Lucy Letby, the British nurse convicted last week of killing seven newborns and trying to kill six others, was sentenced on Monday to life in prison without parole, the culmination of a yearslong case that has horrified Britain and led to questions over the management culture that allowed her crimes to continue for so long.

Judge James Goss handed Letby a “whole life order”, meaning she will spend the rest of her life in prison, a sentence reserved for the country’s worst offences. She is only the fourth woman to have ever been handed the sentence.

The verdicts reached last week made Letby the most prolific serial killer of children in modern British history.

Judge Goss told the courtroom that Letby “acted completely contrary to the normal human instincts of nurturing and caring for babies” and that her actions caused a majority of her victims to suffer “acute pain”.

“There was premeditation, calculation and cunning in your actions,” the judge said, later describing “a deep malevolence bordering on sadism” in Letby’s crimes.

The murders and attempted killings took place between June 2015 and June 2016, when Letby was a nurse in the neonatal ward of the Countess of Chester hospital in northwestern England, tasked with caring for premature and vulnerable babies. She refused to appear in court during her sentencing on Monday, but the court heard heart-wrenching testimony from the parents of babies who were killed.

New York Times News Service