Serial killer nurse Lucy Letby has been found guilty of the attempted murder of an extremely premature baby, just two hours after she was born.
Letby, who was convicted last year of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six others, was found guilty by a jury at a retrial at Manchester Crown Court.
The jury at her original trial had been unable to reach a verdict on the charge that she attempted to murder the premature baby, known as Baby K, at the Countess of Chester Hospital in February 2016.
The prosecution said that Letby had displaced the baby’s breathing tube and had been caught “virtually red-handed” when a doctor walked into the room.
Consultant paediatrician Dr Ravi Jayaram told the jury he saw Letby standing beside the infant’s incubator doing nothing as her blood oxygen levels fell to life-threatening levels.
An alarm that should have been sounding was silent.
After the baby recovered, her tube was displaced two more times that night, the prosecution said, alleging Letby had tried to make it appear like the infant habitually displaced it herself.
The baby, who had been born at 25 week’s gestation, was transferred to a specialist neo-natal unit but died three days later.
Letby’s actions were not alleged to have caused her death.
During the retrial, Letby denied that she had ever intended or tried to harm any baby in her care.
She said she had no recollection of the incident with Baby K but said: “I know I did nothing to interfere.”
Letby was previously convicted of seven counts of murder, and six counts of attempted murder
Letby was asked about Facebook searches she made for Baby K’s surname more than two years after she left the neonatal unit.
She had also searched for the parents of other babies she was convicted of murdering or attempting to murder.
She denied having a fascination with the families or looking for signs of their grief.
She told the jury: “I’m not guilty of what I’ve been found guilty of.”
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Last August, Letby was sentenced to 14 whole life orders after the jury found her guilty at the end of a ten-month trial.
In sentencing at that trial, the judge Mr Justice Goss said she was guilty of a “cruel, calculated and cynical campaign of child murder involving the smallest and most vulnerable of children”.
He added: “There was a deep malevolence bordering on sadism in your actions.”
The motivation for those actions was unclear.
The prosecution told her original trial that she enjoyed “playing God” and was excited by the drama of staff rushing to save the babies she had attacked.
A public inquiry into events at the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal unit will begin to hear evidence in September.
