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Crime

18th Aug 2023

Nurse found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill another six 

Steve Hopkins

The convictions make Lucy Letby, 33, the worst child serial killer in modern British history.

Nurse Lucy Letby has been found guilty of murdering seven babies.

The 33-year-old’s convictions make her the UK’s most prolific killer of babies in modern times.

Letby killed the babies by injecting them with air between June 2015 and June 2016, when she was working at the Countess of Chester Hospital, the Manchester Crown Court was told.

Letby has also been found guilty of attempting to murder six babies in the hospital’s neonatal unit, with methods including deliberately injecting them with air, overfeeding them and poisoning them with insulin.

She faced a total of 22 charges.

Letby was found not guilty of two counts of attempted murder and the jury could not reach verdicts on six charges of attempted murder.

She stood trial for 10 months in what the BBC suggested is believed to be the longest murder trial in the UK.

Suspicions were aroused at the hospital in June, 2015, when a full-term baby girl died 36 hours after her birth. It was the third infant death in a fortnight – equalling the total number of deaths on the neonatal unit for the whole of 2014.

Cheshire Police announced in May 2017 that it had launched an investigation following “a greater number of baby deaths and collapses” at the hospital between June 2015 and June 2016, with a focus on eight deaths. A review of seven further deaths and six non-fatal collapses would also take place.

Letby was initially arrested in July 2018 and the police probe was widened to 17 deaths and 15 non-fatal collapses between March 2015 and July 2016.

In November 2020, Letby is re-arrested and appears in court for the first time two days later.

She then stood trial at Manchester Crown Court in October 2022 accused of the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of 10 others.

Topics:

Murder