Serial killer nurse Lucy Letby sentenced for murdering babies

A former neonatal nurse convicted of murdering seven babies in her care and trying to kill six others at a hospital in northern England was sentenced on Monday to life in prison with no chance of release by a judge who said she was cruel, cunning and callous, and acted with “malevolence bordering sadism.”

Lucy Letby, who refused to appear in court for sentencing or to face an outpouring of anger and anguish from grieving parents, was given the most severe punishment possible under British law.

Justice James Goss said the number of killings and attempts and the nature of the murders by a nurse entrusted with caring for the most fragile infants provided the “exceptional circumstances” required to impose a rare “whole-life order.”

Only three other women have received such a harsh sentence before in the UK.

“There was a deep malevolence bordering on sadism in your actions,” Justice Goss said, addressing the absent defendant, who will be given a transcript of the proceedings. “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 trial lasted 10 months. Letby gave evidence herself for several weeks. That, having been convicted, she has the power to choose not to listen to what her victims’ families have to say does not feel like natural justice.

Read The Independent’s view in this editorial:

Serial killer nurse Lucy Letby was free to target babies for nearly a year after she murdered her first patient as hospital leaders repeatedly ignored concerns raised by whistleblowers, The Independent has learned.

Staff raised concerns over three “unexplained” baby deaths at the Countess of Chester Hospital in July 2015 but health chiefs failed to investigate the allegations, several hospital insiders have claimed.

An external review into the hospital, set to be published after the trial, is expected to find multiple failures by the trust’s leadership to act on warnings, The Independent understands.

Our health correspondent Rebecca Thomas has more in this article:

The justice secretary has vowed to change the law at the “earliest opportunity” to ensure serious offenders can be forced to attend their sentencing following the refusal by child murderer Lucy Letby to appear in the dock.

The 33-year-old was not present to hear words of condemnation from the judge and victims’ families at Manchester Crown Court on Monday, prompting further outrage.

Earlier this year, Alex Chalk said the government was “committed” to changing the law in a way that would allow criminals to be forced to attend their sentencing, after the killers of Olivia Pratt-Korbel, Zara Aleena and Sabina Nessa also refused to stand in the dock for their own.

Read his latest remarks in this report:

Lucy Letby sickened babies by injecting intravenous lines with air, poisoning some with insulin and force-feeding others milk.

After killing them, she sometimes sobbed in grief, made keepsakes for parents and bathed the little bodies and dressed them for burial.

The victims, who were given anonymity and listed only by letters, such as Child A and Child B, died in the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwest England between June 2015 and June 2016.

“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,” the mother of a girl identified as Child I said in a statement read in court.

The judge said no one but Letby knows what drove her, though some parents ventured theories: she wanted to play god; she needed attention, drama and sympathy in her life; or she wanted to be remembered.

Nurse Lucy Letby, the most prolific child serial killer in modern British history, will die in prison after being sentenced to a whole-life order.

Judge Mr Justice Goss handed the baby murderer the rare sentence, which is life imprisonment with no possibility of release, at Manchester Crown Court on Monday.

Dubbed ‘‘The Devil’s Daughter’’, Carr murdered an 18-year-old woman after picking her out at random when she was just 12 years old.

More on the infamous inmates in prison located near Durham:

In a piece for Independent Voices, Lizzie Romain, a midwife of 12 years writes:

“I was at work when I first heard about Lucy Letby’s trial, and I immediately felt a bit sick.

“I’ve never known or worked alongside her, but the thought of anyone knowingly harming a patient under their care just goes completely against the compassion that, I believe, drives people to become healthcare workers in the first place.

“It’s completely against everything that I know, and that I’ve experienced, in my working life.”

You can read her article in full here:

One by one, the parents stood and described the unimaginable pain that Lucy Letby had inflicted on them. First, they shared the pure joy and outpouring of love they had felt at the birth of their children.

Then they spelled out the sheer terror they felt when their babies started to collapse and die – seemingly without explanation.

Letby’s parents, who had supported her throughout the ten-month trial, were also absent from court room 7, but more than a dozen relatives of Letby’s victims sat in the packed public gallery.

Eight of the jurors, who had sat through ten months of harrowing evidence, also returned, this time looking at an empty dock where the defendant had sat during the trial.

Text messages revealed the high regard in which Lucy Letby was previously held by her friends and colleagues, with one doctor writing “You’re a fab nurse” after a baby suffered two collapses, reports my colleague Holly Evans.

Another doctor wrote that she was one of the few nurses he “would trust with my own children”, when it became clear that her actions were under scrutiny.

One conversation involved a married male registrar. Letby denied he was her boyfriend, despite the two having travelled to London together and exchanged heart emojis in their text messages.

In texts read out by the prosecutor, Letby’s nursing friend teased “[I] think he likes u too” and said that the registrar was “as flirty as u”. She replied: “Shut up … I don’t flirt with him!”, before adding: “Certainly don’t fancy him haha just nice guy.” When he appeared in the witness box, she attempted to leave the dock in tears.

It was suggested that, desperate to gain his approval, she had sabotaged Child O deliberately to attract his attention and cause him to return to the hospital to help.

On a scribbled piece of paper found at his address, she had written a declaration of love next to his name, which cannot be published for legal reasons. Scrawled in black ink were the words “I loved you” and “My best friend”.

Rishi Sunak has branded serial child murderer Lucy Letby “cowardly” for refusing to appear for her sentencing hearing at Manchester Crown Court.

Asked during a visit to a nursery in Harrogate on Monday whether ministers are moving too slowly on changing the law to compel serious offenders to attend their sentencing hearings, Mr Sunak told broadcasters: “The first thing is to extend my sympathies to everyone affected by this.

“I think, like everyone reading about this, it’s just shocking and harrowing. Now, I think it’s cowardly that people who commit such horrendous crimes do not face their victims and hear first-hand the impact that their crimes have had on them and their families and loved ones.

“We are looking, and have been, at changing the law to make sure that that happens and that’s something that we’ll bring forward in due course.”