Lucy Letby: Mad Midwife
Before a pregnant woman enters a hospital, a flurry of emotions overwhelms her: excitement to meet her child, doubts of whether she will be an adequate mother, fear of delivery going smoothly… No matter what she, or any patient, is going through, we should not doubt that she will receive the best possible care from the hospital. Yet, millions of people across the world were sickened when seven infants were left dead under the care of one nurse.
Lucy Letby, from Hereford, England, was a nurse at the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital from 2012 until 2016. Letby was accused of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others between 2015 and 2016. The accusations began among her coworkers, who became suspicious after four infant collapses—three of which resulted in death—occurred within one neonatal unit in June 2015. This stuck out to hospital workers, as the Countess of Chester Hospital neonatal unit only observed two or three infant deaths a year.
Unit managers Eirian Powell and Stephen Brearey held an informal review, which they presented to the committee of the NHS Foundation Trust. This review stated that Letby had been injecting air and liquids into the bloodstream of infants, overfeeding them with milk, and using insulin as poison. The NHS Foundation Trust was meant to address serious incidents, but the report was only ruled as a medication error. Although still a serious mistake, it was not questioned heavily due to the fact that Letby had been covering shifts for many understaffed units, and that Letby was a relatively “average” nurse. This made it hard to pinpoint whether or not she was the independent variable in every death.
The unexplained rise in mortality rates within the unit were still concerning managers, though. Once the sixth and seventh deaths appeared right after Letby came back from her vacation in Ibiza, Brearey demanded that Letby be removed from the unit.
In September 2016 — shortly after her removal from the unit in June — Letby made a formal complaint that her removal was based on suspicion and no solid evidence, and that she was wrongfully accused. The board backed her on this grievance, and she was given an apology from the hospital in late 2016. Just months later, in March 2017, the coworkers who accused Letby requested an official investigation by the police. With Letby set to come back to work in May, they knew they had to take more drastic measures.
Letby was arrested three times after the investigation, which lasted a year: she was arrested the first time in July 2018, was bailed in the same month, arrested again in June 2019, and was bailed for the second time just a few weeks later. Then, Letby was arrested for a third time in November 2020 and was denied bail — thus ensuing the next four years of investigation and trials.
Evidence against Letby was both shocking and confusing — there were personal notes reading “I AM EVIL, I DID THIS,” charts of the deceased babies taken from the clinic and kept in her home, searches of the parent’s Facebook accounts, and heaps of medical jargon from the hospital which all persuaded the jury to deem her guilty. However, one key question remained: why? Letby had come from a loving family, an unburdened upbringing, and had a great social life. Her coworkers had even described her as completely unassuming. So what could have driven her to commit such heinous crimes?
Josh Halliday, a reporter for UK newspaper The Guardian was present at one of these court hearings. It was suggested that the prosecutors of the case presented the jury with "the germ of a motive, suggesting Letby enjoyed 'playing God'... and got a kick out of the 'excitement of resuscitating babies'."
The question of Letby’s mental state was brought up multiple times, as well. Beatrice Yorker, a retired professor of nursing, criminal justice, and criminalistics at California State University in Los Angeles, noted that Letby held sadistic traits, enjoying the act of resuscitation. Psychopathy has been suggested in response to the detached and cold demeanor Letby held, unwavering under witness's horrifying descriptions of her murders; the only time she shed any tears was when her coworker, a married doctor who she had been repeatedly accused of being in love with, began speaking on the witness stand.
With the evidence leaving Letby as the sole person responsible for the dead babies, and with a background and motive that doesn’t entirely make sense, the public’s opinion on Letby’s guilt has been conflicting. Nevertheless, Justice Gross has found Lucy Letby guilty, and she has been sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole.
