‘Killer Nurse’ Lucy Letby Sentenced to Life in Prison for Murdering 7 Newborn Babies and Attempting to Kill 6 Others

Nurse Lucy Letby, the United Kingdom’s most prolific child killer in the modern era, was sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison for the killings of seven newborn babies and the attempted murders of at least six others.

Summary

Nurse Lucy Letby, the United Kingdom’s most prolific child killer in the modern era, was sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison for the killings of seven newborn babies and the attempted murders of at least six others.

• Letby killed five baby boys and two baby girls between 2015-2015 by injecting them with insulin or air and force-feeding them milk.
• During her time on staff at the neonatal unit of Countess of Chester hospital in the north of England, she murdered one pair of twins, killed two of three triplets, and in two cases killed one twin while failing to kill the other.
• The children were not identified in court or in the press to preserve the grieving families’ privacy. The mother of the child identified as Baby C described the knowledge that her son’s murderer was supposed to care for him was like “something out of a horror story.”
• The mother of twins identified as Baby E and Baby F told the court Letby has “taken everything from us – absolutely everything…I think she’s a hateful human being.” Baby E was the fourth victim of Letby and Baby F survived an attempted poisoning with insulin and now, at age 7, struggles with severe learning difficulties and “a lot of complex needs.”
• Letby refused to appear in court for her sentencing or to hear the victim statements of the families whose children were murdered when under her care. British law allows convicted killers to refuse to face the families of their victims, a policy that has been maintained by the Conservative government that has governed Britain since 2010.
• “You acted in a way that was completely contrary to the normal human instincts of nurturing and caring for babies and in gross breach of the trust that all citizens place in those who work in the medical and caring professions,” Justice James R. W. Goss told the empty dock where Letby would have sat.
• The presiding judge said the “cruelty and calculation” behind the actions of the 33-year-old nurse between June 2015 and June 2016 were “truly horrific.” During the sentencing, he said, “There was a malevolence bordering on sadism in your actions. During the course of this trial you have coldly denied any responsibility for your wrongdoing. You have no remorse. There are no mitigating factors.”
• The case has raised serious concerns about how a nurse could be allowed to kill babies with impunity for more than a year in Britain’s government-run single-payer health system. Hospital bosses took no action despite warnings from doctors and the deaths were not appropriately reported so the wider National Health Service system was unable to detect her killing spree.

• The Guardian noted Letby is just the fourth woman in the UK to receive a “whole-life term,” a rare penalty reserved for the most heinous crimes as Britain does not have the death penalty.
• The New York Times reported Letby’s refusal to attend any court hearing after she was found guilty has led British politicians to call for new laws to force convicted criminals to hear their sentencing, as is standard practice in the United States.
• NBC News covered the statement from the mother of a girl identified in court as Child I. “I don’t think we will ever get over the fact that our daughter was tortured till she had no fight left in her and everything she went through over her short life was deliberately done by someone who was supposed to protect her and help her come home where she belonged,” she told the court.

• “The grisly case has garnered widespread media coverage in Britain and raised serious questions about the crisis-hit National Health Service. During the trial, doctors who worked on the same ward as Letby said their warnings about the killer nurse were repeatedly ignored by management,” according to the Wall Street Journal. “The hospital in central England where Letby worked called the police nearly two years after the killings began and doctors had raised the alarm, allowing Letby to attack and kill more babies.”
• The Telegraph reported Alison Kelly, the National Health Service manager who reportedly “ignored serious concerns” about Letby before her arrest has been suspended from her position as the director of nursing for the Northern Care Alliance. Kelly was accused in court of failing to act about several warnings about Letby and may be criminally liable for her alleged negligence.
• The New York Post emphasized that Letby’s colleagues were forced to apologize by hospital leadership after repeatedly warning them that she may have caused several at-the-time unexplained deaths. Despite doctors’ efforts to raise alarm over Letby, she was allowed to continue working and killing for another year before her removal. Police weren’t alerted for another year after that because hospital executive Tony Chambers thought “contacting police would damage the facility’s reputation and cause the neonatal unit to become a crime scene.”

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© Dominic Moore, 2023