Lucy Letby is Britain’s most prolific child killer – but why did she kill vulnerable babies in her care? Here’s all the possible motives we know behind the former NHS nurse’s crimes
Lucy Letby’s reasons for killing babies may never be explained – but jurors have tried to understand her motives.
The former NHS nurse has today been convicted of another newborn’s attempted murder following a retrial at Manchester Crown Court. A jury of six women and six men found Letby, 34, guilty of attempting to kill a three-day-old baby girl, known as Child K, in February 2016.
Letby was previously handed a whole-life order in August 2023 after being found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six others during her year-long killing spree, between 2015 and 2016, at the Countess of Chester Hospital where she worked.
The ex-neonatal nurse has denied doing anything harmful to any child, and the grieving families of her victims still have had no explanation from her. So why did she kill? Here, we take a look at all of the possible theories behind her unthinkable crimes…
‘Calculated opportunist’
During 2015 and 2016, there was a significant rise in the number of infants who suffered serious and unexpected collapses in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital. Letby was the only member of the nursing and clinical staff who was on duty every time the collapses – which the Crown argued were not natural events – occured.
Prosecutor Nick Johnson KC said Letby was a ‘calculated opportunist’ who used the vulnerabilities of premature and sick babies to disguise her chilling acts. Her seemingly normal behaviour ‘persuaded many colleagues that the collapses and deaths were normal’.
‘Playing God’
Johnson also said Letby was ‘playing God’ during her trial by harming babies and then being the first to alert her colleagues to their decline. After her final murder of Child P in June 2016, she said to a doctor: “He’s not making it out of here alive, is he?” The neonatal nurse had earlier pumped air into the days-old infant’s stomach as she fed him milk, and he died soon after.
Letby had made similar comments in two previous murders. Johnson told jurors: “She knew what was going to happen. She was controlling things. She was enjoying what was going on. She was predicting things that she knew was going to happen. She, in effect, was playing God.”
‘Besotted’ with Doctor A
The prosecution suggested Letby was infatuated with a married doctor at the hospital, and was having a secret relationship with the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons but is referred to as Dr A. They claimed he was her ‘boyfriend’, but she repeatedly denied this and insisted: “I loved him as a friend. I was not in love with him.”
It was said that she would call him when the babies suddenly deteriorated to get his “personal attention”. After she was removed from the ward, the two continued to meet outside of work for coffee and restaurant dates, shopping trips, and a visit to her home, where she lived alone.
A ‘thrill’ from killing
Parents and nurses described Letby acting unusually when the babies she killed or tried to murder suddenly declined on the ward. The parents of Child I told police they remembered her “smiling and going on about how she was present at [Child I’s] first bath and how much she had loved it”.
She also searched for families of her victims on Facebook on the anniversaries of their deaths. In evidence, Letby said she would search for all sorts of people, and not just the parents of babies on the unit.
Johnson suggested to Letby that she was “getting a thrill” out of watching the grief and despair of parents and colleagues. She denied these claims and told the court that she was “trying, in that awful situation, to have some positive memories”. Letby said: “It wasn’t meant with any malice. We still talk to babies, we still treat them as if they were alive.”
‘Not good enough’
Evidence pointing towards the former nurse included a number of handwritten notes found in her bedroom at home, and one green Post-it note was presented to the jury. Letby wrote: “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them”, “I am a horrible evil person” and in capital letters “I am evil I did this”.
Johnson invited the jurors to read the note ‘literally’ as a confession. Ben Myers KC, representing Letby, explained the note was the “anguished outpouring of a young woman in fear and despair when she realises the enormity of what’s being said about her”.
Letby later said in evidence: “I felt I must be responsible in some way. I think looking back on it now, I was really struggling, and this was a way of me expressing what I wasn’t able to say to anyone else.”
‘Covert narcissism’
One psychologist – who was not involved in the trial and did not present his suggestions in court – has since shared his possible theory behind the killings. Lecturer in criminology at Loughborough University, Dominic Wilmott, told the Mail Letby was a ‘covert narcissist’ and said she may have been motivated by a ‘pathological desire for attention and sympathy’.
“In our analysis of healthcare professionals who perpetrate violence against their patients, especially children, offending appeared to be motivated by a pathological desire for attention and sympathy emerging as a consequence of their involvement in the case,” he said.
“There was a complex interaction between this and a history of personality disorder diagnoses and characteristics, and were often found to be highly sadistic and narcissistic as described by those who knew them.”
It has also been suggested that Letby was suffering from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, a condition in which carers can intentionally harm children in order to gain attention for themselves.
