Revealed: Story Of An Evil Nurse Who Bags life Jail Term For Killing 7 Newborns, Attempting To Kill Six More

By Babatunde Solanke with agency report

A British nurse, Lucy Letby, on Friday, 18 August, 2023 sentenced to whole – life imprisonment for killing seven newborns and attempting to kill six more.

A whole-life order means a convicted criminal can never be released from prison.

Letby has been on trial since last October — was accused of injecting her young victims, who were either sick or born prematurely, with air, overfeeding them milk and poisoning them with insulin.

The jury at Manchester Crown Court in northern England reached all of its verdicts after deliberating for 22 days.

The evil nurse was arrested following a string of baby deaths at the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwest England between June 2015 and June 2016.

Described by the prosecution as a “calculating” woman who used methods of killing that “didn’t leave much of a trace”, Letby had repeatedly denied harming the children.

“Lucy Letby was entrusted to protect some of the most vulnerable babies. Little did those working alongside her know that there was a murderer in their midst,” Senior Crown Prosecutor Pascale Jones said in a statement.

“Time and again, she harmed babies, in an environment which should have been safe for them and their families,” the prosecutor added, calling the killings “a complete betrayal of the trust placed in her”.

The court heard that colleagues raised concerns after noticing that Letby was on shift when each of the babies collapsed, with some of the newborns attacked just as their parents left their cots.

Prosecutor Nick Johnson said Letby “gaslighted” her colleagues into believing the string of deaths were “just a run of bad luck”.

Letby’s final victims were two triplet boys, referred to in court as babies O and P.

Child O died shortly after Letby returned from a holiday in Ibiza in June 2016, while child P died a day after their sibling.

Letby was also said to have attempted to kill the third triplet, child Q, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charge.

Johnson said that by that time Letby was “completely out of control”, adding that “she was in effect playing God”.

Letby was arrested and released twice. On her third arrest in 2020 she was formally charged and held in custody.

During searches at her home, police found hospital paperwork and a handwritten note on which Letby had written: “I am evil, I did this.”

Letby later tried to explain the note by saying she wrote it after being placed on clerical duties following the death of the two triplets.

The killer nurse is only the fourth woman to receive such sentence. A whole-life order means a convicted criminal can never be released from prison.

Letby’s name has been inked in books for committing one of the most horrendous crimes in history. The 33-year-old was sentenced to a rare whole-life order, the most severe penalty, typically reserved for the gravest offenses.

Bellow is the profiles of other women who were recipients of “whole life order” sentence.

1. Myra Hindley: Myra Hindley was an English serial killer. In partnership with Ian Brady, she committed the rapes and murders of five children. Hindley’s victims were between ages 10-17. Hindley’s misdeeds were revealed to authorities by her brother-in-law, who is only 17 years old. Hindley has denied culpability in every homicide case. She was convicted responsible for three killings and given a life sentence. She remained behind bars until her death in 2002.
2. Rose West: Rose West was considered one of the most wicked women in Britain for the torture and murder of at least nine young women between 1973 and 1987. In addition to murdering her stepdaughter Charmaine, then eight years old, in 1971, she and her husband Fred West tortured and killed at least nine young women between 1973 and 1987. She was found guilty of 10 murders in 1995.Rose is currently incarcerated at HM Prison New Hall in Flockton, West Yorkshire. The couple raped, tortured and murdered their victims.
3. Joanna Donnehy: In 2013, Donnehy was arrested after a ten-day killing spree, which left three men dead and two more fighting for their lives. She and her partner Gary Richards planned to kill nine people in an effort to emulate the notorious crime team of Bonnie and Clyde. Although she attempted to kill two more men, she failed and fell way short of her intended number.

Source: AFP