SARAH VINE: In the same way that seeing that beautiful rainbow over Windsor the day the Queen died confirms one’s belief in God… the Lucy Letby case makes me wonder whether the Devil really does walk among us
- Watch the Mail’s documentary The Trial of Lucy Letby
Lucy Letby’s crimes have been revealed in all their wickedness. Act after act of unspeakable cruelty, innocent lives extinguished without mercy or regret. But one thing remains agonisingly unclear. Not what she did; but why she did it.
There is a void that surrounds her case, reflected in that dead-eyed stare, that cool, calm demeanour under interrogation. When atrocities of this kind occur, the normal human mind searches desperately for a reason, an explanation – anything to help rationalise the horror. But with Letby, there is nothing.
No obvious trauma, no outward appearance of perversion. Indeed, one of the most disturbing things about this case, and the reason it took colleagues and the authorities so long to realise what she was doing, was her girl-next- door persona.
No traumatic backstory – an ordinary childhood, an ordinary family, nice middle-class upbringing. They holidayed in Torquay. No history of drink or substance abuse, no evidence of any abuse whatsoever, in fact. No recorded mental-health issues, no disturbing sexual proclivities or practices.
That is what makes her so terrifying: Her banality. She is the stuff of horror films and Grimm fairytales, the personification of the shiny apple that hides a deadly poison. Wholesomeness rotten to the core. Her childlike tendencies and penchant for cuddly toys only adds to the sense of perversion. As does, of course, her choice of career.
Lucy Letby, 33, was convicted of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six more during her shifts on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester
Letby murdered boys and girls between June 2015 and June 2016
Sarah Vine says Lucy Letby did not have a ‘traumatic backstory’ and she had ‘an ordinary childhood , an ordinary family, nice middle-class upbringing’. Pictured: Parents Susan and John Letby at Manchester Crown Court
A neo-natal ward is a place of fragile joy, full of hopes and dreams. I remember my own babies, their first few hours of life. Sleeping with my new daughter by my side, waking fitfully now and then, checking to see if she was still breathing.
Those rosebud lips, those tiny fingers with their perfect little nails. The sheer wonder and magnitude of it all.
READ MORE: Lucy Letby to be ‘placed under 24-hour suicide watch’ in prison amid fears Britain’s most prolific child killer could take her own life before ‘justice gets done’
My newborn son, resting in the crook of my arm, a warm milky bundle of deliciousness. As a new mother, it’s not just your body that is laid bare, it’s your heart and soul. That tiny, fragile little human represents love like you’ve never felt before, fierce, unconditional, elemental.
That evil should have planted its foul seed in such a beautiful, almost sacred place is what makes this case so chilling. The utter innocence of her victims, their unsullied souls, their total defencelessness against her cruelty and wickedness just makes the heart weep.
By her actions she has thrown open the door to Hell, and the stench of evil overwhelms us all. Because when one returns to that question – why, why did she do these unthinkable things? – the answer is as chilling as her crimes: There is no reason.
She herself has given none, and the explanations posited – that she wanted the attention, that she wanted to impress the doctor with whom she was infatuated – simply don’t add up. Nothing could justify killing those babies. So we are left with a sickness of mind and an undeniable conclusion: She is simply evil, and evil knows no reason.
In the same way that seeing that beautiful rainbow over Windsor the day the Queen died confirms one’s belief in God, this case makes me wonder whether the Devil really does walk among us.
Evil knows how to charm, and how. Letby fooled everyone around her into thinking she was a warm-hearted, kind, considerate human, a dedicated nurse who lived for her patients and their parents. She manipulated everyone, from her friends to her colleagues, by presenting an image that served her purpose to perfection.
Children’s nurse Lucy Letby went on a year-long killing spree while working at the Countess of Chester Hospital
Sarah Vine says Letby’s girl-next- door persona was one of the reasons it took colleagues and the authorities so long to realise what she was doing
Letby – who grew up with two loving parents – is pictured as a young girl
She was so good at it she even managed to gaslight the hospital into making senior consultants apologise to her when they dared raise concerns. They even had to attend mediation with her.
