Lucy Letby was a typical girl-next-door who became the most prolific serial killer of children in modern British history.
Lucy Letby was handed a whole-life sentence for murdering seven new-borns and attempting to kill another six.
The shocking details that came out during the Lucy Letby trial stunned the nation.
On the surface, 33-year-old Lucy Letby seemed like any other young nurse who loved her job.
Clad in her blue scrubs, she appeared calm and professional. But behind that façade hid a sadistic and evil murderer – one who inflicted indescribable pain on the most defenceless and tiny babies in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital, where she worked.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr Sohom Das says, “It is without doubt a horrific case. There were no apparent warning signs - I have never come across a woman like her before.
“She somehow managed to compartmentalise her dark and twisted emotions and could divorce her actions from the rest of her everyday normal life. Sickeningly, it was easier for her because her victims were so defenceless – it took no physical energy to murder them, there was no violence, or struggle. So, her acts were less draining emotionally.”
In the space of just over a year, from June 2015 to June 2016, Lucy Letby murdered seven babies in different horrific ways – by injecting them with air, over-feeding, poisoning with insulin, and assaulting them with medical tools. She also attempted to murder a further six new-borns.
Lucy Letby was sentenced to life in prison on 21 August this year, but horrifically, the true scale of her actions is still unknown.
Police are now reviewing the care of 4,000 babies she may have come into contact with at the Countess of Chester Hospital between January 2012 and June 2016.
She also had two work placements at Liverpool Women’s Hospital in 2012 and 2015, which are also being reviewed.
A Government inquiry has also been launched to investigate why, despite senior doctors repeatedly raising their suspicions over Lucy Letby to senior management, she was able to continue working on the neonatal unit.
She was finally removed in July 2016 and, in May 2017 after a formal investigation, police were contacted. Lucy Letby was arrested in July 2018 and charged in November 2020.
Lucy Letby has maintained her innocence throughout and, in a final act of cowardice and cruelty, refused to attend her sentencing and listen to the impact statements given by the devastated families of the babies she murdered.
Dr Das says, “It’s possible she’s just callous with a complete lack of empathy. I’ve assessed over 500 defendants and there’s only been three or four out of them who haven’t suffered some sort of trauma or abuse in their childhood or more recent past. That’s what makes her case so unusual.”
Lucy Letby gave no mitigating circumstances for her actions. She seemingly came from a loving family, brought up in Hereford by her doting parents Susan, 63, and Jonathan, 77. Their pride in their only child was obvious to everyone – they even took out advertisements in their local paper to celebrate such milestones as her graduation and 21st birthday.
She still went on holiday to Torquay with them and admitted that they hated her being away from home.
Lucy Letby also had an active social life, with salsa dancing a particular favourite.
She was a regular gym goer and a member of the local pub quiz team.
Her home was neat and tidy and she had cuddly toys on her bed.
But the question still remains as to why she would choose to commit such heinous crimes. Dr Das says, “On balance, I don’t think it was Munchausen’s by proxy – the disease that Beverley Allit, aka the ‘Angel of Death’, who murdered four infants and attempted to kill another five in 1991 – had. With this disease, the caretaker of the child either makes up symptoms or causes real symptoms to make a child look ill. Lucy didn’t appear to want to draw attention to the babies being ill, as such, or saying that they needed help, which would be expected as it is a feature of Munchausen’s.
“In my opinion, there are four different possible motivations. It could have been about feeling powerful and feeling she had control and dominance, like a God complex. Another possibility is that she had a fascination with the grieving process – I say that because she liked to be there with the parents, making memory boxes, and she repeatedly looked up the babies’ families on Facebook. And she may have done it because she enjoyed the deception and feeling that she was appearing to be the caring nurse and part of their grieving process, but she was tricking them as she was actually the instrument of death.
“Or it could be that she felt jealousy or rage towards the family units, as in her mind she thought she’d never achieve that – on one of the Post-it notes found in her flat by police, which was part of the prosecution’s evidence, she’d written, ‘I’ll never have children or get marry [sic]. I’ll never know what it’s like to have a family. NO HOPE.’”
Further theories have said that Lucy Letby was a psychopath or had narcissistic personality disorder.
But Dr Das is sceptical. He explains, “She has some character traits of a psychopath – she’s callous, cold and impulsive. She doesn’t care about the rights of other people and will do what she wants. But a psychopath usually also has other elements, such as being sexually promiscuous; they’re usually versatile, parasitic and violent and offend in other ways too, which, as far as we know, she didn’t do.
“Equally, narcissists tend to be narcissistic in every aspect of their life – they will be attention-seeking and have an inflated self-image. She didn’t seem entitled or full of herself outside of her offending. To this day, Lucy Letby has maintained her innocence, so sadly the parents affected by this horrific case may never hear from her the real reason she committed such atrocious crimes.”
● In Two Minds: Stories Of Murder, Justice And Recovery From A Forensic Psychiatrist by Dr Sohom Das is out now