UK killer nurse Lucy Letby may have harmed dozens more babies, claim police

Lucy Letby, the 32-year-old British nurse convicted on Friday of murdering seven newborn babies while in her care, has also been accused of harming dozens more infants.

The other babies are in addition to the 17 infants for whom Letby was put on trial last year. The alleged murders took place at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.

She was eventually convicted of murdering seven babies and trying to kill another six after a trial at Manchester Crown Court that lasted for 10 months.

Now, a report in The Guardian has claimed that she may have harmed more babies at Liverpool Women's Hospital and the Countess of Chester Hospital. The police are in the second phase of their investigation of the case.

"From 2012 through to 2016, there were more than 4,000 admissions of babies into the neo-natal units of both the Countess of Chester hospital and the Liverpool women's hospital for us to work through," Det. Supt. Paul Hughes said.

"This does not mean we are investigating all 4,000, it just means that we are committed to a thorough review of every admission from a medical perspective, to ensure that nothing is missed throughout the entirety of her employment as a nurse. Only those cases highlighted as concerning medically will be investigated further."

The matter came to light after the hospital authorities called in police to investigate the "significant rise," in infant mortality rates.

One of the babies was just 24 hours old when Letby allegedly injected him with air. It is alleged that she tried to kill his twin sister the next day, Manchester Crown Court was told.

Letby reportedly tried to kill some babies more than once, using different methods. Last year, the court was told that sometimes the babies were injected with air down a tube into their circulation, and sometimes they would be injected with insulin. On other occasions, they would be given too much milk, which may have had "catastrophic effects" on the newborns.

A baby was just a day old when he died under Letby's watch in June 2015. Her final victims were two triplet boys. During the trial, prosecutors told the court that "she was in effect playing God" when the killings took place.

"She was controlling things. She was enjoying what was going on. She was predicting things that she knew were going to happen," said one of the prosecutors. During the searches at her home, the police found several handwritten notes, one of which read: "I am evil, I did this."

"I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough to care for them. On another note, she wrote, "I will never have children or marry. I will never know what it's like to have a family," read another note.

The prosecutors called the killing "a complete betrayal of the trust placed in her." They further stated that Letby "gaslighted" her colleagues into believing that the deaths were just "a run of bad luck."

Dr. Ravi Jayaram, a consultant paediatrician at the Countess of Chester Hospital, was among those who raised concerns about Letby. He says that some of the lives could have been saved if the police had been alerted sooner.

"I do genuinely believe that there are four or five babies who could be going to school now who aren't," Dr. Jayaram told ITV News after the court convicted Letby of the murders.

He said that concerns about Letby were first raised in June 2015. However, she was arrested only in July 2018 and subsequently charged in November 2020. The trial in her case began in October of last year. The court has not yet announced her sentence.