Good morning.
The 10-month trial of Lucy Letby, a 33-year-old neonatal nurse found guilty of murdering seven babies and trying to kill six more, came to a close yesterday. She will never be released from prison after a judge gave her a whole-life sentence, making her the fourth woman to be given such a jail term in the UK. The first woman to be sent to jail for life was Moors murderer Myra Hindley, who was convicted of the murders of two children between 1963 and 1965 across Greater Manchester. The other two women currently serving whole-life sentences are Rose West and Joanna Dennehy.
Letby’s crimes, which have been described as “sadistic”, “cruel” and “calculated”, triggered one of the biggest and most complex murder investigations in recent history. The volume of evidence was so great it left the jury deliberating for 22 days during which they handed out the verdicts that would make Letby the worst child serial killer in modern British history. The verdicts were not all given at once, but over several days, and the jury was unable to reach verdicts on six additional counts of attempted murder against five babies.
As time has gone on, serious questions have been raised about the inaction of hospital bosses who were running the neonatal unit when Letby was committing her offences. So despite the length of the investigation and subsequent trial, the story is not over: police believe that Letby may have harmed dozens more children at two hospitals in the north-west and the families are waiting for an independent inquiry to begin.
For today’s newsletter, I spoke to the Guardian’s north of England correspondent, Josh Halliday, about his reporting on the trial.
In depth: ‘Even with the sentencing, this is not the end of the story’
Lucy Letby’s crimes began at least eight years ago, at the Countess of Chester hospital, where she injected a fatal amount of air into the bloodstream of a premature baby who was otherwise healthy. After being handed over to Letby, who was working the overnight shift, Child A deteriorated rapidly and died within 90 minutes of her shift starting. Over a year-long period, Letby would replicate these attacks, murdering and attempting to murder several other babies. The trial found that Letby had force fed milk to one infant and murdered two others by poisoning them with insulin. For more information read the Guardian timeline on Letby’s attacks at the hospital.
How did this young nurse, who has been described as “beige”, “average”, and even “nice”, commit such unfathomable crimes? And what, if anything, was done to stop it?
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The turning points in the case
Josh says he remembers Letby’s arrest vividly. It was in 2018, three years after the first crime was committed. Cheshire police announced that they had arrested a woman on suspicion of murdering babies at the Countess of Chester hospital. “The statement dropped quite late in the afternoon, maybe early evening, and it was just an absolute bombshell,” Josh says.
It took two years for the police to charge Letby because of the complexity of the case – and she has remained in custody since November 2020, awaiting trial. Even when the trial began, the agonising wait for the victims’ families did not end, with a number of delays.
One particularly critical moment in the trial was when it became clear that Letby would be giving evidence herself. Defendants do not have to do this, but Letby, who always maintained her innocence, decided that she would. When she was being questioned by her barrister, Josh says, “she was incredibly believable and she talked convincingly about the impact that the arrest had on her life”. But as soon as the cross examination began, all credibility fell apart.
Josh describes how her demeanour changed: “She became colder and gave curt answers.” He adds that Letby never looked the prosecutor in the eye when he was talking to her and stared straight ahead at a fixed point in the wall. She seemed fidgety and nervous and by the end she was just giving “robotic monosyllabic one-word answers to every single question”.
The jury deliberated for more than 110 hours. As the days and weeks inched by, it increasingly looked like it could be headed towards a hung jury, Josh says, but in the end they found her guilty. A joint statement released by the victims’ families said that the verdict was “bittersweet” and would not quell their “heartbreak” and “devastation”.
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Motives
Despite years of investigation and 10 months at trial, there is still not a clear explanation for the motive behind these horrifying murders. Unlike Myra Hindley and Rose West, there are no signs of abuse or trauma in Letby’s childhood – quite the opposite, Letby’s parents continue to stand by her side. A few ideas, however, were posited throughout the trial for jurors to mull on: one focused on Letby’s infatuation with a married doctor, with whom, according to the prosecution, she was having an affair. The nature of their relationship is important, as this doctor, who cannot be named due to a court order, was responsible for helping babies who would suddenly deteriorate. The prosecution suggested that this was her way of getting his attention.
Other motives that were put forward included the idea Letby enjoyed “playing God”, that she was bored, or that she got a thrill from the “grief and despair” that took place after the death of a baby. Josh wrote a comprehensive rundown on the other possible motives that led Letby to commit these crimes.
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The hospital
The other question that hangs over this case is around the culpability of the hospital. Hospital bosses at Countess of Chester (pictured above) have been accused of failing to act after numerous concerns were raised by senior doctors in the neonatal unit over the course of the year that Letby was harming infants.
