Holding up a tiny babygrow with a flower sample printed on it, Lucy Letby presents a large smile for the digicam in what would grow to be the defining picture of the killer nurse.
Dressed in her blue nursing uniform together with her title badge pinned proudly on her chest, the younger, blonde woman in her mid-20s is now the UK’s most infamous baby killer.
Described as non-descript and regular by police, few may envisage the horror she would inflict on harmless households.
Born in Hereford on 4 January 1990, Letby is the one baby of John and Susan Letby, a retail boss and accounts clerk who at the moment are each retired.
After attending an area faculty and sixth-form school, Letby certified as a youngsters’s nurse on the University of Chester in 2011.
She accomplished coaching placements in Liverpool Women’s Hospital earlier than becoming a member of the neonatal unit on the Countess of Chester Hospital on 2 January 2012, simply two days earlier than her twenty second birthday.
Her life at this level was terribly regular.
She lived in a number of homes, earlier than shopping for her suburban, red-brick, semi-detached residence in 2016 which was round a 20-minute stroll from the ward.
An ornate teal chook feeder had been put up on the wall of the porch with a easy, child-like decor all through the home.
In her bed room, fluffy toys had been laid throughout a cover inscribed with the phrases “sweet dreams”. Artwork saying “leave sparkles wherever you go” was pinned to the wall, illuminated by twinkling fairy lights.
Told colleagues she was bored
Letby owned two cats, Tigger and Smudge, and was shut together with her dad and mom, saying in messages she felt “guilty” for not visiting them extra typically.
She had associates and an lively social life, holidaying in Ibiza, occurring nights out and attending weekly salsa dancing courses.
Letby used social media recurrently to maintain in touch with colleagues, family and friends and even exchanged messages with administration on the neonatal ward.
At work, she was trusted and devoted, having accomplished specialist coaching in March 2014 and recurrently working in what was referred to as nursery one – the place essentially the most sick youngsters had been cared for.
It was often called the “hot room” – an average-looking room with yellow partitions alongside work of owls and teddy bears.
She would textual content colleagues when working within the lower-risk nurseries – two, three and 4 – that she was bored and wished to work in nursery one – which the prosecution later mentioned was a set off for Letby to hold out assaults.
‘Beige or vanilla’
It was speculated that Letby had a romantic crush on a married physician on the ward, having exchanged a whole bunch of messages with him. The pair had additionally gone out for meals, been on a visit to London collectively and hung out at her residence.
But whereas the main points of her life could seem banal, the Crown Prosecution Service alleged there was a “much darker side to her personality”. A member of the prosecution workforce described her as “devious, calculated and cold-blooded”.
“There isn’t anything outstanding or outrageous about her. She was a normal, 20-something-year-old,” DCI Nicola Evans from Cheshire Police mentioned.
“She had a normal job, she was average in that job, she had a group of friends and a family and a social life, nothing that you wouldn’t expect from someone of her age at that time.
“The truth she was non-descript and common in work allowed her to go underneath the radar and commit these offences.
“There wasn’t anything outrageous about her, there wasn’t anything that stood out about her, she was beige or vanilla. She was present but not featured.”
The begin of the assaults
Letby had labored on the Countess of Chester hospital for greater than three years when the mortality charge of the neonatal unit started to rise in 2015.
Her first assault got here on 8 June 2015 when Child A died lower than 90 minutes into Letby’s in a single day shift.
Letby used a number of strategies to kill or severely injure the helpless victims – together with bodily assaults, overfeeding with milk, forcing air into their stomachs, and injecting air into their bloodstreams.
Two victims survived after Letby poisoned their IV drip baggage with insulin.
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The prosecution accused Letby of various her strategies to keep away from detection.
Some infants had been subjected to repeated makes an attempt by h to kill them.
The jury heard Letby would use medicines and tools available to her to trigger infants to unexpectedly collapse throughout day and evening shifts.
Her victims included each girls and boys, a lot of whom had been born prematurely.
After she had killed the infants, Letby looked for 11 of the victims’ households on social media and even despatched one set of fogeys a sympathy card on the day of their child’s funeral. She took a photograph of the sympathy card earlier than she posted it.
Letby was mentioned to be relaxed and picked up regardless of the rising variety of deaths.
The dad and mom of Child L and M – twin brothers who had been simply days outdated when Letby tried to kill them in April 2016 – mentioned she was performing “very cool and calm” after she injected Child M with an injection of extreme air.
But Child M survived, after which “her body language and her behaviour totally changed”, the twins’ mom mentioned.
