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A neonatal nurse in a British hospital was found guilty Friday of murdering seven babies and trying to kill six others during a yearlong campaign of deception that saw her prey on the vulnerabilities of sick newborns and their anxious parents.
Following 22 days of deliberation, the jury at Manchester Crown Court convicted 33-year-old Lucy Letby of killing the babies, including two triplet boys, in the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwest England between June 2015 and June 2016. She will be sentenced on Monday, August 21.
“Parents were exposed to her morbid curiosity and her fake compassion,” said senior prosecutor Pascale Jones. “Too many of them returned home to empty baby rooms. Many surviving children live with permanent consequences of her assaults upon their lives.”
Her attacks, Jones said, were “a complete betrayal of the trust placed in her.”
Families of the victims said they will “forever be grateful” to jurors who since last October had to sit through 145 days of “grueling” evidence.
In a joint statement read outside court, they also expressed their gratitude to all those who came to give evidence during the trial, which they described as “extremely harrowing and distressing” to listen to.
“To lose a baby is a heart-breaking experience that no parent should ever have to go through, but to lose a baby or to have a baby harmed in these particular circumstances is unimaginable,” they said.
Letby’s motives remain unclear, but the scale of her crimes points to intricate planning.
She was accused of deliberately harming the babies in various ways, including by injecting air into their bloodstreams and administering air or milk into their stomachs via nasogastric tubes. She was also accused of poisoning infants by adding insulin to intravenous feeds and interfering with breathing tubes.
The British government launched an independent inquiry soon after the verdicts that will look into the wider circumstances around what happened at the hospital, including the handling of concerns raised by staff.
