A British nurse was found guilty of killing seven babies and trying to kill six more at the hospital where she worked. This makes her the worst baby serial killer in the country in recent years.

The Manchester Crown Court in northern England heard that Lucy Letby, age 33, hurt babies in her care by injecting air into their blood and bellies, giving them too much milk, hitting them, and poisoning them with insulin.

In one case, the UK’s PA Media news agency said that Letby killed a baby boy named Child E by putting air into his system. She tried to kill his twin brother, Child F, the next day by giving him insulin.

A court order guards the identities of the children who died or lived under Letby’s care and are named in the accusations against her.

During their investigation, the police searched Letby’s house and found a lot of handwritten notes. One of them said, “I am evil, I did this.”

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) of Britain said in a statement that she attacked 13 babies in secret on the newborn ward of the Countess of Chester hospital between 2015 and 2016.

Prosecutors said that her plan was to kill the kids and make her coworkers think that they died of natural causes.

Pascale Jones of the CPS said that Letby’s actions were a “complete betrayal of the trust placed in her.”

She said, “Lucy Letby tried to trick her coworkers into thinking that the harm she caused was nothing more than a worsening of each baby’s existing weakness.”

“In her hands, harmless things like air, milk, and water, as well as medicines like insulin, could kill. She turned her knowledge and skills against herself and used them as weapons to cause harm, grief, and death.

The families of the people who died said, “We may never really know why this happened.”

“To lose a baby is a heartbreaking experience that no parent should ever have to go through,” said a joint statement.

“But losing a baby or having a baby hurt in these circumstances is unthinkable,” the statement said.

In written notes, the nurse said, “I killed them.”

PA said that Letby was arrested twice by police in 2018 and 2019 as part of their probe. In November 2020, she was caught again.

When the police searched Letby’s home, they found notes she had written.

“I’m not worth living. She wrote in one memo, “I killed them on purpose because I wasn’t good enough to care for them.” In another, she said, “I am a horrible, evil person,” and in big letters, “I did this because I am evil.”

According to PA Media, when the mother of Child E and Child F testified in court, she said she “completely” believed Letby’s advice.

But she said that she “knew there was something wrong” when her baby, Child E, started crying in the urgent care unit one night.

It turned out that before Letby killed Child E, she had tried to hurt him and he started bleeding.

“It was a sound that a little baby shouldn’t make,” the mother told the court. “I don’t know what that noise was. It was terrible. I screamed more than I cried.”

After Child E died, there was no examination of the body. The mother said that she believed he had died of natural causes.

Letby later tried to harm her twin son, Child F, with insulin, but he lived.

Consultants were told to say sorry for bringing up issues

The court heard that doctors at the hospital started to see a sharp rise in the number of babies who were dying or suddenly falling.

Consultants were worried that Letby’s patients were dying more often, but the hospital’s management at first didn’t believe them, PA Media said.

Letby made a complaint against her employers in September 2016 after she was moved from the neonatal ward. After three days in a row in June 2016 when two of her male triplets died and a baby boy fell over, she was sent back to doing office work.

Later that year, the Royal College of Nursing union told her about the claims against her. However, the case was later settled in her favour. Doctors were asked to send Letby a letter of apology.

She was supposed to go back to the newborn unit in March 2017, but that didn’t happen. The hospital trust called the cops, and the police started looking into it.

“Heartbroken, crushed, and angry.”

The UK government has asked for an independent investigation into the murders, including “how concerns raised by clinicians were dealt with.”

The review will look into the “circumstances surrounding the deaths and incidents,” the government said in a statement on Friday.

It will also look at what regulators and the National Health Service in Britain did in answer to concerns about Letby.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay promised that the parents of the victims’ views will be “heard” throughout the investigation. He also said that there are still a lot of questions to be answered.

“Justice has been done, and the nurse who was supposed to care for our babies but hurt them instead has been found guilty,” the families of the victims said in a joint statement on Friday.

“But this justice won’t change how much pain, anger, and stress we’ve all had to go through,” the statement said.

“We are heartbroken, crushed, angry, and don’t know what to do.”

On August 21, Letby will be given a sentence at Manchester Crown Court.