Former nurse Lucy Letby was found guilty on Tuesday of trying to murder another newborn baby, adding to convictions last year that made her Britain’s most prolific serial child killer of modern times.
Letby, 34, was found guilty last August of murdering seven babies and trying to kill six more between June 2015 and June 2016 while working as a nurse in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, northern England.
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In her evidence, Letby again denied having ever harmed any baby put in her care, and said she had no recollection of the night in question. Her defence lawyer said the evidence was not there to prove her guilt.
Letby was originally found guilty of killing the five baby boys and two baby girls by injecting the infants with insulin or air, or force-feeding them milk.
The case shocked Britain and prompted the government to order an inquiry into why concerns about her behaviour had not been heeded by hospital bosses.
Police also said they were carrying out further investigations into whether there were other victims at hospitals where Letby had previously worked.
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For some on social media, Letby has become a cause celebre who was herself a victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice and, ahead of the latest trial, the New Yorker magazine ran an article questioning the evidence against her.
In May, however, England’s Court of Appeal rejected her attempt to overturn her conviction, which was mainly based on arguments that evidence from the prosecution’s expert witness was flawed.
Letby had also argued jurors were wrongly told they did not have to be sure how she was alleged to have killed or attempted to kill her victims.
But, Judge Victoria Sharp said in a ruling made public on Tuesday, that “it was not necessary for the prosecution to prove the precise manner in which she had acted”.
–0Reporting by Michael Holden and Sachin Ravikumar; editing by William James, Mark Heinrich, Alexandra Hudson
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