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Lucy Letby was on August 18, 2023, found guilty of murdering seven newborn babies and trying to murder six others at the hospital neonatal unit where she worked, becoming the UK’s most prolific killer of children
AFP PHOTO / CHESHIRE CONSTABULARY/ HANDOUT
- On Monday, Lucy Letby will be sentenced for the murder and
attempted murder of multiple newborn babies. - She faces life in prison.
- She will not be in court and will not hear the families’
victim impact statements.
A British
nurse will be sentenced on Monday for murdering seven newborn babies and
attempting to kill six others while they were in her care.
Lucy Letby,
33, was convicted of killing five baby boys and two baby girls, making her the
UK’s most prolific child serial killer in modern history.
She 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.
The
prosecution said Letby attacked her young and often prematurely born victims by
either injecting them with air, overfeeding them with milk or poisoning them
with insulin.
Following a
trial that started in October, a jury at Manchester Crown Court ended more than
100 hours of deliberations on Friday.
The jury
cleared Letby of two counts of attempted murder and were unable to reach
decisions on six other counts of attempted murder.
But the
multiple guilty verdicts for murder mean Letby faces the prospect of never
being released from prison.
Letby
fought back tears in the dock as the jury returned their first guilty decisions
earlier in August.
But she was
not in court for the final verdicts and was absent from court at the start of
her sentencing on Monday.
Letby’s
absence means she will not hear the families’ victim impact statements about
how her crimes affected them.
Prime
Minister Rishi Sunak said it was “cowardly that people who commit such
horrendous crimes do not face their victims”.
READ | ‘I am evil, I did this’: British nurse found guilty of murdering seven babies
The leader
of the main opposition Labour party, former chief prosecutor Keir Starmer,
promised to close the “shamefully exploited loophole” if elected to
government.
The judge
is expected to pass sentence on Monday afternoon.
The
families of Letby’s victims said in a joint statement last week that while
“justice has been served” it “will not take away from the
extreme hurt, anger and distress that we’ve all had to experience”.
They added
that it was a “bittersweet result” since some families did not receive
the verdicts they had expected.
Hospital bosses
under fire
The first
babies Letby was accused of attacking were twins. A baby boy, referred to as
child A, was just a day old when he died in early June 2015, while his elder
sister survived a murder attempt.
After the
death of two triplet brothers within 24 hours of each other in June 2016, Letby
was removed from the neonatal unit and placed on clerical duties.
Two years
later, in July 2018, she was arrested for the first time. On her third arrest
in November 2020, Letby was formally charged and placed in custody.
Letby’s
motives remain unclear.
During the
trial, the prosecution described Letby as a “calculating” woman, who
“gaslighted” her colleagues into believing the rise in baby deaths
was “just a run of bad luck”.
The jury
was told that Letby was on shift when each of the babies collapsed. Some of the
newborns were attacked just as their parents left their cots.
The court
heard that Letby took an unusual interest in the families of her victims, making
searches for them on social media.
She also
sent a sympathy card to the grieving parents of a child she was later found
guilty of murdering.
Handwritten
notes found during police searches at Letby’s home were among the evidence seen
by the court, one of which had “I am evil I did this” written in
capital letters.
Letby
repeatedly denied harming the babies.
The UK
government has announced an independent inquiry into the case and will look at
how the concerns of clinicians were dealt with by hospital management.
The
hospital’s executives have come under fire for failing to act sooner on
concerns about Letby, which were reportedly raised by senior doctors as early
as 2015.
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