Lucy Letby, a nurse, was convicted on Friday of murdering seven newborns and attempting to murder six others, making her one of the UK’s deadliest medical serial murderers. Her youngest victim had only been born a day before.
The reasons behind the 33-year-old’s acts may never be completely explained, but the prosecution provided jurors with numerous plausible explanations throughout the 10-month trial.
Lucy Letby’s final victims were two triplet boys known as infants O and P in court. kid O died shortly after Letby returned from a vacation in Ibiza in June 2016, and Kid P died a day later.
During the trial, prosecutors stated that Letby was “completely out of control” at the time, and that “she was in effect playing God.”
The prosecution said she “played God” by injuring a newborn and then being the first to notify her colleagues about the kid’s deteriorating condition.
“She was controlling things. She was enjoying what was going on. She was predicting things that she knew were going to happen. She, in effect, was playing God,” one of the prosecutors said.
She Enjoyed Hurting The Babies
Letby was detained twice and freed. She was legally accused and placed in detention after her third arrest in 2020.
During house searches, police discovered hospital documentation and a handwritten letter on which Letby wrote: “I am evil, I did this.”
During the trial, prosecutors said that Letby was enjoying the sadness and suffering in the room.
She Wanted The Attention Of An Anonymous Doctor
Prosecutors said Letby was having an affair with a married doctor at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
He was one of the doctors who would be notified if newborns suddenly worsened, and this was regarded to be an important component of their connection. Letby protested with the implication that she damaged them in order to gain his “personal attention.”
Text messages submitted in court indicated that the two messaged often, exchanging love heart emoticons, and met together multiple times outside of work, even after Letby was removed from the newborn unit in July 2016.
She Wasn’t ‘Good Enough
The jurors were presented with several notes written by Lucy Letby, one of which said, “I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them. On another note, she wrote, “I will never have children or marry. I will never know what it’s like to have a family.”
Boredom
Lucy Letby was a band 5 nurse, which meant she had the skills and training to care for the neonatal unit’s sickest newborns. During the trial, she admitted that she found her job less interesting when she was assigned to newborns who didn’t require as much medical attention.
Prosecutors revealed evidence of Letby attacking newborns using numerous tactics, including the injection of air and insulin into their circulation, the infusion of air into their gastrointestinal system, force-feeding an overdose of milk or fluids, and impact-type damage.
The jury was told that she meant to murder the infants while tricking her colleagues into believing there was a natural cause.
“Lucy Letby sought to deceive her colleagues and pass off the harm she caused as nothing more than a worsening of each baby’s existing vulnerability. In her hands, innocuous substances like air, milk, fluids – or medication like insulin – would become lethal. She perverted her learning and weaponised her craft to inflict harm, grief, and death,” said Pascale Jones of the CPS.
“Time and again, she harmed babies, in an environment which should have been safe for them and their families. Her attacks were a complete betrayal of the trust placed in her,” he said.
