Lucy Letby: British neonatal nurse guilty of murdering babies

A British nurse, who penned a note stating “I am evil”, has been found guilty of murdering seven newborn babies and trying to kill another six in the neonatal unit of a hospital in northwest England where she worked.

Lucy Letby, 33, was convicted of killing five baby boys and two baby girls at the Countess of Chester hospital and attacking other newborns, often while she was working night shifts, in 2015 and 2016.

The jury had been told she poisoned some of her infant victims by injecting them with insulin and others were injected with air or force fed milk, sometimes involving multiple attacks before they died.

“I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them,” said a handwritten note found by police officers searching her home after she was arrested.

“I am a horrible evil person,” she wrote.

“I AM EVIL I DID THIS.”

Some of those she attacked were twins — in one case she murdered both siblings.

She tried to kill one baby girl three times before finally succeeding on the fourth attempt.

“Lucy Letby was entrusted to protect some of the most vulnerable babies,” said Pascale Jones, a Senior Crown Prosecutor from the Crown Prosecution Service.

“Little did those working alongside her know that there was a murderer in their midst.

“She did her utmost to conceal her crimes, by varying the ways in which she repeatedly harmed babies in her care.”

She was accused of deliberately harming the newborn infants in various ways, including by injecting air into their bloodstreams and administering air or milk into their stomachs via nasogastric tubes.

She also was accused of poisoning infants by adding insulin to intravenous feeds and interfering with breathing tubes.

Letby denied all the charges.

A jury of seven women and four men deliberated for 22 days before reaching the verdict. One juror was excused well into deliberations for personal reasons and the judge later gave the remaining 11 jurors the option of reaching a verdict with 10 people in agreement instead of a unanimous decision.