Myra Hindley kidnapped and murdered five children in the 1960s alongside Ian Brady

When Lucy Letby was found guilty of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of another six on Friday she became Britain’s most prolific child killer – worse even than the likes of “Moors Murderer” Myra Hindley.

The 33-year-old nurse from Chester had been trusted by parents to care for their premature and vulnerable babies, yet Letby deliberately set out to cause them pain, harm and suffering, a jury in Manchester found.

The magnitude of her crimes has been made all the worse by her professional duty of care, and there appeared to be no explanation for why she had carried out such horrendous acts.

Like Hindley, her crimes, directed against the young and helpless, have shocked the country. Here we look at Britain’s worst child killers prior to Letby.

‌Myra Hindley and Ian Brady

‌Together with her boyfriend Ian Brady, Myra Hindley killed five children who were aged between 10 and 17 – Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey, and Edward Evans – after luring them into their clutches.

At least four of the children were sexually assaulted in a series of crimes that came to haunt a generation.

The bodies of two of the pair’s victims were discovered in 1965, in shallow graves dug on Saddleworth Moor.

A third grave was discovered there in 1987, more than 20 years after Brady and Hindley’s trial.

Bennett’s body is also thought to be buried in the same location, but despite repeated searches he has never been found.

Beverley Allitt

‌Beverley Allitt was convicted of murdering four infants, attempting to murder three others and causing grievous bodily harm to a further six at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire between February and April 1991.

Allitt, who came to be known as the “Angel of Death”, carried out the murders while working as a state enrolled nurse on the hospital’s children’s ward.

Beverley Allitt - REX

‌Robert Black

‌Robert Black was convicted of the kidnap, rape and murder of four girls aged between five and 11 in a series of crimes carried out across the UK between 1981 and 1986.

It is thought that Black, who died in 2016 at the age of 68, may also have been responsible for several other unsolved child murders throughout Britain, Ireland and continental Europe between 1969 and 1987.

Rosemary West - PA

Rosemary and Fred West

‌Together with her husband Fred West, Rosemary West tortured and murdered at least nine teenagers and young women aged 15 to 27, between 1973 and 1987. She also murdered her eight-year-old stepdaughter Charmaine in 1971.

She is currently an inmate at HM Prison New Hall, West Yorkshire, after being convicted in 1995 of the 10 murders. Fred West hung himself at HMP Birmingham in 1995 before he could be tried for his crimes.

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