Child serial killer Lucy Letby has been sentenced to life in prison for the murder and attempted murder of multiple children at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Sentencing Letby today (21 August) at Manchester Crown Court, Mr Justice Goss said: “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.
“There was a deep malevolence bordering on sadism in your actions.”
He added: "There is no doubt that you are intelligent and outwardly were a very conscientious, hardworking, knowledgable nurse – which enabled you to harm babies for some time."
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The disgraced nurse, who refused to be present for her sentencing, has become only the fourth woman in UK history to be told she will never be released from prison.
These include the girlfriend of Moors murderer Ian Brady, Myra Hindley, who died in 2002, and serial killers Rose West and Joanna Dennehy.
Last week, Letby was found guilty of murdering seven babies and trying to kill six others.
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Pascale Jones, senior prosecutor in the case, commented: “Parents were exposed to her morbid curiosity and her fake compassion. Too many of them returned home to empty baby rooms. Many surviving children live with permanent consequences of her assaults upon their lives.”
Letby was just two days away from her 22nd birthday when she joined the hospital's neonatal unit in January 2012, after qualifying as a children's nurse the previous year.
She completed specialist training in March 2014, and spent much of her work life in what was known as 'nursery one', where the most ill children were cared for.
DCI Nicola Evans, from Cheshire Police, said of Letby: "There isn't anything outstanding or outrageous about her. She was a normal, 20-something-year-old.
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"She had a normal job, she was average in that job, she had a group of friends and a family and a social life, nothing that you wouldn't expect from someone of her age at that time."
It was the 'normal' impression that Letby gave off which, Evans believes, 'allowed her to go under the radar' and commit horrific offences between June 2015 and June 2016.
This was when the mortality rate of the neonatal unit began to rise, with Letby's first attack dated on 8 June, 2015, when a child died less than 90 minutes into Letby's overnight shift.
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Over the following months, she used several different methods to kill or injure children on the unit, including physical assaults, overfeeding them with milk, or forcing air into their stomachs or bloodstreams.
Letby was arrested at her home in Chester on 3 July, 2018.
During a search of her home, police found notes which read: “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them”, and “I am a horrible evil person."
Following the sentencing, Cheshire Police will continue to review the care of approximately 4,000 babies who were admitted to the Countess of Chester, and to Liverpool Women’s Hospital where Letby had two work placements.
Emily Brown