British nurse Lucy Letby was found guilty by a Manchester jury of murdering seven newborns and attempting to kill six more in the neonatal unit of the hospital in north-west England where she worked.

Letby, 33, was convicted of murdering five newborn boys and two newborn girls at the Countess of Chester Hospital and attacking other newborns, often while working night shifts, between 2015 and 2016.

The court was told Letby poisoned some of her infant victims by injecting them with insulin and injecting others with air or force-feeding the infants milk.

“I killed them on purpose because I’m not well enough to take care of them,” read a handwritten note found by police when they searched her home after her arrest. “I am a horrible, diabolical person,” he wrote. “I AM DEVIL, I DID THIS.”

Some of the infants were twins – in one case he murdered both brothers. He tried three times to kill a little girl, before finally killing her on the fourth attempt.

“Lucy Letby was entrusted to protect vulnerable souls. Those who worked with her did not know that there was a murderer in their midst,” said Pascal Jones, public prosecutor from the UK Crown Prosecution Service.

“She did everything she could to cover up her crimes, varying the ways in which she repeatedly harmed infants in her care,” Jones added.

Letby’s trial lasted nine months. Her sentence will be handed down at a future date.