“She was very annoyed with us. She thought that ‘I couldn’t kill your baby’.”
She additionally made uncommon feedback which aroused suspicion presently.
As Child P was being readied to be moved to a different hospital in June 2016 after Letby pumped extra air into his abdomen, she mentioned: “He’s not leaving here alive, is he?”
She had made an identical comment when Child C fatally collapsed a 12 months earlier.
Exclusive: Mother fears Letby attacked her child too
Letby was accused of committing the murders in a one-year interval – between June 2015 and June 2016 – out of her five-year profession.
But Cheshire Police mentioned it’s investigating whether or not Letby could possibly be chargeable for any additional assaults earlier than June 2015, each at Countess of Chester Hospital and Liverpool Women’s Hospital.
As a part of that probe, they’re reviewing the care of round 4,000 infants within the two hospitals.
‘I’m evil’
On the floor, there is no such thing as a rhyme or cause to Letby’s assaults, and he or she has supplied no motive for her crimes.
She stuffed reams of confidential medical paperwork in reusable procuring baggage, with a few of these notes regarding the infants who had been killed or injured.
Letby scribbled all types of messages however on some she had written: “I am evil”, “I did this” and “I don’t deserve to be here because I’m evil”.
Prosecutors mentioned the notes illustrated a lady in turmoil, grappling with the guilt of her actions.
But Dr Sohom Das, a advisor forensic psychiatrist, mentioned Letby would not match any “typical” killer profiles.
‘Low vanity and self-worth’
He says girls who kill infants are normally pushed by psychotic beliefs.
“I’ve seen at least two or three patients who have had delusional beliefs related to schizophrenia, for example, where they believe children are marked by the devil, that they’re somehow saving them from hell or damnation,” he advised Sky News.
“Letby doesn’t fit into that category. I’ve also met serial killers and they tend to be antisocial, angry, they tend to have a long criminal history of violence. Again, Letby doesn’t fit that kind of motivation.”
Beatrice Yorker, a professor emerita of nursing and legal justice and criminalistics at California State University in Los Angeles, mentioned Letby additionally doesn’t match the profile of an attention-seeking killer like Angel of Death nurse Beverley Allitt.
“I haven’t read anything about Lucy Letby that indicates she wanted to be the centre of attention, that she enjoyed resuscitation of the infants. She seemed much more clandestine and deceitful. Kind of sadistic, maybe.”
Dr Das mentioned Letby suffered from low vanity and self-confidence which can have manifested a level of jealousy.
‘The most cowardly act’
In one be aware, Letby wrote she had an “overwhelming fear… I’ll never have children or marry… I will never know what it’s like to have a family… despair”.
Dr Jane Carter Woodrow, a screenwriter and member of the British Society of Criminology who has written a number of books about murderers and serial killers, mentioned it’s seemingly Letby might match the profile of a psychopath.
The NHS defines a psychopath as somebody with an delinquent persona dysfunction that means they’re manipulative, lack empathy, and sometimes have a complete disregard for the implications of their actions.
“How could she not be [a psychopath] to be able to do those things,” she mentioned. “It’s the most cowardly act of all killers, [to kill] a child or an elderly person.”
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‘Trust me, I’m a nurse’
Dr Carter Woodrow says that “once you’ve crossed that line” and “murdered for the first time, I think it gets easier. And you see she feels emboldened as time goes on and the cases kind of escalate, particularly towards the end”.
The truth Letby pleaded not responsible additionally reveals psychopathic traits, she says. “She could have pleaded guilty and not put the parents through this terrible trauma again. She could have spared them all these details they’ve had to sit through.”
During the trial, the jury heard how Letby advised one mom, “trust me, I’m a nurse”, as she killed one child.
“I think this was about power,” says Dr Carter Woodrow. “Saying, ‘trust me, I’m a nurse’, all the time knowing what she was going to go and do… it’s like somebody with a card up their sleeve that they’re almost laughing about.”
Suspicions improve
Colleagues turned suspicious of Letby inside weeks of the primary assault.
Dr Stephen Brearey, the pinnacle advisor on the neonatal unit, reviewed the deaths of Child A, C and D in June 2015. He discovered Letby was the one nurse on shift for every of the deaths.
In October 2015, consultants turned more and more involved once they noticed a spike in deaths that had been “unexplained and unexpected” – a extremely uncommon prevalence in neonatal wards that means there was no prior indication within the 24 hours earlier than that loss of life might happen.
