The English nurse sentenced on Friday for the murders of seven newborn babies, which makes her the worst child killer in modern UK history, will be sentenced on Monday.
Lucy Letby, 33, faces life in prison without the possibility of release, a very rare sentence in English law. She was found guilty in Manchester (North) Court of the murder of seven premature babies and six attempted murders in the hospital where she worked, but questions are beginning to emerge about the true extent of her crimes.
This woman, “cold, calculating, cruel and tenacious” according to the prosecution, maintained her innocence throughout her long and grueling trial, which began in October 2022.
She worked in the intensive care unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital in the North West of England.
The murders took place between June 2015 and June 2016. She notably injected intravenous air into premature newborns, used their nasogastric tubes to send air or an overdose of milk into their stomachs.
During the trial, a mother said she returned to give milk to one of her premature twins in August 2015, heard him scream and discovered blood around his small mouth. She had been reassured by Lucy Letby.
According to the prosecution, the nurse had just pushed medical equipment down the tiny baby’s throat, and also injected him with air. He died a few hours later.
Lucy Letby would attack babies after their parents left, when the charge nurse went away, or at night when she was alone. She then sometimes joined the collective efforts to save newborns, even assisted desperate parents. She wrote cards to grieving relatives.
Already absent from court on Friday when she was found guilty, Lucy Letby did not appear for the hearing on Monday, which is due to end with her sentencing in the afternoon.
Her refusal to hear her sentence has angered families of victims, who want Lucy Letby in court to hear their final testimonies and sentencing.
Transferred in June 2016 to an administrative service, arrested for the first time in 2018, then in 2019, Lucy Letby had been imprisoned in November 2020.
His motives remain unclear despite the ten-month trial.
Investigators found handwritten notes in her home. On one of them, she had written: “I’m evil, I did it”. But on others she proclaimed her innocence.
The judgment “will not take away from the extreme pain, anger and distress that we have all felt”, reacted the families of the victims in a press release read on the steps of the court on Friday. “We may never know why this happened,” they added.
But since Friday, the questions are multiplying, in particular on the fact that Lucy Letby was not arrested earlier.
According to the British press, doctors would have launched alerts as early as 2015, but the management of the hospital would not have listened to them or would not have acted, concerned about the reputation of the establishment.
The government announced the opening of an independent investigation to understand “the circumstances behind the horrific murders and attempted murders”.
In addition, the police continue to study thousands of files in search of possible additional victims of Lucy Letby.
On Sunday evening, The Guardian newspaper reported that police were investigating dozens of “suspicious” incidents, involving 30 babies, at the hospital where Lucy Letby worked.
21/08/2023 11:18:50 – London (AFP) – © 2023 AFP