British nurse Lucy Letby, 33, was sentenced Monday to life in prison, without the possibility of parole, for murdering seven newborn babies and attempting to kill six others while in her care.
Lebty was convicted of killing five boys and two girls, making her the biggest serial killer of children in modern British history.
This nurse was arrested between June 2015 and June 2016 following a series of infant deaths in the neonatal ward at Countess of Chester Hospital, in the North West of England.
She was accused of deliberately hurting newborn children in a variety of ways, including injecting air into their veins and pushing air or milk into their stomachs through nasogastric tubes.
She was also accused of poisoning babies by adding insulin to intravenous feeds and disrupting the assisted breathing intubation system.
After a trial that began in October, a Manchester Crown Court jury completed more than 100 hours of deliberations on Friday.
The nurse was not in the dock when the verdict was announced.
“He acted in a way that was completely contrary to normal human instincts to raise and care for babies,” said Judge James Goss, addressing Letby, although the defendant was not present.
The magistrate stated that there was “premeditation”, “calculation” and that the nurse acted with a “deep evil close to sadism”.
“You have no remorse, there are no extenuating circumstances,” the judge said.
“Because the seriousness of the offenses is exceptionally high, I order that the provisions on early release do not apply,” said the magistrate.
“The court order is therefore a life sentence for any crime and you will spend the rest of your life in prison,” the judge added.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said it was “cowardly” when “people who commit such horrible crimes don’t face their victims”, referring to the fact that the defendant was not present when the verdict was read.
In Letby’s absence, he did not hear statements from the families, released before sentencing, discussing the impact of the crimes on their lives.
“He thought it was his right to play God with our children’s lives,” the mother of twins who was assaulted in June 2015, said in a statement read in court. The boy was killed while the sister survived the assassination attempt.
The father of two brothers killed by the nurse, who were part of triplets, said: “Lucy Letby destroyed our lives”.
“The anger and hatred I have for her will never go away,” he said in a pre-recorded video statement shown in court.
After the death of two of the triplets in June 2016, Letby was removed from the neonatal unit. Two years later, in July 2018, she was arrested for the first time. In November 2020, Letby was formally charged, after being taken into custody.
During the lengthy trial, which began last October, prosecutors indicated that in 2015 the hospital was the scene of a significant increase in the number of premature babies who died or suddenly deteriorated in their health for no apparent reason. Some suffered “catastrophically severe failures” but survived with the help of medical personnel.
Prosecutors alleged that Lucy Letby was on duty in all cases, describing her as a “constant malevolent presence” in the neonatal ward when children passed out or died.
They specified that the nurse hurt the babies in a way that left virtually no trace and in such a way that she could convince her colleagues that failures and deaths were normal.
Letby’s motives remain unclear. At trial, prosecutors alleged that Letby “led” colleagues to believe that the rise in infant deaths was “just bad luck.”
The court heard that Letby took an unusual interest in the victims’ families and investigated them on social media.
The nurse sent a condolence card to the relatives of a child, one of her victims.
Prosecutors reported that a post-it note – on which she wrote “I am evil, I did this” – was found at Letby’s home when she was arrested in 2018 – which was “literally a confession”.
Her lawyer, Ben Myers, insisted she was a “hard-working, dedicated and caring” nurse who loved her profession and that there was insufficient evidence that she committed any of the allegedly harmful acts.
He also argued that the babies’ sudden organ failure or death may have been due to natural causes, or a combination of other factors, such as hospital understaffing or the failure of others to provide necessary care.
Letby’s lawyer also claimed that four doctors blamed him for covering up defects in the neonatal ward.
Lucy Letby testified for 14 days and denied all allegations of intentionally harming one of the babies. “I’ve always tried my best to take care of them,” he said, adding, “I’m there to take care of them, not hurt them.”
She sometimes cried, justifying the amount of medical records she had at home on some of the babies she cared for.
However, on that green ‘post-it’, shown in court, she had written: “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose, because I’m not good enough to take care of them. I’m a evil and horrible person. I AM EVIL. I DID IT”.
Her lawyer argued that these were the haunted thoughts of a woman who had lost faith in herself and blamed herself for what happened in that hospital ward.
“A note says, ‘I’m not good enough,'” Myers emphasized.
Who did she write this for? It wasn’t for us, the police or this trial. It’s a note to itself. She wrote it for herself,” he insisted.
An independent investigation into the matter has been announced to look at how the doctors’ concerns have been handled by the hospital administration.
Hospital administrators have been criticized for not responding earlier to concerns about Letby, reportedly raised by doctors as early as 2015.
Source: DN
