Nurse Lucy Letby found guilty of murdering seven babies as police investigate more attacks

Nurse Lucy Letby has been found guilty of murdering seven babies while working on a neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

The nurse, who was in her mid-20s at the time, was also convicted of attempting to murder others between June 2015 and June 2016.

Letby, deliberately injected babies with air, poisoned two with insulin, and force fed others. She is now considered the UK’s most prolific child killer of modern times.

She was found guilty through a series of partial verdicts which were delivered several days apart. The judge had issued reporting restrictions until the end of the trial, which began in October 2022.

Letby cried through some of the verdicts, while devastated families of the victims sobbed and comforted each other through the findings of the jury. One jury member was also reportedly seen crying with her head in her hands.

she was also found not guilty of two charges of attempted murder and the jury was unable to reach verdicts on six other counts of attempted murder.

Her mother, Susan, broke down into her husband’s arms saying: “You can’t be serious, this can’t be right.”

For the later verdicts, Letby refused to come up from the cells and into the dock, where in her absence, she was found guilty of more murders.

During the trial the prosecution labelled Letby as a ‘calculating and devious’ opportunist who ‘gaslighted’ colleagues to cover her ‘murderous assaults’.

She was convicted following a two-year investigation by Cheshire Police into the alarming and unexplained rise in deaths, as well as near-fatal collapses of premature babies, at the hospital.

Officers say they examined more than half a million medical and digital records as they supported the families of the victims – many of whom attended the trial. Letby claimed that she was being wrongly accused to cover hospital failings.

DCI Evans said: “I don’t think there’s anybody who has worked on this investigation who will come out of the other side the same person they were. It has been heartbreaking.”

No motive has ever been established, which DCI Evans said ‘must be really hard for families to accept’.

Adding: “I don’t know whether we will ever be able to answer that question, and only Lucy Letby can answer that.”

Following today’s verdicts, Cheshire Police confirmed they are now investigating whether Letby could have attacked other children in her care, prior to June 2015.

This includes several more years she worked at the Countess of Chester Hospital, as well as time Letby spent on training placements at Liverpool Women’s Hospital.