London: Call her a smiling assassin or a heartless human being, Lucy Letby has become the UK’s most prolific killer of children!
The 33-year-old British nurse was on Friday found guilty of murdering seven newborn babies and trying to murder six others at the neonatal unit of Countess of Chester Hospital, reported AFP.
Letby, who has been on trial since October 2022, was accused of injecting her young victims — who were either sick or born prematurely — with air, overfeeding them milk and poisoning them with insulin.
The jury at Manchester Crown Court reached its verdicts after deliberating for 22 days.
Letby was arrested after a string of baby deaths at the Countess of Chester Hospital in north-west England between June 2015 and June 2016.
Letby, who was described by the prosecution as a “calculating” woman who used methods of killing that “didn’t leave much of a trace”, repeatedly denied harming the children.
“Lucy Letby was entrusted to protect some of the most vulnerable babies. Little did those working alongside her know that there was a murderer in their midst,” Senior Crown Prosecutor Pascale Jones said in a statement.
“Time and again, she harmed babies, in an environment which should have been safe for them and their families,” the prosecutor added, calling the killings “a complete betrayal of the trust placed in her.”
Modus Operandi
Colleagues had raised concerns after noticing that Letby was on duty when each of the babies collapsed, with some of the newborns attacked just as their parents left their cots.
Prosecutor Nick Johnson said Letby “gaslighted” her colleagues into believing the string of deaths were “just a run of bad luck.”
Letby’s final victims were two triplet boys. One of them died shortly after Letby returned from a holiday in June 2016, while the other child died a day after their sibling.
Letby was also said to have attempted to kill the third triplet, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charge.
Letby was arrested and released twice. It was after her third arrest in 2020 that she was formally charged and retained in custody.
Police, on searching her home, found a handwritten note on which Letby had written: “I am evil, I did this.”
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