If looks could kill: Why UK Nurse Lucy Letby, convicted of killing 7 babies, still has supporters

Lucy Letby is young and white, with parents who dote on her. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

A British nurse in her mid-20s went on a killing spree, with preemies as her victims. The crime is horrific, and the life sentence she received has some mulling if death penalty should be brought back. Lucy Letby is convicted of killing seven babies and harming many more between June 2015 and June 2016 at the Countess of Chester Hospital in the UK. And the reason she got away with it for a long time – and is currently garnering some online support – is her lack of ‘killer’ qualities. She just doesn’t look evil!

Lucy is young and white with parents who dote on her; her father made her bed on the day she was arrested and her mother told the police to jail her instead of her daughter. Lucy even had a crush on a married man just to go the whole ‘normal’ hog. She doesn’t have the unblinking dead-eyed stare that most think psychopaths sport. Described as vanilla and beige for being too ordinary and someone who doesn’t stand out, she is accused of using her girl-next-door characteristics to hide in plain sight. If black, go some, she’d have been locked up at first suspicion.

Also, she is not a man. Women are usually associated with nurturing and caring – and the world doesn’t easily own up to its chauvinism. Lucy’s unspoken defence lay in sexist, racist and ageist roots: she was a neonatal nurse in her 20s, and she was pale and pink. The frantic search for motives stems from a refusal to accept that homicide for her was a sport. It could be Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, which has parents or caretakers harm minors to call attention to themselves in convoluted and twisted ways.

Dr Ravi Jayaram, the Indian-origin doctor who was one of those who went behind the hospital’s back to reach out to the police, had been previously made to apologize to her. Even now the internet is divided over the sentencing. She is innocent, they assert, unwilling to accept that someone who looks like her can do what she is said to have done. There is already a fundraising campaign for her appeal because her conviction ‘may represent the greatest miscarriage of justice the UK has ever witnessed’.

At 33 she is seen as having her whole life before her to be lived, and those who refuse to believe she is a murderess want her out and about, getting all the sunshine she can. The Manchester crown court saw emotions flit across Lucy’s face only once – when the doctor she was allegedly infatuated with came in to testify. Her absence during sentencing sparked calls to make the presence of prisoners in court mandatory in the future. Her disbelieving parents were not there to listen to the bereaved parents’ statements either.

Those demanding proof of her crimes cannot imagine ‘a nice girl like her’ skulking around pre-term babies to pump air and insulin into them just so she can bask in the tragic aftermath.