Consultant Dr Ravi Jayaram alerted administration however was advised “not to make a fuss”. He was even compelled to apologise to Letby and attend mediation for accusing her of wrongdoing, information retailers reported.
Other colleagues who reported Letby had been advised there was no proof in opposition to her.
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‘Lots of suspicion’
Speculation grew as Letby could be on shift or close to a baby throughout each suspicious loss of life.
Her status turned so notorious that one employees member who labored on the hospital advised Sky News: “There was a lot of suspicion when alarms would go off, during the night especially, there would be a phrase colleagues would use – ‘I wonder if Lucy is working tonight’.”
“That’s exactly how it was, so people knew exactly what was going on,” nursing assistant Lynsey Artell mentioned.
Then and now, all proof in opposition to Letby was circumstantial – there is no such thing as a CCTV, no witnesses to her crimes.
But by July 2016, after a number of extra warnings by senior consultants, Letby had been moved off the neonatal ward and put into an administrative position. An inner NHS investigation adopted.
But the hospital solely contacted police in early 2017, asking whether or not they thought an investigation was vital – nearly two years because the prosecution mentioned Letby first attacked and effectively over a 12 months after colleagues first turned suspicious.
Letby caught
Letby was arrested greater than three years after her killing spree began.
On that day in July 2018, she was relaxed and talking in a peaceful, quiet tone after officers knocked on her door.
She allow them to in, sporting a blue hoodie with white and pink writing, in addition to blue tracksuit bottoms. Her shoulder-length mousy blonde hair was hanging down round her face.
Ten minutes later, police bodycam footage recorded Letby being escorted out of the home in handcuffs and put right into a police automobile the place she advised officers she simply had knee surgical procedure.
During a police interview that very same day, she remained calm. When requested if she had been involved a couple of rise in mortality charges on the hospital, she mentioned: “I think we’d all just noticed as a team in general, the nursing staff, that this was a rise compared to previous years.”
She was launched after her first arrest however was rearrested in June 2019 when she was bailed pending additional inquiries.
Letby was rearrested and charged in November 2020 three years after the investigation – named Operation Hummingbird – began.
Letby on trial
Letby on trial was a really completely different individual to Letby the quiet nurse.
She was now 33 – eight years on from her first assault. She was well dressed, her hair now darkish brown and longer than in photos utilized by the media.
She was seated within the glass-fronted dock – her dad and mom had been seated within the gallery reverse her in courtroom seven at Manchester Crown Court.
Her mom continuously made eye contact together with her daughter and mouthed “I love you” because the gruelling trial went on.
Spoke quietly and calmly
When Letby was referred to as to present proof in May, she spoke quietly and calmly and was requested repeatedly to lift her voice.
At instances she was vigorous in her defence and firmly denied the fees. She pointed the finger at different colleagues and blamed basic hospital failings.
But she repeatedly contradicted herself, muddled her story and have become pissed off with the prosecution’s questions – a far cry from the cool and picked up nature she had displayed throughout her killing spree.
Letby cried when talking concerning the influence of the arrest and trial on her, when images of her bed room had been proven and when talking about her cats. But, because the prosecution identified, the tears stopped when the subject of the deaths arose.
Britain’s worst baby serial killer
She bowed her head and cried once more when the primary verdicts had been delivered.
Susan Letby broke down sobbing as her daughter was led away from the dock, whispering “you can’t be serious, this can’t be right”, into her husband’s arms.
During the second set of verdicts, when she was discovered responsible of murdering 4 infants and trying to homicide two extra. As the jury delivered the end result of its deliberations she was impassive, however her shoulders started to shake as she stood to be taken again right down to the cells.
Letby refused to go away the cells and seem in court docket for the third set of verdicts when she was discovered responsible of three extra murders and three extra tried murders.
This time, John and Susan Letby had been silent, resigned, and leaned on one another with their eyes closed.
The verdicts had been delivered after greater than 100 hours of deliberations by the jury of seven girls and 4 males.
For her sentencing on Monday, Letby made it clear she would refuse to seem in individual or by way of video hyperlink.
Who is Lucy Letby?
Letby has by no means defined her transition from a really unusual girl to Britain’s most prolific baby killer.
It is one thing her victims’ households should fathom within the coming months and years as they grapple with a public inquiry and their harrowing grief.
Deputy senior investigating officer at Cheshire Police Nicola Evans mentioned this “must be really hard for families to accept”.
“I don’t know whether we will ever be able to answer that question [of motive], and only Lucy Letby can answer that.”
Source: information.sky.com”