(Lucy Letby)
Lucy Letby, a 32-year-old nurse, Oct. 10, 2022, denied charges that she murdered five baby boys and two girls; and tried to kill ten other babies in the neonatal unit of Countess of Chester Hospital in the U.K.
Prosecutors at Manchester Crown Court called Lucy a “constant malevolent presence” in the hospital. They accused her of trying to kill one child three times while another died after being injected with air.
According to a BBC report, the babies were sometimes injected with air, and other times, they were fed insulin or too much milk.
Nick Johnson KC, prosecuting, told jurors the babies’ deaths were “no accident,” nor were they “naturally-occurring tragedies.
“Sometimes a baby that she succeeded in killing she did not manage to kill the first time she tried, or even the second time, and in one case even the third time,” Johnson said.
Letby’s trial could last as long as six months.
Boiling Mommy’s Head on the Stove
He doesn’t want anyone to jump to conclusions about his guilt or innocence, but Joel Guy Jr., a 32-year-old from Knoxville, Tennessee, has requested he be executed if convicted of first-degree murder for the deaths of his parents.
Joel is accused of not only murdering his parents in their home four years ago, but chopping up their bodies. In fact, police say Joel boiled his mother’s head in a saucepan and tried to dissolve both of his parents’ corpses.
Knox County Sheriff’s investigators say they found other parts of Joel’s parents stored in Tupperware. And, yes, his mother’s head was in a saucepan on the kitchen stove.
Both Joel Guy Sr. and his wife, Lisa, suffered multiple, vicious stab wounds.
Knox County Sheriff’s Office Detective Jeremy McCord labeled his findings as "the most horrific thing I’ve ever encountered in police work – in my life,"
Joel requested his execution in a letter to the court: Joel wrote: “In the event that I am eventually found guilty of first-degree murder, I contend that the waiver above, if permitted by the court, would free the court to sentence me to death, imprisonment for life without the possibility of parole or imprisonment for life, in spite of the district attorney general’s failure to satisfy the notice requirements of Rule 12.3(b).”
But he also wrote that “nothing in this filing is intended to be an admission of guilt…”
Investigators think the Guys were killed and butchered by their son a day or two after Thanksgiving 2016.
During his trial, the jury was presented with a plan written in Joel's handwriting, an expert said, that detailed how he would kill his parents and cut up their bodies.
Joel was sure he'd purchased enough lie to erase any trace of his parents. The plan also included steps to dissolve their bones.
It took the jury only three hours to return with a verdict of guilty on five charges: one count of felony murder for killing his mother while committing the first-degree murder of his father.
Joel was also found guilty of two counts of felony murder while committing theft and two counts of a corpse's abuse.
One question left to answer as of this writing is whether Joel will serve the five life prison terms that come with those convictions consecutively or concurrently.
However, there is still one more question that is unanswered.
Why?
Sheriff’s Major Michael MacLean told reporters, “usually there’s a motivation behind (a crime such as this), but in this case we just don’t know what it was.”
January 14, 1927 — A.J. Mathis, a wealthy, elderly chicken rancher is missing. One of the last of the cowboy sheriffs, Jim McDonald, is convinced A.J. is dead, murdered. And McDonald says he knows who did it and vows to “prove it on her.”
McDonald’s leading, and only, suspect is a former salon singer and prostitute, Eva Dugan. Short, stocky, and plain, Eva takes off with a younger man in A.J.’s Dodge Coupe. They drive from Arizona to Texas, before Eva makes her way to White Plains, New York.
While she’s on the run, her young friend, Jack, vanishes. And A.J.’s skeleton is discovered buried in a shallow grave.
After she’s captured, Eva proclaims her innocence, but is convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Eva says if she was more attractive, if she was a “flapper” she would not have been convicted and certainly would not have been sentenced to death by hanging.
A movement grows among people opposed to capital punishment to spare Eva’s life. They fail, and Eva walks to the gallows, all the while proclaiming her innocence.
What happens next changes the way Arizona treated those sentenced to death for capital crimes. Never again will anyone hang for murder in Arizona because of what happens the day Eva Dugan dies.
Was justice done?