Josh spoke to Dr Stephen Brearey (pictured top), the consultant paediatrician who was the first person to spot Lucy Letby’s connection to these unexplained and unusual baby deaths and alert hospital executives. They met in a cafe in Chester: “We were sat right at the back because he was very nervous. There was such an atmosphere of paranoia among all the senior doctors because of how their concerns were handled.” Brearey told Josh that hospital executives failed to act when he and other doctors raised multiple concerns about Letby as she carried out her killings, and were even told to apologise to her.
Letby was not removed until July 2016, a year after she was first suspected of foul play by a doctor and it was raised with a hospital executive. To put it simply, Brearey said that the hospital trust had been “negligent”. Josh described this interview as the most “eye-opening, staggering day” in his journalistic career. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget it and I remember just driving home from Chester in complete silence, unable to take in the magnitude of what he said.”
The families have said that they feel “very, very let down” by the hospital and the prosecution’s key medical expert has said that those who failed to respond adequately should be investigated by the police for corporate manslaughter.
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What is next
The government has launched an independent inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Letby’s murders. One minister has said that a statutory inquiry would take too long but there are growing calls from the victims’ families to give the chair of the inquiry the full legal powers to summon witnesses. Meanwhile, Antoinette Sandbach, former MP for Eddisbury, whose own baby died at the Countess of Chester hospital in unrelated circumstances in 2009, told Channel 4 News that hospital executives who failed to act swiftly on Letby should be investigated by Cheshire Police for gross negligence or corporate manslaughter.
“The inquiry will likely look into what the executives knew, who made which decisions and when,” Josh says. “But it just shows that, even with the sentencing, this is certainly not the end of the story.”
What else we’ve been reading
Wilfred Chan writes on the battle to build the world’s tallest prison in New York. Will the 300ft (92m) tower help heal the criminal justice system or stand as a brutal symbol of incarceration? Helen Pidd, North of England editor
When she was 13, Ariel Anderssen’s family decided to leave the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Up until that point her life felt hemmed in and constrained – Anderssen explains how as she made up her own rules she became a BDSM model. Nimo
What’s more important, a good career or a good marriage? In the New York Times (£), David Brooks argues that marrying the right person will make you happier than winning a top job. Helen
The culture wars has expanded into every region imaginable at this point. Nick Robins-Early examines why the far right are taking up (metaphorical) arms against artificial intelligence and how this battle could shape the future of this burgeoning sector. Nimo
You may think you don’t want to read 1,800 words about sweat, but take a deep inhale and enjoy Emma Beddington’s 16 amazing facts about our cooling “superpower”, from armpit transplants to artificial BO. Helen
The front pages
“Letby locked up for life over ‘sadistic’ murder of seven babies” says the Guardian splash headline today, alongside that infamouse photo of Letby holding baby clothes. “In your own words, you killed them on purpose. You are evil. You did this” says the Daily Telegraph, quoting from a mother’s victim statement. The Daily Mail has another quote: “Those lives were not yours to take … there is no forgiving, not now, not other”. “‘Malevolent’ Letby will die in jail for murders” says the Times. “One final act of wickedness” – the Daily Mirror emphasises Lucy Letby’s refusal to, as the i puts it, “face babies’ parents at her sentencing”. The Daily Express has “One final act of wickedness from a coward” while the Metro calls Letby “Calculating, cunning, cruel, cowardly”. The top story in the Financial Times is “Blue-chip bosses handed 16% pay rise amid BoE calls for restraint on wages”.
Today in Focus
Cotton Capital: The Brazilian connection – episode 4
Revisited: The fourth episode in the Cotton Capital series explores how during the transatlantic slave trade, more enslaved African people were taken to Brazil than any other country. Today, more than half of Brazil’s population identify as Black and there are more Black people in Brazil than any other country except Nigeria. But the country is still grappling with deep structural racism
Cartoon of the day | Jason White
The Upside
“My age makes me well prepared for the role of teacher. I have two teenagers. I know what they’re like,” says Cass O’Reilly (pictured), who has left a long career in the NHS to become a French teacher aged 60. She is not alone: this year, the over-55s accounted for the biggest rise in new trainee teachers in England, with a 75% increase in applications.
Amelia Hill talks to four retirees stepping back into the classroom this September, from the 70-year-old nuclear engineer who will teach physics to a 63-year-old ex-banker turning her attention to computer science after a cancer diagnosis.
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
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