English nurse Lucy Letby was sentenced on Friday August 18 for the murder of seven newborn babies. The one who has become the worst child killer in the modern history of the country was fixed on her sentence on Monday, August 21: she was sentenced to life imprisonment incompressible. A sentence of such severity is very rare in English law and is commensurate with the horror caused by this case.
The sentence was pronounced in Manchester court (north of England), in the absence of this 33-year-old woman who refused to attend the hearing. As the court finds her guilty of murdering seven premature babies and six attempted murders in the hospital where she worked, 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 difficult trial, which began in October 2022.
Judge James Goss justified the sentence on the “exceptional gravity” of his crimes: “You will spend the rest of your life in prison. “There was premeditation, calculation and deviousness in your actions,” he insisted, referring to “a calculated and cynical campaign” of murders, “bordering on sadism” and without remorse.
Lucy Letby worked in the intensive care unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital in north west 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 letters 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 testimony 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. Her motives remain unclear despite the ten months of trial. Investigators found handwritten notes in her home. On one she wrote, “I’m evil, I did it.” But on others, she proclaimed her innocence.
The judgment “will take nothing away from the extreme pain, anger and distress we have all felt,” the families of the victims responded in a statement read from the court steps 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 in 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 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.
