Summary:
- Nurse Lucy Lettby sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering seven newborn babies and attempting to kill six others.
- Lettby's actions involved injecting infants with insulin or air, force-feeding them milk, and causing significant physical and mental suffering.
- Her crimes included targeting twins and triplets, leaving a handwritten note confessing her evil actions.
- Lettby becomes one of the few women in Britain to receive a whole life order, joining infamous serial killers Myra Hindley and Rosemary West.
- The emotional impact on the parents of the victims is profound, with one mother expressing the incomparable agony caused by Lettby's actions.
Nurse Lucy Lettby will spend the rest of her life behind bars for murdering seven newborn babies and trying to kill another six, a judge ordered on Monday. She's Britain's most prolific serial child killer in modern times.
The 33-year-old murdered the five baby boys and two baby girls at the neonatal unit of Countess of Chester Hospital in Northern England over 13 months from 2015. She injected the infants with insulin or air or force-fed them milk. Lettby refused to leave the cells to hear the sentencing delivered by Judge James Goss. This was a cruel, calculated and cynical campaign of child murder involving the smallest and most vulnerable of children, knowing that your actions were causing significant physical suffering and would cause untold mental suffering. She removed and retained confidential records of events relating to your crimes and checked up on bereaved parents.
There was a deep malevolence bordering on sadism in your actions. Some of those she attacked were twins. In one case she murdered both siblings. In another she killed two or three triplets. In two instances she murdered one twin but failed in her attempts to kill the other. A handwritten note reading, I am evil, I did this, was found during a police search of her home after her arrest. Whole life orders are very rare and only three women in Britain have received such a sentence before.
They include serial killers Myra Hindley and Rosemary West. The harrowing crimes committed by Lettby, who was in her 20s when she carried out her killing spree, have horrified Britain. Earlier the court heard emotional heart-wrenching statements from the parents of those she murdered and tried to kill. The mother of one murdered baby boy said, There is no sentence that will ever compare to the excruciating agony that we have suffered as a consequence of your actions.