A nurse has been found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder others while working on a hospital's neonatal unit in the UK.

Lucy Letby was in her mid-20s and working at the Countess of Chester Hospital in western England at the time of the murders between June 2015 and June 2016.

She was found guilty by a series of partial verdicts, delivered several days apart, with the judge issuing reporting restrictions until the end of the trial.

Letby was also found guilty of seven counts of attempted murder.

She cried during some of the verdicts, while families of her victims sobbed and comforted each other as the jury read out its findings. One member of the jury also cried and held her head in her hands.

She was also found not guilty of two charges of attempted murder. The jury was unable to reach verdicts on six further counts of attempted murder.

The Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, England is seen in May 2017. Picture by: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo

Letby's mother, Susan, broke down sobbing as her daughter was led away from the dock after the first set of verdicts, whispering "you can't be serious, this can't be right," into her husband's arms.

Neither Letby nor her parents were in court as the trial came to a close today.

During a later set of verdicts, Letby refused to come up from the cells, and was found guilty of more murders in her absence.

All of the children have been granted anonymity, although their names were read out in the courtroom during the nine-month trial.

Two of her victims, known as Child L and M, were twin brothers.

They had been born prematurely and were just days old when Letby tried to kill them within hours of each other in April 2016.

'I had to listen to her lie'

Speaking publicly for the very first time, the boys' parents described the killer nurse as acting "very cool and calm" after trying to murder Child M with an injection of excessive air.

"At that time, her body language and her behaviour totally changed," the twins' mother said.

"She was very annoyed with us. She thought that 'I couldn't kill your baby'."

The boys' father said he broke down as he watched doctors trying to resuscitate Child M on the ward, "pumping his heart like a rag doll".

"We were first-time parents, we didn't know what was going on," he said. Neither parent suspected Lucy Letby at the time.

Both Child M and Child L, who Letby tried to poison with insulin, survived the assaults.

But Child M has been left with brain damage which his parents say means he may "deviate from his peers" as he grows older.

The boys' parents, who joined other families in the court, said it was "horrendous" to witness Letby repeatedly deny hurting their children during weeks of cross-examination.

"I had to listen to her lie and lie and lie," their mother said, "and I say now enough: don't tell lies."

"Whatever sentence she gets, it's not going to be enough."

No motive

Described as "devious" and "cold-blooded", Letby "completely perverted her learning" and "weaponised whatever was at her disposal," the UK's Crown Prosecution Service said.

The jury heard the nurse would misuse medical equipment and medicines to cause babies to unexpectedly collapse across day and night shifts on the hospital's neonatal ward.

Her victims included both boys and girls, many of whom were born prematurely.

Two of her last victims were boys, known as Children O and P, who were two of three triplet siblings. Both died within the first week of their lives, and Child O was found with severe liver damage.

Letby had denied all the charges.

Cheshire Police conducted a two-year investigation into the babies' deaths before Letby was charged in November 2020.

Officers say they examined more than half a million medical and digital records and have been supporting the victims' families, many of whom have attended court proceedings in person.

Nicola Evans, the deputy senior investigating officer on the case, said: "I don't think there's anybody who has worked on this investigation who will come out of the other side the same person they were.

"It has been heartbreaking."

During the trial, Letby claimed that she was being wrongly accused to cover hospital failings.

No motive has ever been established, which DCI Evans said "must be really hard for families to accept".

"I don't know whether we will ever be able to answer that question, and only Lucy Letby can answer that," the officer added.

Additional reporting: Jack Quann/IRN

Main image: Nurse Lucy Letby. Picture by: Cheshire Constabulary via AP.