Nurse Lucy Letby has been found guilty of murdering seven babies on a neonatal unit, making her the United Kingdom’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.
Since Wednesday, Letby has refused to appear in the dock for the verdicts.
She broke down in tears as the first guilty verdicts were read out by the jury’s foreman on 8 August after 76 hours of deliberations.
Letby cried with her head bowed as the second set of guilty verdicts were returned on 11 August.
She was found not guilty of two attempted murder charges and the jury was undecided on further attempted murder charges relating to four babies.
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.
Among her murder victims were two babies from a set of identical triplets. She also attacked three sets of twins.
The jury, made up of four men and seven women, spent more than 100 hours deliberating and delivered their verdicts to the 22 charges in batches that could not be reported until now.
Her unimaginable crimes, which have shocked the nation, mean Letby, is likely to spend the rest of her life in prison.
She is due to be sentenced next week.
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