Nurse Lucy Letby was found guilty of murdering seven children at the Countess of Chester Hospital in a unique trial. This incident shocked Britain.
An independent investigation has now been launched to understand how Latby managed to commit six murders before the police were tipped off.
The reasons why Letby, a neonatal nurse, committed the murders may never be fully understood, though prosecutors and other experts told jurors during the trial about several possible motives.
He was ‘obsessed’ with the attention of a fellow doctor
One of the reasons put forward by the prosecution was that Latby attacked and killed the children in her care in order to win the sympathy of a doctor for whom she had gone ‘crazy’.
It was alleged that she wanted to make herself the center of his (the doctor’s) attention.
During the trial, Letby showed no emotion until February 16 when the doctor, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, confirmed his name under oath.
Latby and those in the gallery could not see the married registrar as he asked to make his statement from behind a screen.
Hearing his voice, the nurse burst into tears as she suddenly left her seat and walked towards the exit door.
When it came time for her to testify, she said she loved the doctor as a ‘trusted friend’ but was not romantically in love with him.
She denied claims by prosecutors that she was ‘deeply infatuated’ with the doctor.
She loved being ‘God’
Child P, one of the three children killed by Latby, collapsed on June 24, 2016 and preparations were being made to transfer him to another hospital.
A view of the signboard at the Counties of Chester Hospital, where former nurse Lucy Letby worked, in Chester, northern England, on July 13, 2023 (Oli Scarfe/AFP)
Shortly before the transfer, Latby is said to have told a colleague, who was accused of being obsessed with him, ‘Is he getting out of here alive, isn’t he alive?’
During Letby’s trial, prosecutor Nick Johnson QC said the nurse made the comment because she ‘knew what was going to happen.’
He said: ‘She was controlling things. She was enjoying what was happening and happily anticipating something she knew was about to happen.
‘She was actually playing God.’
Latby first pumped into Child P’s stomach while she was being breastfed – just 13 minutes after killing the child’s brother.
Latby got ‘thrill’ from the parents’ ‘grief and despair’
Parents and other nurses on the ward where she worked said Letby acted unusually when the number of children she killed or tried to kill suddenly dropped.
The parents of child number one, who died from Letby’s repeated attacks, told police they were ‘smiling and talking about him. [بچے کے] How she was present at the first bath and how much she enjoyed it.’
Mr Johnson KC advised Latby that she was ‘getting a thrill out of grief and despair in the room you were looking at.’
Letby denied the allegation.
The serial killer searched for the families of his victims on Facebook on the anniversary of their death, often finding their numbers within minutes.
An example was his search on Christmas Day. Letby testified that she looked out for all kinds of people, not just the parents of the children in the unit.
She found caring for less sick children ‘boring’
Latby is said to have had an argument with a senior colleague when he was asked to work in an ‘outside (second) nursery’, where under-treated children were prepared to return home.
The court was told that the unit was divided into four rooms – nursery one was intensive care, nursery number two was intensive care and rooms three and four were ‘returnees’ nurseries’.
Senior nurse Catherine Percival Calderbank told jurors Letby would have been ‘unhappy’ if she had been given three or four room shifts.
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He said: ‘She made it clear that she was unhappy about being placed in outside nurseries.
‘She said it was boring and she didn’t want to breastfeed babies. She wanted to be in the intensive care nursery.’
Mrs Percival-Calderbank, who qualified as a nurse in 1988, added: ‘If there was anything going on in the nursery you’d know she’d be there, as we all are, to help. She would definitely reach out to help out in nursery number one.
‘We were worried for Lucy’s mental health because it can be stressful, emotional and sometimes exhausting work at the end of a shift if you are put in this stressful situation all the time.
‘Sometimes you have to get out of that environment and live in an outside nursery.’
Latby ‘wasn’t fit to care for them’
Latby wrote “I AM EVIL I DID THIS” on a post-it note police found at his home, the closest prosecutors have come to pleading guilty.
He also wrote: ‘I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I am not well enough to take care of them. I will never marry or have children. I will never know what it’s like to have a family.’
Latby told the court that the notes, which were written after she was suspended from work during the investigation, revealed her mental distress following the deaths of children in her care.
The sentences also contained protestations of innocence and were never seen in court as substantive evidence of his motive, Nurse said.