Why Did Lucy Letby, A UK Nurse, Murder Babies? Investigation Points Out 'Evil' Motive
Lucy Letby, a 33-year-old nurse in the UK has been convicted of murdering seven newborns and attempting to kill another six, making her the worst baby killer in modern British history.
The crimes took place between June 2015 and June 2016. She was cleared of two counts of attempted murder and the jury was unable to reach verdicts on six further attempted murder counts relating to five babies.
What's happening?
Before June 2015, there were about two or three baby deaths a year on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital. But in the summer of 2015, something unusual was happening.In June alone, three babies died within the space of two weeks. Then, four more died after attacked by Letby.?
Those who survived were not always the lucky ones: two of Letby¡¯s victims, a girl, now eight, and a boy, now seven, sustained brain damage as a result of her attacks. The girl, who was born 15 weeks early and given just a 5% chance of survival, has since been diagnosed with quadriplegic cerebral palsy. She is nil by mouth and requires 24-hour care.
Meanwhile, a lead consultant says they raised concerns about Letby in October 2015 - but claims that hospital bosses didn't investigate and Letby went on to attack again. An independent inquiry will be carried out, the government has said, to ensure vital lessons are learned.
Police have confirmed they will review of 4,000 admissions to two neonatal units where Letby worked - although this does not mean 4,000 new investigations.
But, why?
What turned this young, university-educated children¡¯s nurse into a ¡°cold, calculated, cruel and relentless¡± baby killer? How did she carry out such unthinkable murders within the confines of an institution designed to save the most vulnerable of lives? And, perhaps the most difficult and pressing question: why?
The reasons behind Letby's actions may never be fully explained, but the jurors were given several possible motives by the prosecution during the 10-month trial.
Lucy Letby's final victims were two triplet boys, referred to in court as babies O and P. Child O died shortly after Letby returned from a holiday in Ibiza in June 2016, while child P died a day after their sibling.During the trial, prosecutors said by that time Letby was "completely out of control", adding that "she was in effect playing God".
The prosecutor suggested that she "played God" by harming a baby and then being the first to alert her colleagues about the deteriorating health."She was controlling things. She was enjoying what was going on. She was predicting things that she knew were going to happen. She, in effect, was playing God," one of the prosecutors said.
Letby was arrested and released twice. On her third arrest in 2020, she was formally charged and held in custody.During searches at her home, police found hospital paperwork and a handwritten note on which Letby had written: "I am evil, I did this."In the trial, the prosecutors suggested that Letby was getting a thrill out of the grief and despair in the room.
Prosecutors alleged that Letby was having a secret relationship with a married doctor at the Countess of Chester Hospital.He was one of the doctors who would be contacted when babies rapidly deteriorated, which was thought to be a crucial aspect of their relationship. It was implied that she hurt them to receive his "personal attention", but Letby disagreed.
Texts shown to the court revealed the pair messaged regularly, swapping love heart emojis, and met up several times outside work, even after Letby was removed from the neonatal unit in July 2016.The jurors were presented with several notes written by Lucy Letby, one of which said, "I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough to care for them.
On another note, she wrote, "I will never have children or marry. I will never know what it's like to have a family."Lucy Letby was a band 5 nurse, meaning that she had the skills and training to tend to the sickest babies in the neonatal unit. At the trial, she agreed that she sometimes found work less stimulating when she was assigned to babies who did not need as much medical attention.
She intended to kill the babies while deceiving her colleagues into believing there was a natural cause, the jury was told."Lucy Letby sought to deceive her colleagues and pass off the harm she caused as nothing more than a worsening of each baby's existing vulnerability. In her hands, innocuous substances like air, milk, fluids - or medication like insulin - would become lethal. She perverted her learning and weaponised her craft to inflict harm, grief, and death," said Pascale Jones of the CPS.?
"Time and again, she harmed babies, in an environment which should have been safe for them and their families. Her attacks were a complete betrayal of the trust placed in her," he said.
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