Lucy Letby's jail life - water attacks and only contact through hatch in cell
Serial killer Lucy Letby is locked up as a Category A prisoner with a target on her head.
The former neonatal nurse became Britain's most prolific child killer after she was found guilty of murdering seven innocent babies in her care in 2015 and 2016. Letby, 33, was handed a whole-life order and is now imprisoned with some of the most dangerous female criminals in the UK.
The twisted killer faces a re-trial for one count of attempted murder of a newborn baby girl. She has also lodged a bid to be allowed to appeal against her other convictions. It has not been confirmed where Letby has been sent for her life-long sentence, but she will likely have started in either HMP Bronzefield in Surrey, where she has already served jail time, HMP New Hall in Yorkshire or HMP Low Newton in Durham.
Experts believe Letby will be on suicide watch for a number of months before she's allowed to mix with her fellow inmates, and it's suspected she will mostly only interact with prison officers "through the hatch in her cell door". In fact, while some prisoners may enjoy certain privileges behind bars such as being granted day releases for important events like family funerals, it's said to be "extremely unlikely" that baby killer Letby will ever be permitted any sort of day release.
Child killer Lucy Letby has had her appeal refused (MEN MEDIA)
A cell at HMP Low Newton (HMP Low Newton)This means that when the time comes, she will not be able to attend the funerals of her parents, Susan and Jonathan Letby, according to chartered security professional James Bore. Speaking to the Mirror, the director of family consultancy Bores said: "Any day release for parents' funerals, or anything else, would be based on a risk assessment. I find it extremely unlikely that any sort of temporary release would be granted - for her own safety as much as anything else. Currently, she's being segregated within Low Newton, again to prevent her from being attacked. Social media rumours saying that she's been attacked already are misinformation."
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It is also believed 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. "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. HMP Low Newton holds women from aged 18 and as of April 2022, there were 242 prisoners living at the facility. It has housed a number of notorious criminals over the years including sadistic killer Joanna Dennehy, who brutally stabbed three men to death within a chilling 10-day murder spree in 2013.
Serial killer Rose West is a current inmate at HMP New Hall in West Yorkshire, but had a stint in Low Newton. West was convicted in 1995 of 10 murders after collaborating with her husband, Fred West. In time, it is expected that Letby would be integrated into groups, such as reading clubs or cooking classes, like Rose West, who is said to have become a star baker behind bars.
Lucy Letby's mugshot (PA)
Lucy Letby was convicted of the murder of seven babiesLetby will 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, said 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 one-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.
A former inmate of Bronzefield, 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."
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 Mairead 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.
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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 heard 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."
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