Serial child killer Lucy Letby has become one of the few female murderers in the UK who will die behind bars after being given a whole life sentence.
The 33-year-old nurse became the UK's most prolific ever child serial killer when she was found guilty, on Friday, August 18, after a year long killing spree on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital. Letby was trusted by her colleagues on the unit.
Between June 2015 and June 2016, she lived a secret life “relentlessly” preying on premature and sick babies unlucky enough to be placed in her care. The Band 5 nurse, originally from Hereford, killed and maimed by injecting babies with air, force feeding them excess milk, poisoning them with insulin and even physically assaulting them.
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She was eventually stopped after consultants at the hospital began to grow suspicious of her proximity to so many deaths and sudden collapses. Letby denied all the allegations as she gave evidence in the witness box at Manchester Crown Court for 14 days during the trial, which began last October.
On Monday, August 21 Letby was handed a whole life term for the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six others. She is the fourth woman to receive such a sentence – which is the maximum a British judge can deliver.
Here we take a look at the other women in the UK who were given the maximum punishment for their heinous crimes.
Myra Hindley
Hindley, along with her partner Ian Brady, murdered five children between July 1963 and October 1965.
The body of one of their victims Keith Bennett has never been found after the killers refused to reveal where his remains were dumped.
In 1966 both Hindley and Brady were jailed for life for the murders. Hindley died in 2002 at the age of 60 but even on her death bed she refused to give up where Keith's body was.
Ian Brady died in jail in 2017 at the age of 79.
At their trial at Chester Assizes Court in 1966, Hindley, 23, was convicted alongside Brady and was handed two life sentences to be served concurrently. The pair narrowly escaped the death penalty which was suspended the year before and would later be abolished.
Hindley would later die in hospital in West Suffolk in 2002, after serving 36 years in prison.
Rose West
Rose West, the wife of murderer Fred West, was convicted of the murders of 10 women and girls, including their own daughter, in and around Gloucestershire between 1973 and 1987.
She was convicted by a jury just days before her 42nd birthday in 1995. While the judge urged that she should never be released, she didn't initially receive a whole life term.
However, in 1997, Home Secretary Jack Straw decided that West should receive the maximum sentence – a whole life tariff meaning she would never be eligible for parole.
She and husband Fred killed, dismembered and buried young women and children at their home at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester.
Fred, 53, hanged himself in jail on New Year’s Day 1995 while awaiting trial for 12 murders. Rose meanwhile remains behind bars at HM Prison New Hall, in Flocton, West Yorks.
Joanne Dennehy
The last woman before Letby to receive the maximum sentence was Joanne Dennehy, who murdered three men in what came to be known as the Peterborough Ditch Murders.
Dennehy stabbed her victims to death. Their bodies were found in ditches in the county.
All the men were killed over the course of 10 days up to March 29, 2013 – she also stabbed two other men who survived their injuries. She stood trial in November 2013 at the Old Bailey where, unlike Letby, she entered guilty pleas to the charges she faced.
On the day she was sentenced Judge Mr Justice Spencer told the Old Bailey: "Within the space of ten days you murdered three men in cold blood. Although you pleaded guilty, you've made it quite clear you have no remorse."
He went on to add: "You are a cruel, calculating, selfish and manipulative serial killer."
Joanna was ordered to spend the rest of her life in prison, but during her sentencing, she laughed and smirked.
Since Letby was found guilty of her crimes on Friday, August 18, people have compared her to Beverley Allitt, known as the "Angel of Death". Allitt is currently serving 13 life sentences – one for each of the children she murdered or attempted to murder as a paediatric nurse in the 1990s.
In a case with disturbing echoes of Letby's crimes, Allitt attacked 13 children who had been admitted for minor injuries between February and April 1991 at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire, injecting some of them with dangerous amounts of insulin. She succeeded in killing four of them.
The youngest of whom, Liam Taylor, was just seven weeks old. After the death of her fourth victim, 15-month-old Claire Peck, staff became suspicious of the number of cardiac arrests on the children's ward and police began to investigate.
It was established that Allitt was the only nurse on duty during the medical episodes and she was found guilty of four counts of murder, three of attempted murder, and a further six of grievous bodily harm in 1993. Allitt, now 54, is currently imprisoned at Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire.
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