A 32-year-old former nurse, Lucy Letby, has been appearing since Monday, October 10 for the murders of 7 babies in the Chester hospital where she worked at the time.
Between 2015 and 2016, the death toll in the neonatal unit of the hospital in Chester, UK, increased in a particularly worrying way. These are 7 children who died inexplicably in the service, and nearly a dozen whose health deteriorated suddenly when they were in good health. An investigation is launched to understand the cause of these newborn deaths. According to prosecutor Nick Johnson at the opening of the trial this Monday, October 10 “After looking for a cause, the consultants noticed that deaths or fainting had a common denominator.” This common denominator is a woman, a nurse from the neonatology department: Lucy Letby.
The tragedies seem to follow the young nurse. The prosecutor adds: When Lucy Letby Switches to Daytime Schedules, Faintings and Deaths Switch to Daytime Schedules.” She becomes the main suspect in the case. Within 18 months, she is accused of killing seven babies and attempting to kill ten others including a set of twins. She even went back to it sometimes several times to kill the same child. His modus operandi was to inject infants with insulin, with air to induce embolisms, or in some cases feed them too much milk. Arrested and then charged in November 2020, the young woman chose to plead not guilty to the 22 counts for which she was appearing against the Manchester judges.
Lucy Letby isn’t the first killer in a white coat
Lucy Letby isn’t the first caregiver to take advantage of her position to quietly kill patients. Its history is reminiscent of another very famous one: that of Donald Harvey, nicknamed “the angel of death”. The American nurse was sentenced to life in 1987 for the murders of 34 people, all patients in the hospitals where he worked. Investigators have since estimated that he killed at least 70 people between 1970 and his arrest. This murderer has since died, murdered in prison in 2017 by a fellow prisoner.