But it was all a construct, a carapace of cutesy homilies designed to disguise a monster.
Did she even fool herself? Who knows. But it worked. No wonder it took so long for her colleagues to accept what was going on. Not Lucy. Not ‘lovely’ Lucy.
The human mind can’t always see what it can’t – or would rather not – comprehend, even if it’s right there before our very eyes. And who could comprehend, who could even start to fathom, that someone would do something so wicked as to deliberately harm and kill new-born babies? When a crime is that atrocious, how can we even begin to imagine it?
As my brilliant colleague Liz Hull, who has followed the trial from the start, writes in today’s Mail on Sunday, part of the reason Letby went undetected for so long was that ‘nobody could ‘grasp’ that someone had been killing babies’. And when Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes, the officer in charge of the investigation, finally realised – after exhaustive work – that there could be no other explanation for the deaths other than ‘inflicted harm’, it was a ‘sombre’ moment.
Court artist sketch by Elizabeth Cook of Letby reacting to the final questions from her barrister Ben Myers
Letby – wearing a blue hoodie with the strings covered in pink glitter – is taken from her house in handcuffs after being arrested by Cheshire Police in July 2018
Letby, from Hereford, at her graduation following a three-year nursing degree
The team had been desperately hoping to find some alternative explanation – a virus, an illness, even an honest mistake. But there was none. Just a horrible, inescapable truth. ‘There was suddenly the hard realisation that we’d approached every angle,’ he says, ‘looked at every possible explanation and obtained advice from the best sources around the country and this was what we were left with.’ As for the families, what are they left with? Only more agony.
You never truly get over the loss of a child – I have seen friends go through it. To then discover that their death was the deliberate act of the very person charged with their care, and that in some cases that person had even showered them with false condolences and perverted acts of kindness, tried in some way to inveigle themselves into their grief, must be a pain almost too hard to bear.
Better not to have known. Better to have grieved for your lost child believing that he or she had simply died of natural causes.
Instead, the lives of these poor families will be for ever tainted by the presence of Letby, by the knowledge of what she did. To have such wickedness in your life must be repellent, like having a worm burrowing into your skin.
The idea that Letby’s murderous hands might have been one of the last that touched those precious babies makes me burn with an overwhelming desire for vengeance on their behalf. The fact that she doesn’t even have the courage to face them in court (or, indeed, that our legal system does not compel her to) is just the final insult.
I am not, nor have I ever been, an advocate of the death penalty (there are too many miscarriages of justice in this world); but why should this creature live and breathe when her victims do not? How can there be any forgiveness, any redemption for what she has done?
But then such is the nature of true evil: It drives people out of their minds, sullies everything it touches with the depths of its horror.
An inquiry is to be welcomed: It will expose the operational flaws that allowed Letby to go unchecked. I doubt whether even the most rigorous system could have anticipated the actions of one so perverted or so skilled in manipulation. Still, there are practical steps that can be taken.
Police seized a number of handwritten notes made by Letby after she was arrested, including this one where she has circled the word ‘hate’
While Letby’s motive is not clear, the prosecution suggested she got a ‘thrill’ out of ‘playing God’. She is pictured on a night out
In Australia, for example, mothers of premature babies can monitor their little ones via CCTV on their smartphones. Perhaps it is time to introduce a similar system here.
And if the inquiry provides even an iota of comfort to the bereaved families – and to those of Letby’s other potential victims – then it will perhaps go some small way to help them live with this atrocity.
But the sad truth is it will probably never give them the answer to the question that really matters: why. Why did she do it?
That, for me, is the only reason she remains alive. So that before she shuffles off this mortal coil she can at least provide some sort of explanation, some small chance of closure for her victims – and explain what compelled her to destroy so many innocent lives. That is the very least they deserve. After that, Hell can have her. And not a moment too soon.
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