Britain’s serial killer nurse Lucy Letby will never be released from prison after a judge sentenced her this week to a rare whole-life term for the “sadistic” murder of seven babies.
Letby (33) is one of only three women alive to have been given such a jail term in the UK, reports The Guardian.
The former neonatal nurse, described as the worst child serial killer in modern British history, was also convicted of attempting to murder six more babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Sentencing Letby, Justice Goss described her crimes as a “cruel, calculated and cynical campaign of child murder involving the smallest and most vulnerable of children”.
She knew her actions were “causing significant physical suffering and would cause untold mental suffering”, he said. “There was a deep malevolence bordering on sadism in your actions.”
The judge said she “acted in a way that was completely contrary to the normal human instincts of nurturing and caring for babies”.
Her claims to have done her best in caring for babies was “one of many lies” she told throughout the trial, he added.
“There is no doubt that you are intelligent and outwardly were a very conscientious, hardworking, knowledgeable nurse – which enabled you to harm babies for some time.”
The trial had heard how Letby often attacked the infants just moments after their parents or nurses had left their sides. She fatally injected seven babies with air, tried to kill two others by lacing their feeding bags with insulin and attempted to murder one by thrusting a nasogastric tube down his throat.
Letby “cruelly and callously” made inappropriate remarks to parents or colleagues during or after a death, and kept hundreds of medical documents as “morbid records of the dreadful events surrounding your victims and what you had done to them”, the court heard.
The former nurse refused to be present in court for the sentencing, in which parents of her victims described in powerful detail the impact of her crimes.
Goss ordered her to be provided with a copy of the sentencing remarks and of the victim impact statements in her absence.
Whole-life orders are reserved for crimes of exceptional gravity.
The other two women serving whole-life terms are Rose West, who tortured and killed at least nine young women in the 1970s and 1980s, and Joanna Dennehy, who murdered three men in what came to be known as the Peterborough ditch murders in 2013.
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UK nurse murdered seven babies, tried to kill others, court hears
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