Lucy Letby’s terrifying prison home – ‘insanity, smashed up faces and screams all night’

Former NHS neonatal nurse, Lucy Letby, has become the fourth woman in Britain to be handed a whole-life order, meaning she will spend the rest of her life in prison without any possibility of parole.

The 33-year-old serial killer murdered seven babies in her care and attempted to kill six others between June 2015 and June 2016, injecting them with air or insulin or overfeeding them with milk while working at the Countess of Chester Hospital. Since her first arrest on July 3, 2018, Letby has spent time in four prisons, but nothing will have prepared her for her new lifelong sentence as a Category A prisoner with a target on her head.

It’s not been confirmed yet which prison Letby will spend her life-long sentence in, but she will likely have started her sentence in either HMP Bronzefield in Surrey, where she has already served time, or at HMP Low Newton in Durham, both of which have also been home to some of Britain’s most notorious female killers.

Letby could serve her whole-life order in HMP Bronzefield in Surrey (

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PA)

Bronzefield is the largest women’s prison in Europe, where Rose West spent time before being transferred. Current inmates include Shauna Hoare, who was found guilty of manslaughter for the killing of Becky Watts in 2015; and the al-Qaeda fanatic Roshonara Choudhry, who stabbed Labour MP Stephen Timms in 2010. Meanwhile, Low Newton, a maximum security prison, has housed female killers Joanna Dennehy, Rose West, Bernadette McNeilly, and the mother of tragic tot Baby P, Tracey Connelly.

A former inmate of Bronzfield, Sophie Campell, said her time at the women’s prison was so disturbing that she was compelled to write a memoir about it, Breakfast At Bronzefield. The woman, who was convicted for GBH of a police officer, said violence and bribery was commonplace within the jail’s walls. Releasing her story in 2020, she said: “As well as same-sex relationships thriving in Bronzefield, some female prisoners were engaging in sexual favours with the officers to get drugs or food, and that was a real shock for me. It’s so horrible how normalised it is, often gossiped and giggled about. Violence is everywhere. It puts you on edge. You have to be alert as a situation can escalate rapidly. That’s why you learn to adopt a new code of conduct inside.”

She also spoke of witnessing a woman having boiling hot water thrown over her face during her first few weeks, adding: “It rattles you. You know it could be you – say the wrong thing, or look at the wrong person and you could be burned and blistered and never offered medical treatment.”

If not HMP Bronzefield, Letby could be jailed at HMP Low Newton where Rose West served time (

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HMP Low Newton)

Another former Bronzefield prisoner, Francesca Fattore, who was jailed for drug offences, has recently opened up about what it was like inside during her year-long stay. During her time at the prison, she was moved to a protected wing, where she was close to Malread Philpott, who was sentenced for manslaughter after deliberately setting fire to her home where her six kids were killed – but was released in 2020 under a new name having served half of her 17-year sentence. She also encountered Joanna Dennehy, who was dubbed “Britain’s most dangerous female prisoner” after killing three men. Dennehy remains locked up after getting a whole-life term.

Speaking to the Daily Star, Fattore recalled the most haunting thing about being in the prison, saying: “The worst thing for me that stood out was the self-harming and the mental health in there for me. I hear the girls screaming all night long because they are mentally insane. It’s not an act, it’s not someone kicking off, They would scream from nine at night until six in the morning and you can’t do that unless you are mentally ill. Seeing girls coming out having scratched all their own faces up and beating their own faces with flasks…”

The 43-year-old, who has since turned her life around and is now the assistant manager at a car company, explained that when entering HMP Bronzefield, she initially didn’t want to know about the crimes fellow inmates had committed. But she soon had a change of heart after spending days anxiously looking over her shoulder. “I needed to know because then I won’t talk to the people I don’t need to,” she explained. “I would never kick off on the wing because in my head when I went to prison that was it for me, I was going to change so I had to behave. I had to take my feelings aside of what you would want to say, what you’d want to do to somebody and just be a better person. When I learned my next-door neighbour was that woman (Mairead) you just start thinking, ‘Wow I am in with some crazy, evil, nasty people’.”

“It is a lot to absorb and to suddenly be living in these wings and having to see these faces every day. Literally, you just have to think that if I am spoken to by then then just don’t speak back or keep it as minimal as possible. You have to switch off (from their crimes) because you have no choice.”

Letby has been handed a whole-life order (

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PA) One of the general population prison cells in HMP Low Newton where Letby may stay (

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HMP Low Newton)

Experts have said that Letby will have ‘restricted status’ for an inmate, which is considered the female equivalent of Category A – meaning she is the highest-risk threat to the public. It is said she will be on suicide watch for some months and it will be at least six months before she is integrated with other prisoners. She will start off her whole life sentence living in the hospital wing of the prison while they assess her mental and physical health and protect her from other inmates. Eventually, she’ll be moved into her own cell. This is a routine procedure for every inmate found guilty of murder, on the assumption that anyone who faces decades in prison will contemplate taking their own life. It will take place in a number of forms – from CCTV cameras watching Letby to direct supervision from officers, noting her moves every 10 minutes.

“She’ll be what’s known as a ‘restricted status’ prisoner,” Mark Leech, a prisons expert and editor of The Prison Oracle website told the Telegraph. “She’ll be on suicide watch and it will be some time before she gets to mingle with the main prison population – at least six months.” She may also receive extra care and attention if she is at HMP Low Newton, which boasts the ‘Primrose Project’ – designed to treat women with “dangerous and severe personality disorders”. It is the only prison in the UK with such a unit. While Letby will be considered a threat to herself, she will be a possible target for others for the rest of her life.

She’ll be spending at least 22 hours a day inside her single cell – approximately 1.8 metres wide by three metres in length. Inside the cell, Letby, will have a single bed, a storage unit, a chair, and a toilet. Due to her confinement, it’s likely she will be encouraged by staff to be mentally stimulated to avoid extreme stress, anger, and frustration. Her life of solitude will be filled with reading stories about others – she will be able to read newspapers, books, and watch TV, but not much else. And for an hour a day, she will be able to exercise, walking the prison grounds.

Professor Yvonne Jewkes, professor of criminology at the University of Bath, says Letby will have a price on her head in prison. “At best, she’ll be subjected to extreme bullying and intimidation. At worst, she might be in quite considerable physical danger,” she told the Telegraph. Letby will also have very little human contact. “She’ll associate mostly with prison officers, her key worker in the prison and one or two cleaners, but much of that interaction will be through the hatch in her cell door,” Leech added.

She will, however, be able to speak to her family and receive visits, which will be vetted by police, though they will be few and far between. A convicted prisoner is usually allowed at least two 1-hour visits every four weeks. Letby won’t be able to receive emails directly, but she can receive messages through the Email a Prisoner service. These are printed out and delivered by prison staff, with each email costing 40p from Letby’s prison cash card. There is no limit on the number of letters she can send and receive, however, although most are checked by prison staff.

And when it comes to phone calls, she will only be able to speak to those named on her friends and family list. As this needs to be checked by security, it’ll take a few days following her arrival for her to be able to make a call. Later in life, it is expected for Letby to be moved to a lower-security prison to see out her final days before her death behind bars.