neonatal nurse who described herself as a “h%rrible ev#l person” was found guilty on Friday of m¥rdering seven newborn babies and trying to k#llanother six.
The verdict, following a harrowing 10-month trial at Manchester Crown Court, makes Letby Britain’s most prolific serial child k#ller in modern history, local media said.
Lucy Letby, 33, was convicted of k#llingfive baby boys and two baby girls at the Countess of Chester hospital and att@cking other newborns, often while working night shifts, in 2015 and 2016.
Letby was in her mid-20s when she pr£y£d on highly vulnerable babies between June 2015 and June 2016, often att@cking them just moments after their parents or nurses had left their side. Police were finally contacted in 2017 and she was arrested in 2018.
“I k#lled them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them,” said a handwritten note found by police officers who searched her home after she was arrested. “I am a h%reible ev#lperson,” she wrote. “I AM EV#L I DID THIS”.
Her victims included two identical triplet brothers, k#lled within 24 hours of each other, a newborn weighing less than 1kg (2lb) who was fatally inj£cted with air, and a girl born 10 weeks premature who was m¥rdered on the fourth attempt. The youngest victim was just one-day old.
She was found not guilty of two attempted m¥rders while the jury, who spent 110 hours deliberating, were unable to agree on six other suspected att@cks.
“We are heartbroken, devastat£d, angry and feel numb, we may never truly know why this happened,” the families of Letby’s victims said in a statement.
Prosecutors told the jury Letby p#i§oned some of her infant victims by inj£cting them with insulin, while others were inj£cted with air or force fed milk, sometimes involving multiple att@cks before they di£d.
Letby is expected to become only the third woman alive in the UK to be handed a whole-life term – meaning she will never be released from prison – when she is sentenced on Monday.
