By Charlotte Webster-
Nurse, Lucy Letby, has been found guilty of murdering seven babies on a neonatal unit, making her the UK’s most prolific child serial killer in modern times.
The 33-year-old has also been convicted of trying to kill six other infants at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.
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Letby was in her mid-20s and working at the Countess of Chester Hospital at the time of the murders – is now the UK’s most prolific child killer of modern time
She deliberately injected babies with air, force fed others milk and poisoned two of the infants with insulin.
Two of her victims were twin brothers.
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Speaking publicly for the very first time, the boys’ parents described the killer nurse as acting “very cool and calm” after trying to murder Child M with an injection of excessive air.
“At that time, her body language and her behaviour totally changed,” the twins’ mother said.
Letby, originally from Hereford, was found not guilty of two counts of attempted murder.
The jury was unable to reach verdicts on six further attempted murder charges.
Nicholas Johnson KC, prosecuting, asked the court for 28 days to consider whether a retrial would be sought for these remaining six counts.
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”.
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”.
The trial lasted for more than 10 months and it is believed to be the longest murder trial in the
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”.
Described as “devious” and “cold-blooded”, Letby “completely perverted her learning” and “weaponised whatever was at her disposal,” the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.
The jury heard the nurse would misuse medical equipment and medicines to cause babies to unexpectedly collapse across day and night shifts on the hospital’s neonatal ward.
Her victims included both boys and girls, many of whom were born prematurely.
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.”
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.
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