Lucy Letby And The Angels Of Death (2)

She was found not guilty of two attempted murders while no verdict was returned on four more. Letby will be sentenced on Monday. Although she took the stand at her trial she refused to attend court after the first verdicts were returned and has indicated she will not attend her sentencing hearing. That will be one of the few significant events in the rest of her miserable life for which she will be able to exercise her free will.

The coverage of this case has been very muted but since its completion (bar Monday’s sentencing) it has attracted saturation coverage, including some very good uploads to the video hub of the world. 

In retrospect, the case against her was very strong. There was the little matter of the notes she wrote and posted around her home, which were interpreted (rightly) as a confession, and consultants, especially Dr Ravi Jayaram, were quick to raise the alarm. And were ignored. Dewi Evans is a retired paediatrician who appeared at the Letby trial as an expert witness. He told Talk TV there was a culture of cover up by managers in the National Health Service. The defence tried to have his evidence excluded, and some of the questions they put to him bordered on insults. In view of this extremely spirited defence, Letby will have little chance of a successful appeal, should she be brazen enough to mount one. 

Readers of a certain vintage may remember a similar angel of death: Beverley Allitt. Allitt was a nurse who worked at a Grantham hospital. She murdered four babies between February and April 1991 as well as attacking at least thirteen more. Unlike Letby, who was to all appearances a normal human being, there were definite red flags with Allitt. Shortly after her conviction she was transferred to Rampton, one of the country’s high security hospitals, where she has been held ever since.

Allitt murdered her victims with insulin, one of the methods used by Letby.

Allitt has been eligible for parole since November 2021 but it is doubtful if she will ever be released. Earlier this year, Steve Gibson and David Crampton – the fathers of two of her victims – issued a plea to keep her behind bars.

Because he murdered only adult patients, most of them elderly women, the aforementioned Harold Shipman got away with it for years, and even then it was only because of greed or arrogance that he was brought to book after forging the will of his final victim. Another angel of death who murdered older patients was Victorino Chua. Like Allitt before him, he used insulin, killing two patients and poisoning many more at Stepping Hill Hospital, Stockport. The most significant thing about this case is that it led in the first instance to the arrest of Rebecca Leighton, the first and for several weeks the only suspect in the case.

Yet another angel of death who warrants mention is the American nurse Genene Jones. She was convicted initially of only one murder, a 15 month old girl, which earned her a 99 year sentence in 1985. There was talk of her killing literally dozens of infants. but a more reasonable estimate is upwards of 11. In spite of this conviction and a conviction for attempted murder, there was a serious possibility of her being released after spending more than thirty years behind bars, so a thoughtful district attorney filed further charges against her. In January 2020, as part of a plea deal, she pleaded guilty to one further murder, that of an 11 month old boy. 

Jones, Allitt and Shipman have all made their way into popular culture via documentaries, films, and books. Lucy Letby will almost certainly be awarded the same infamy very shortly.

Back To Part 1.