On Monday, Lucy Letby was convicted of the murders of seven babies and attempted murder of six others while working as a neonatal nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Cheshire between 2015 and 2016.
We’ve all been struggling to wrap our brains around how anyone – let alone a neonatal nurse – could do such a thing. A handwritten note found in Letby’s home during a police search provides some insight:
During the trial, jurors were shown this note (and others) which includes phrases like ‘I don’t deserve to live’, ‘I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them’, ‘I am a horrible evil person’ and ‘I am evil I did this’.
Forensic psychiatrist Dr Soham Das has now given his take on the messages, and how they reflected Letby’s ‘true motivation’ in her crimes. Writing for MailOnline, he explained:
“Her true motivations, I believe, are power, control and the thrill of being around the grieving process.
There’s evidence of vitriolic anger or jealousy towards the happy family unit, expressed in the words: ‘I’ll never have children or marry, I’ll never know what it’s like to have a family.’
We know that Letby wanted to be present when parents were overwhelmed by grief, even when the dead babies had not been her own patients.
She even sent one family a sympathy card after murdering their premature baby. Clearly, there’s a morbid urge to feed off their pain.
I doubt whether we will ever fully understand her. Because she will never leave prison, she is unlikely to get the kind of intensive psychiatric support that could lead to real remorse.
Without that, it’s very unlikely she could have an epiphany that explains what she has done.
The only insight into her poisoned, twisted mind that we are ever likely to have lies in these bizarre Post-it notes.”
Letby would also routinely look up the families of the babies she killed on Facebook, for example around Christmas time, in hopes of reading statuses about their grief which I guess gave her some kind of f***** up thrill.
From the notes she wrote, it seems she was at least fully aware of how screwed in the head she is, so top marks for self-awareness there. It’s just a shame she took so many opportunities to act on her evil impulses and destroyed so many lives in the process.
For the health secretary confronted live on air by a woman accusing him of doing ‘bugger all’ for the NHS, click HERE.
