A mother of a child murdered by Lucy Letby has revealed the serial killer nurse chose the gown that her child was buried in.
The families of Letby’s many victims are in court as part of her sentencing hearing on Monday, to explain the devastating impact the nurse’s crimes have had on their lives.
Letby was given a whole life order after being convicted on Friday of the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of six more.
Lucy Letby did not appear in court for her sentencing hearing— (PA Media)
The 33-year-old refused to turn up in the dock at Manchester Crown Court, leading to families and prime minister Rishi Sunak branding her a coward. All of the families involved in the case have been granted anonymity, with the babies only identified by a letter.
With a shaking voice, the mother of murdered Child E said she had to grieve her child’s death in front of Letby and other members of the neonatal unit and was not given privacy.
She added that her child was buried in a gown that was given as a gift from the unit, and it was chosen by Letby.
“We were robbed of precious time with our baby after they died,” the mother said. “We were denied the opportunity to spend private moments with [the child], having to grieve openly in the presence of Lucy and the neo-natal unit staff in nursery one.
“Lucy bathed [the child], an action I deeply regret, and dressed [the child] in a woollen gown. [The child] was buried in that gown, a gift from the unit chosen by Lucy. I feel sickened by the choice we made. Not a single day passes without distress over this decision”
“I still struggle to understand why it happened to us.”
A prison van arrives at at Manchester Crown Court ahead of sentencing— (Sky News)
She said Letby “presented herself as kind and softly spoken” but “now I know it is an act”. “The lies that she has told fill me with anger,” the mother added.
“The trial felt like a platform for Lucy to relive her crimes. She has repeatedly disrespected my child’s memory.”
The mother hit out at Letby’s refusal to come to court for her sentencing, saying: “She has decided she has had enough and stays in her cell.”
Other parents have been sharing their victim impact statements with the court in agonising detail.
The mother of murdered Child C told the court that “the shock and pain” of the night her baby died would stay with her forever.
“It was so sudden, so unbelievable,” she said. “It was a pain for us all that was just too hard to bear. The trauma of that night will live with us all till the day we die.
The realisation that the ‘kind’ nurse who had watched over the family was actually their child’s killer was like “something out of a horror story”, she said.
The moment the killer nurse was arrested— (PA Media)
Her voice cracking, she continued: “Lucy Letby, to think that you could get any kind of gratification of inflicting pain on my child and from watching our suffering in the aftermath goes against everything that I believe is to be human.
“I am horrified that someone so evil exists. To you, our child’s life was just collateral damage. There is no sentence that will ever compare to the excruciating agony that we have suffered.
“At least now there is no debate that - in your own words, you killed them on purpose, you are evil, you did this.”
In a statement read to the court, the mother of Child A, who was murdered by Letby, and Child B, who she attempted to kill, said: “2015 was going to be the best year of our lives. We were going to become parents…Never could we have imagined that the most precious things in our lives would have been placed in harm’s way.
“Our minds are so traumatised that it won’t let us remember most of the night when you killed our child.
“You have been successful in your quest to cause maximum pain. You thought it was your right to play God with our children’s lives.
“You thought you could enter our lives and turn it upside down, but you will never win. My family will never think of you again from this day. You are nothing.”
The mother and father of Child O and P, who were also murdered by Letby, spoke to the court via a prerecorded video statement.
The mother said the serial killer had been the last person to hold Child P and also dressed him after he died. She described being in a “state of shock” and continuing to be haunted by “vivid images” from the time, living in “constant fear” of anything happening to her children.
“I now hate that Lucy Letby was the last person to hold [my child],” she said.
With his head bowed and struggling through the statement, the father told the court that he turned to alcohol after the deaths of his children.
“As time went on, around a year after [the children’s] first anniversary, I was still struggling to come to terms with their deaths and so I turned to alcohol, I had not really drunk excessively before. I could see how much this was all hurting [my wife]. I hid how much alcohol I was consuming; I was low and disgusted with myself.”
Wiping tears away, he continued: “One day I took the car keys and had thoughts of ending my life.”
He said he “was gobsmacked” when police told him they were investigating one of the nurses that had cared for their children.
“I knew that something was not right, but it never occurred to me that they’d been purposely murdered.”
“Lucy Letby has destroyed our lives,” he concluded. “The anger and the hatred I have towards her will never go away. It has destroyed me as a man and as a father.”
The parent of Child M, whose child Letby attempted to kill, said that they were made to feel “uneasy” during the trial because she kept looking over at them.
After describing the impact of the nurse’s crimes on their life, the parent added: “One extra thing I would like to add is that there was a day when I was at the trial and the public gallery was full and I was sat in Lucy Letby’s line of view and she kept looking over at me.
“That made me feel quite uncomfortable and uneasy and I had to move in the afternoon so I was out of her view.”
Letby was sentenced to life in prison without parole for her crimes. Judge Mr Justice Goss said that the nurse had “no remorse” and showed a “malevolence bordering on sadism”.
