The government has ordered an independent inquiry after nurse Lucy Letby was found guilty of the murder of seven babies and attempting to kill six others in the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
The Department of Health said the inquiry would investigate the “wider circumstances around what happened at the Countess of Chester Hospital”, including how concerns raised by clinicians over Letby were dealt with.
The inquiry will also look at what actions were taken by regulators and the wider NHS, with a focus on “lessons that can be learned quickly”.
Victims’ families will be invited to “engage with and shape the inquiry”, the Department said, to “ensure their views are heard throughout the process”.
Letby, 33, “played God” as she stalked the words of the neo-natal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital, callously injecting air and fluids including insulin and milk into babies in her care between June 2015 and June 2016.
The convictions make Letby the worst child serial killer in modern British history. Police fear she may have killed more during her time as nurse.
Parents were left devastated by the sudden and unexplained deterioration of their child’s health, but trusted Letby implicitly as the nurse who had been apparently providing care in their hour of need.
The finger of suspicion eventually pointed at Letby after a spike in the hospital’s child mortality rate, and investigations by consultants revealed she had been on duty and with access to the babies repeatedly when babies sudden began to collapse.
Some babies survived an attack by Letby but were then targeted again in a determined attempt to end their lives, Manchester crown court heard during her nine-month trial.
In notes found after a raid on Letby’s home, an apparent confession was found, saying: “I AM EVIL I DID THIS”,
A jury found Letby guilty of seven counts of murder and six charges of attempted murder. Jurors were undecided on a further six charges of attempted murder, and she was cleared of one charge of attempted murder.
Full timeline of Lucy Letby’s campaign of evil
She will now be sentenced by Mr Justice Goss, and almost certainly faces the prospect of the rest of her life in prison.
Letby broke down in tears when the first verdicts were delivered days ago, which could not be reported on until the end of the trial.
Families of the victims have been in court throughout, while Letby’s parents stopped attending court after the first guilty verdicts were delivered.
Prosecutor Nick Johnson KC said consultants on the neo-natal unit noticed the sharp rise in deaths and went looking for a cause.
“Their concern was that babies who were dying had deteriorated unexpectedly. Not only that, but when babies collapsed they did not respond to appropriate and timely resuscitation”, he said.
Letby first showed emotion during trial when ‘crush’ colleague gave evidence
“Some other babies who did not die collapsed dramatically but then recovered – their collapses and recoveries defied the normal experience of the treating doctors.”
He said they found “one common denominator” – Letby – who was a “constant malevolent presence when things took a turn for the worse”.
The trial heard harrowing evidence from parents of the babies targeted by Letby, as well as from her colleagues who began to fear that something terrible was happening.
One of the murdered babies’ mothers recalled hearing “horrendous” screams and walking in to find Letby alone in the room with her five-day-old incubated son.
Why wasn’t ‘Angel of Death’ nurse caught sooner?
“I walked over to the incubator to see he had blood coming out of his mouth”, she said, but was then told by Letby: “Trust me, I’m a nurse.”
She said Letby blamed the bleeding on a feeding tube rubbing her son’s throat, but less than five hours later the young boy – whose health had been improving after he was born 11-week premature – was declared dead.
“I trusted her. Completely”, said the mother, when asked if she had accepted Letby’s explanation of the bleeding.
Other parents described being hugged and comforted by Letby, their main point of contact on the unit, after she had murdered or attempted to murder their child.
Chester Police
Senior Investigating Officer, Detective Chief Inspector Nicola Evans
“Today is not a time for celebration. There are no winners in this case.
“Our focus right now is very much on the families of the babies. The compassion and strength shown by the parents – and wider family members – has been overwhelming.
“Today is all about them – and we must not lose sight of that. I cannot begin to imagine how the families in this case feel today. We will all take some time to reflect on today’s verdict both the guilty and the not guilty verdicts.
“I would like to say thank you to the families for putting their trust in us and I hope that this process has provided them with some of the answers they have been waiting for. We will continue to work closely with each of the families in the days and weeks ahead in order to ensure they have the support they all require in light of everything they have experienced.
“My thoughts – and those of the whole prosecution team – remain with them at this incredibly difficult time.”
DCI Evans added: “The details of this case are truly crushing. A trained nurse responsible for caring and protecting tiny, premature babies; a person who was in a position of trust, she abused that trust in the most unthinkable way.
“I cannot begin to understand what the families have had to endure over the past seven or eight years but we have been humbled by their composure and resilience throughout this whole process.”
The nurse killed one baby when he was just 24 hours old by injecting him with air, and she tried to kill his twin sister the very next day.
In the notes later found at Letby’s home, she had written: “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough” and added: “I am a horrible evil person.”
Mr Johnson told jurors Letby was “completely out of control” by June 2016, when she attacked three babies on her return from a holiday in Ibiza. Two boys were murdered and she attempted to kill a third boy, the court heard.
She had “got away with so much” by that point that she had the “misplaced confidence that she could pretty much do whatever she wanted”.
Letby remarked to a colleague about one of the boys “he’s not leaving here alive, is he?”, she had texted a friend about going back to work “with a bang”, and the prosecutor said Letby knew what she was planning.
“She was controlling things. She was enjoying what was going on and happily predicting what she knew was going to happen”, he said. “She was in effect playing God.”
Colleagues of Letby raised their suspicions, leading to her being removed from the neo-natal unit in July 2016 as an investigation began.
She was in her pyjamas at home in bed when she was arrested and led away in handcuffs by police, and told the court in her evidence that she was “devastated” to be accused.
“I only ever did my best to care for them – I am there to help and to care, not to hurt”, she insisted.
Originally from Hereford, the court heard Letby studied for her nursing degree at Chester University and had been working as a nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital since qualifying a few years before the murders.
Her parents, John, 76, and Susan, 62, watched on in court along with some of the victims’ families as Letby gave evidence.
