TW: INFANTICIDE
Lucy Letby has received a life sentence without parole for the murder of seven newborns and the attempted murder of another six.
The neonatal nurse targeted newborns in her care at a hospital in northwest England between 2015 and 2016.
The 33-year-old is the worst serial killer of children in modern UK history.
Lucy Letby is one of only a handful of women in the UK to have been given a life sentence.
Details
Letby’s lethal methods included force-feeding newborns and injecting air into babies’ bodies. In multiple cases, Letby interfered with babies’ feeding tubes.
Letby also appeared to target siblings, killing two of three babies in a set of triplets and attacking three sets of twins.
After a ten-month trial, a jury convicted Letby of the “persistent, calculated and cold-blooded” murders of five boys and two girls when she was an employee of a Cheshire hospital.
In a statement, Senior Crown Prosecutor Pascale Jones said Letby worked hard to conceal her crimes. Jones described her attacks as a “complete betrayal of the trust placed in her”.
“[She attempted to] pass off the harm she caused as nothing more than a worsening of each baby’s existing vulnerability.”
Investigation
This week, consultants at the neonatal unit where Letby worked told UK media that her name was first raised in connection with a string of infant deaths in mid-2015.
A Cheshire police investigation launched in May 2017 led to Letby’s arrest in July 2018.
An independent review of the hospital’s neonatal unit in 2016 flagged significant staffing and management issues.