Cheshire Constabulary/Reuters
A British nurse convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder another six was sentenced on Monday to the most severe, rarely used punishment possible under local laws—life without parole.
The verdicts against Lucy Letby, 33, were made public last Friday at the end of what is believed to have been the longest murder trial in U.K. history. The appalling scale of her crimes over a 12-month killing spree beginning in June 2015 at a hospital where she worked makes her the most prolific serial child killer in modern British history.
In recognition of the exceptional nature of her case, a judge at a court in Manchester on Monday sentenced Letby to a “whole life order,” meaning she will never be released from prison. Letby is now only the third woman alive in Britain to be given the sentence, with the other two being Joanna Dennehy—who stabbed three men to death 10 years ago in what became known as the “Peterborough ditch murders”—and Rose West, who infamously helped her husband torture and kill at least nine young women throughout the 1970s and 1980s.