Lucy Letby might not attend court as serial killer set to be sentenced today

The nurse murdered seven babies and tried to kill six more while working at the Countess of Chester Hospital neonatal unit between 2015-2016.

She has joined the list of the UK’s most twisted child killers, including the Moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley and the so-called Angel of Death paediatric nurse Beverley Allitt.

Letby, 33, could be handed a whole-life order by judge Mr Justice Goss at Manchester Crown Court today.

She is reported to have been put on 24-hour suicide watch after being found guilty last week.

Whole-life orders are the most severe punishment available in the UK criminal justice system, for those who commit the most serious crimes.

Letby may attend court although she previously indicated she did not intend to return to the dock, did not want to take any part in her sentencing hearing, and would not follow the hearing via video-link from prison.

Mr Justice Goss said the court has no power to force a defendant to attend a sentencing hearing but a Government source suggested ‘lawful enforcement’ could be used as a last resort to ensure Letby attends if it is considered necessary, reasonable and proportionate.

‘Lucy Letby should be in court to hear society’s condemnation of the enormity of her crimes, expressed by the judge,’ the source said..

‘If that requires the use of lawful enforcement, so be it. If she continues to refuse, that will only strengthen our resolve to change the law as soon as we can.’

Earlier this year, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk said the Government is ‘committed’ to changing the law so criminals are compelled to attend their sentencing hearings.

Former justice secretary Robert Buckland called for the sentencing to be played into Letby’s cell if she does not attend, regardless of her wishes, and said she should have to listen to the victim statements from the families of the babies she murdered.

‘She needs to hear the victim’s personal statements, as impact statements that will really bring home I think, to the wider world, the appalling devastating impact of the loss of these innocent children, these innocent babies, have had upon dozens of families,’ Mr Buckland told GB News.

The Conservative chairman of the Health Select Committee has meanwhile called for a judge-led statutory inquiry to examine Letby’s crimes.

Steve Brine expressed concern that the non-statutory independent inquiry, announced by the Government, will not have the power to compel witnesses, and could drag on for years and ‘disappear down a rabbit hole’, he told BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.

Police have also been urged to investigate hospital bosses for potential corporate manslaughter.

The prosecution’s lead medical expert, retired consultant paediatrician Dewi Evans, says he will write to Cheshire Constabulary to ask them to investigate ‘grossly negligent’ bosses for not acting on fears about Letby while she was on a killing spree, the Observer reported.

Consultants who raised concerns about Letby as far back as 2015 have said babies could have been saved if hospital management had listened and acted sooner.

The Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal unit head consultant, Dr Stephen Brearey, first raised Letby’s association with an increase in baby collapses in June 2015.

He told the Guardian that deaths could arguably have been avoided from as early as February 2016 if executives had ‘responded appropriately’ to an urgent meeting request from concerned doctors.

Police were contacted only in 2017.

Letby was arrested at her semi-detached home in Westbourne Road, Chester, at 6am on July 3 2018.

During searches of her address, a number of closely written notes were discovered.

On one note she wrote ‘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 in capital letters ‘I am evil I did this’.

Prosecutor Nick Johnson KC invited the jurors to read the note ‘literally’ as a confession.

Her ‘voyeuristic tendencies’ drove her to carry out numerous Facebook searches for parents of children she attacked, he said.

She used various ways to harm the babies, including injecting air into the bloodstream, injecting air into the stomach, overfeeding with milk, physical assaults and poisoning with insulin.