Her silence is a hallmark of the serial killer, but ‘beige’ nurse did not display the usual warning signs
for the murders of seven babies and the attempted murder of six others at the Countess of Chester hospital will provide only one form of judicial ending to this harrowing case. In the process Letby, who has steadfastly maintained her innocence, has become our worst child serial killer since the days of Mary Ann Cotton, who was hanged in 1873, and Amelia Dyer, a “baby farmer”, who suffered the same fate in 1896.
In all of this Letby conforms to what we know more generally about serial killers – murderers who kill three or more victims in a period of longer than 30 days – but also confounds what we currently understand about nurses who murder in a hospital setting. Shipman is a case in point. Even after an exhaustive inquiry by Dame Janet Smith, which reported in 2002, she had nothing much to say on the motivation question. Smith admitted that neither she nor her team could “gain any real insight into Shipman’s character” and had been unable to “attempt any detailed explanation of the psychological factors underlying Shipman’s conduct”.
Letby was popular with her colleagues too. In the main – a few exceptions notwithstanding – she didn’t make them feel uneasy and seemed competent and somewhat quiet. One of the lead detectives who worked on the case described her as being “beige”. This is perhaps why she was able to escape detection for as long as she did, despite the efforts of a couple of paediatric consultants.
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