In a 12-month killing spree, Lucy Letby murdered seven babies and attempted to murder seven more, making her the most prolific baby killer in modern British history.
Her crimes put her near the top of the list of notorious serial killers – ahead of Moorish murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, who killed five children in Manchester in the early 1960s; nurse Beverley Allitt, who killed four of her child patients in 1991, and Robert Black, who raped and murdered four young girls in the early 1980s.
She also becomes the second-worst serial killer of all time behind Rose West, who is serving a life sentence for the murders of 10 young girls, including her eight-year-old stepdaughter.
It is estimated that Amelia Dyer, a Victorian farmer, killed 400 infants over a 30-year period. However, she was only convicted of one murder.
The UK’s worst serial killer was Dr Harold Shipman, who used his position as a GP to murder around 250 patients.
Letby murdered seven babies. Myra Hindley (left) helped her partner Ian Brady kill five children. Fellow nurse Beverley Allitt (right) killed four of her child patients in 1991
Dr Harold Shipman used his position as a GP to murder around 250 patients, while Robert Black raped and murdered four young girls in the early 1980s.
Hindley and Brady The first murder took place in July 1963 when they shot and killed 16-year-old Pauline Reade after persuading her to get into their car.
They then abducted and killed four other children before burying their bodies at Saddleworth Moor. Keith Bennett, 12, is the only victim whose remains have yet to be found.
The couple were jailed for three murders in 1966. They later confessed to two more murders before Hindley died aged 60 in prison in 2002. Brady died in 2017.
Beverley Allitt – known as the “Angel of Death” – killed four babies and poisoned nine others in 59 days at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital in Lincolnshire in 1991.
Originally, Allitt’s crimes were suspected to be of natural causes, but blood samples taken from nine of the children who had collapsed or died revealed that they had been injected with lethal doses of insulin, potassium or lidocaine.
She was sentenced to 13 life sentences and ordered to serve at least 30 years behind bars after a trial in 1993.
The 54-year-old is currently being treated at Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire and is eligible for parole.
Robert Black was sentenced to 12 life sentences for the murders of four girls aged between 5 and 11 in the 1980s, but he is suspected of being responsible for countless others.
He spent the 1970s and 1980s working as a delivery driver and crisscrossed the UK in search of young victims to abduct.
His reign of terror ended in 1990 when he was arrested by police with a barely alive six-year-old girl.
She was found hooded, bound, gagged and stuffed into a sleeping bag in the back of her van in the Scottish village of Stow.
Letby is the second-worst serial killer after Rose West, who – along with her husband Fred – abducted, tortured and raped 12 women over a 20-year period from their home in Cromwell Street, Gloucestershire.
Fred, who confessed to the murders, committed suicide in his cell while remanded to HMP Birmingham on New Years Day 1995, while Rose remains in prison.
Britain’s worst serial killer was Dr Shipman, who killed an estimated 250 patients over a 27-year period dating back to 1971, using the drug Diamorphine.
About 80% of his victims were elderly women, with his youngest victim being a 41-year-old man.
Nurse Lucy Letby’s crimes are among Britain’s worst ever
Amelia Dyer, a Victorian farmer, murdered infants in her care over a period of thirty years and is estimated to have had hundreds of victims – but she was never convicted of a single infant.
Shipman was convicted of drug offenses in 1976 after becoming addicted to pethidine as a young doctor, but he was cleared to continue practicing by the General Medical Council (GMC).
He began his killing spree at Pontefract General in the early 70s, and was finally arrested in September 1998 at the age of 52, and jailed for life in January 2000.
Letby murdered five boys and two girls between June 2015 and June 2016.
She targeted a set of triplets and three sets of twins and her victims ranged from a full-term baby girl to extremely premature infants, including a baby girl who survived despite being born in a hospital toilet just 23 weeks gestation.
It is unlikely that the identity of any of the babies will ever be made public.
All were given lifetime anonymity orders by the judge before the trial began, barring the media from naming them or their parents.
On one occasion it was claimed that Letby had murdered a ten week premature baby boy because she was angry that a friend of hers she was texting did not understand why she was upset at being interrupted in intensive care after the death of another baby.
Criminology professor David Wilson told the Mail that this desperation to be recognized at work was a sign of a “hero complex” and narcissism in Letby’s personality.
Placing himself in the center of a crisis was also indicative of the mental state, that of Munchausen, he said.
A hallway in the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital, where Letby worked
“She sees herself as deserving of attention and with superior skills to others,” he said. “She considers herself a savior – she has unique skills that no other person can.
“But she is quite unusual for other healthcare and nursing serial killers, who are often seen as odd by their peers, as she had friends and people she socialized with.
“The other thing is that she creates a crisis around her, which is a form of Munchausen. Extraordinary stories are told of what happens when she is in office. She says, ‘look at all the things that happen when I’m here.’ It’s also a ruse to get the doctor he likes to come.
After being convicted by a jury, Letby likely faces a lifetime tariff.
Undated handout photo issued by Cheshire Constabulary of a cot where a baby called child G in the Lucy Letby case. The black circles were added by the font
There are around 60 felons still alive serving life sentences, according to government figures.
They include Met PC Wayne Couzens, who kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard; Levi Bellfield, Milly Dowler’s killer; and Michael Adebolajo, one of Rifleman Lee Rigby’s killers.
Other notorious lifers are Mark Bridger, who abducted and murdered five-year-old April Jones in Powys, Wales, in 2012; neo-Nazi Thomas Mair, who killed MP Jo Cox; Grindr serial killer Stephen Port; and terrorist Khairi Saadallah – who murdered three men in a park in Reading.
