The Guardian:
The serial killer nurse Lucy Letby will never be released from prison after a judge sentenced her to a rare whole-life term for the "sadistic" murder of seven babies.
Letby, 33, is only the third woman alive to be given the jail term in the UK. She was sentenced at Manchester crown court on Monday.
The former neonatal nurse, the worst child serial killer in modern British history, was also convicted of attempting to murder six more babies at the Countess of Chester hospital.
Letby had a "detached enthusiasm" for the resuscitation of babies fighting for life, the judge said, adding that she "cruelly and callously" made inappropriate remarks to parents or colleagues during or after a death.
She kept hundreds of medical documents as "morbid records of the dreadful events surrounding your victims and what you had done to them", the court heard.
In one statement, the mother of a baby murdered on his fourth day alive, Child C, said she felt it was like watching someone else's life as her son died.
Holding back tears in court, she said: "The trauma of us all will live with us all until we die. Learning that his killer was watching us [as we grieved] is like something out of a horror story."
She said she would "live forever with the guilt" that she was not able to protect him: "I think about what his voice would have sounded like. What he would have looked like now. Who he would have been."
She refused to come to court for sentencing and is the third woman to receive a whole-life order, i.e. there is no possibility of her ever being released.
The serial killer nurse Lucy Letby will never be released from prison after a judge sentenced her to a rare whole-life term for the "sadistic" murder of seven babies.
Letby, 33, is only the third woman alive to be given the jail term in the UK. She was sentenced at Manchester crown court on Monday.
The former neonatal nurse, the worst child serial killer in modern British history, was also convicted of attempting to murder six more babies at the Countess of Chester hospital.
Letby had a "detached enthusiasm" for the resuscitation of babies fighting for life, the judge said, adding that she "cruelly and callously" made inappropriate remarks to parents or colleagues during or after a death.
She kept hundreds of medical documents as "morbid records of the dreadful events surrounding your victims and what you had done to them", the court heard.
In one statement, the mother of a baby murdered on his fourth day alive, Child C, said she felt it was like watching someone else's life as her son died.
Holding back tears in court, she said: "The trauma of us all will live with us all until we die. Learning that his killer was watching us [as we grieved] is like something out of a horror story."
She said she would "live forever with the guilt" that she was not able to protect him: "I think about what his voice would have sounded like. What he would have looked like now. Who he would have been."
She refused to come to court for sentencing and is the third woman to receive a whole-life order, i.e. there is no possibility of her ever being released.
