A UK jury on Tuesday convicted child serial killer Lucy Letby of attempting to murder another baby girl at the hospital neo-natal unit where she worked.
It comes nearly a year after a different jury convicted the former nurse of murdering seven newborn babies and attempting to kill six others, making her Britain’s most prolific child serial killer in modern history.
Lucy Letby, 34, faced a retrial at Manchester Crown Court for the attempted murder of the baby girl, referred to in court as Child K, at the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwest England in 2016.
Jurors at her original trial last year failed to reach a verdict on that charge.
However, the jury hearing the case this time took just over three hours to reach their unanimous guilty verdict.
Letby, who is already serving a whole-life prison sentence and was earlier this year refused an appeal bid, will be sentenced for the latest offence on Friday.
During the re-trial, jurors heard that the former nurse was “caught virtually red-handed” by a senior consultant as she displaced Child K’s breathing tube.
The prosecution detailed how the consultant paediatrician walked into the unit’s intensive care nursery room and saw Letby standing next to the incubator “doing nothing”, as the infant’s blood oxygen levels dipped.
The jury was also told of Letby’s convictions last August of the other murders and attempted murders between 2015 and 2016.
Reporting restrictions prevent publication of the identities of the surviving and dead children in the cases.
Child K was transferred to a specialist hospital later the same day because she was born extremely prematurely.
She died there three days later. The prosecution has not alleged Letby caused her death.
The young girl’s parents thanked the jury and said “justice has been served”. “But this justice will not take away the extreme hurt, anger and distress that we have all had to experience,” they added.
“It also does not provide us with an explanation of why these crimes have taken place,” a statement read.