32-year-old Lucy Letby, a nurse at Countess of Chester Hospital is accused of murdering seven premature babies – and trying to kill at least ten more. She allegedly murdered five baby boys and two baby girls between the years of 2015 and 2016. One infant boy had his life threatened three times, twice in a single day by Nurse Letby.

The nurse’s year-long killing spree ruined the lives of more than a dozen families when their children came into the care of the deadly neonatal nurse. Letby was specially trained as a neonatal intensive care unit nurse who was described as a “constant malevolent presence” in the hospital’s children’s unit.

The nurse took advantage of the fact that parents were less likely to visit their babies in the NICU overnight, using her night shifts to harm them instead. She killed and injured a range of different children, including twins.

The nurse is accused of killing one premature baby with an injection of insulin and another by injecting air into its veins, according to accusations presented in court. If true, these actions could have caused strokes or heart attacks. It is also alleged that the nurse pumped milk into babies through feeding tubes and their veins.

Not only did Letby target twins on multiple occasions, in some cases killing one while the other survived. During the prosecution’s opening remarks in the Crown Court, Nick Johnson KC said: “Sometimes a baby that she succeeded in killing was not killed the first or even second time she tried.”

He continued: “Sometimes they were injected with air – both intravenously [into the blood] and via the nasogastric tube [into the stomach]. Sometimes they were injected with milk or some other fluid. Sometimes it was insulin. But the constant presence was Lucy Letby.”

Letby has been charged with a total of twenty-two counts, seventeen of which are related to infant murder or attempted murder. she denied all charges and pleaded not guilty during her court appearance.

Johnson said Letby went against the rules at the “closely restricted” neonatal unit in the British hospital.

“It is a hospital like so many others in the UK, but unlike many other hospitals in the UK, and unlike many other neonatal units in the UK, within the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital, a poisoner was at work.”

The prosecutor continued, “Babies who had not been unstable at all suddenly severely deteriorated. Sometimes babies who had been sick and then on the mend deteriorated for no apparent reason. Having searched for a cause, which they were unable to find, the consultants found the inexplicable collapses and deaths did have one common denominator. The presence of one of the neonatal nurses. That nurse was Lucy Letby.”

Letby’s trial is still ongoing and is expected to last for another six months.