A UK jury convicted child serial killer Lucy Letby of attempting to murder another baby girl at the hospital neo-natal unit where she worked on Tuesday.
This comes nearly a year after a different jury convicted the former nurse of murdering seven newborn babies and attempting to kill six others, making her Britain's most prolific child serial killer in modern history. Letby, 34, faced a retrial at Manchester Crown Court for the attempted murder of a baby girl, referred to in court as Child K, at the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwest England in 2016. Jurors at her original trial last year failed to reach a verdict on that charge. However, the jury hearing the case again took just over three hours this time to reach their unanimous guilty verdict.
Letby, who is already serving a whole-life prison sentence and was earlier this year refused an appeal bid, will be sentenced for the latest offence on Friday. During the re-trial, jurors heard that the former nurse was "caught virtually red-handed" by a senior consultant as she displaced Child K's breathing tube. The prosecution detailed how the consultant paediatrician walked into the unit's intensive care nursery room and saw Letby standing next to the incubator "doing nothing", as the infant's blood oxygen levels dipped. The jury was also told of Letby's convictions last August of murdering seven babies and the attempted murders of six more between 2015 and 2016.
Reporting restrictions prevent publication of the identities of the surviving and dead children in the cases. Appearing in the witness box last month, Letby denied attempting to murder or harm Child K, or intending to hurt or harm any baby in her care. Child K was transferred to a specialist hospital later the same day because she was born extremely prematurely. She died there three days later, although the prosecution has not alleged Letby caused her death. Letby, from Hereford, western England, was arrested and then charged in 2020 following a string of baby deaths at the Countess of Chester Hospital's neonatal unit. The prosecution at her first trial last year said she attacked her vulnerable prematurely born victims, often during night shifts, by either injecting them with air, overfeeding them with milk or poisoning them with insulin. A public inquiry into events at the hospital unit will start to hear evidence in September.
