ENGLAND —
Nurse Lucy LETBY has been found guilty of murdering seven babies on a neonatal unit, making her the UK’s most prolific child serial killer in modern times.
The 33-year-old has also been convicted of trying to kill six other infants at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.
Letby deliberately injected babies with air, force fed others milk and poisoned two of the infants with insulin.
She refused to appear in the dock for the latest verdicts.
They have been delivered by the jury over several hearings but they were not reportable until jurors were discharged.
Letby broke down in tears as the first set of guilty verdicts were read out by the jury’s foreman on 8 August after 76 hours of deliberations.
During the trial, which started in October 2022, the prosecution labelled Letby as a “calculating and devious” opportunist who “gaslighted” colleagues to cover her “murderous assaults”.
She was convicted following a two-year investigation by Cheshire Police into the alarming and unexplained rise in deaths and near-fatal collapses of premature babies at the hospital.
Before June 2015, there were fewer than three baby deaths per year on the neonatal unit.