Killer nurse Lucy Letby remained entirely emotionless as the jury returned guilty verdicts in the hospital baby poisoning trial that lasted nine months.
While Letby was unmoved, the nurse’s mother sobbed uncontrollably and wailed at the jury.
The 33-year-old serial killer has been unmasked as one of Britain’s worst child murderers, after injecting babies with air and poisoning them with insulin while working at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Last Friday, the jury delivered eight guilty verdicts after 86 hours of deliberating, after being provided with a majority direction by the judge.
Susan Letby cried out ‘This can’t be right’ before sobbing uncontrollably— (Getty Images)
Upon hearing that she had been found guilty of four murders and four attempted murders, Letby remained dispassionate with her head bowed.
Her mother, Susan Letby, was heard crying out “This can’t be right, this can’t be right” and sobbing uncontrollably, before being escorted from the courtroom by her husband John.
Three times a year John and Susan Letby would visit Torquay for their holidays and their only child Lucy often joined them.
In July 2018, they had returned from one such break and Mr Letby was staying overnight at his daughter’s semi-detached home in Westbourne Road, Chester.
She had bought the house two years earlier, within walking distance of her workplace, the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal unit.
She lived alone and doted on her two cats, Smudge and Tigger.
At 6am on July 3 there was a loud knock at the front door.
When it was answered, police officers from Cheshire Constabulary filed in and told Letby she was being arrested on suspicion of multiple counts of murder and attempted murder.
She was taken to a nearby police station in handcuffs where she faced three days of questioning about babies in her care.
Further arrests followed in June 2019 and November 2020 when she had moved back in with her parents in her home city of Hereford.
The Letbys were a close-knit family and her parents were understandably proud when their daughter became the first in their wider family to go to university and move away from home.
But her trial heard that Mr Letby, now 77 and Mrs Letby, 63, came to “hate it” when she did not return home after her graduation and that made her feel “constantly guilty”.
Messaging a friend who had joked about emigrating to New Zealand, Letby said: “I couldn’t leave my parents. They would be completely devastated. Find it hard enough being away from me now and its only 100 miles.
“I came here to uni & didn’t go back. They hate it & I feel guilty for staying here sometimes but it’s what I want.”
Letby told another friend: “My parents worry massively about everything & anything, hate that I live alone etc.
“I feel bad because I know it’s really hard for them especially as I’m an only child, and they mean well, just a little suffocating at times and constantly feel guilty.”
The guilty verdicts included the murders of Baby O and Baby P, two brothers in a set of triplets, who died in June 2016 after being injected with air.
She was also found guilty by a majority of 10 to one of murdering Baby C, who was killed after air was inserted into his stomach, and Baby I, who suffered extreme pain after air was injected into her bloodstream.
