Chester found a number of handwritten Post-it notes in which she had written: ‘I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough’, ‘I am a horrible person’ and ‘I AM EVIL I DID THIS’.

Other scribbled notes included the words ‘Kill Me’, ‘Help Me’ and ‘I Can’t Do This Any More’. Police also discovered 257 handover notes which contained medical details of her victims, including how many doses of adrenaline had been given to one child during his collapse.

Ben Myers KC, defending Letby, had insisted the notes showed his client’s “anguish not guilt”, telling the jury they were the “outpouring of a young woman when she learnt she was being accused of killing children, that she’d done her best to care for”.

Analysis of her devices found that she had made a number of Facebook searches for the family members of her victims and had become “obsessed” with one mother, searching for her on several occasions including on Christmas Day.

With one infant, known as Child I, Letby tried to murder her on four occasions by injecting air into her stomach and bloodstream. Described as “calculated” and “cold-blooded”, Letby sent her parents a sympathy card after the infant’s death on October 23 and kept a picture of it on her mobile phone.

She denied the charges, with her defence lawyer claiming that “suboptimal care” at the Countess of Chester had been a major factor, and accused hospital bosses of a “conspiracy” to cover up shortcomings on the neonatal ward.

The ‘nice’ nurse who became a child killer in plain sight

‘Nice Lucy’ as one consultant called her, was born in Hereford in January 1990, the only child of John and Susan Letby, who attended court throughout their daughter’s trial.

An unremarkable childhood filled with holidays to Devon, she attended the local comprehensive school before enrolling in nursing at the University of Chester, 100 miles from home.

One rare moment of emotion during her 10 month trial came when jurors were shown pictures of her bedroom in Hereford, which prompted Letby, 33, to break down in the dock.

The untidy room gave a childish impression of the serial killer, with two teddy bears placed on a duvet cover bearing the motif Sweet Dreams.

Framed pictures containing the slogans ‘Shine Bright Like A Diamond’ and ‘Leave Sparkles Wherever You Go’ appeared on the bedroom walls, while a fluffy pink and white polka dot dressing gown hung on the door.

During her time at university in Chester, she was seen as a studious type, never staying out late as she worked towards her goal.

In fact, on qualifying as a registered NHS nurse in 2011, Letby developed a reputation among her colleagues as reliable, hard-working and trustworthy.

But the innocent exterior masked a terrifying truth, her trial heard.

“Lucy Letby was operating in plain sight,” said deputy senior investigating officer Nicola Evans. “She abused the trust of the people around her, not just the parents who had trusted her with their babies but also the nurses she worked with, the people she regarded as friends.”

Emotionless response in the dock

For months during the trial, Letby had appeared a sullen, brooding presence in the dock. In the witness box she cried on cue for her barrister, but appeared almost belligerent when cross-examined.

It didn’t escape prosecutor Mr Johnson’s attention that she claimed not to remember some of her victims. He noted, too, that she shed no tears for any of the babies. Those, he said, were reserved exclusively for Lucy Letby.

Upon hearing that she had been found guilty of the first four murders and four attempted murders, Letby remained dispassionate with her head bowed.

Her mother was heard crying out “This can’t be right, this can’t be right” and sobbing uncontrollably, before being escorted from the courtroom by her husband.

Now finally convicted after a lengthy trial, Letby will be remanded into custody and sentenced in due course.

She joins a list of Britain’s worst killers of children, alongside the likes of Myra Hindley and her partner Ian Bradley. The Moors murderers killed five children in and around Manchester in the 1960s.

Nurse Beverley Allitt was convicted of killing four children in the 1990s, by administering large doses of insulin at Grantham and Kesteven district general hospital in Lincolnshire.

For her horrific crimes, Letby can only receive a mandatory life sentence and will likely spend the majority of her life behind bars.

Infamous across the country, it is likely she will be placed in HMP Low Newton, a maximum security prison that is home to many of the deadliest female killers in recent history.

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