Lucy Letby set to be locked up with notorious criminals in Low Newton
Lucy Letby will be locked up with notorious criminals including fellow serial killer Joanna Dennehy and child murderer who randomly stabbed girl, 13, to death and now ‘lives as a man in the women’s jail’
- EXCLUSIVE: The £179K house where child-killer Lucy Letby was first arrested
Serial child killer Lucy Letby is set to be locked up with some of Britain’s deadliest criminals including fellow serial killer Joanna Dennehy and murderer Hannah Bonser, who randomly stabbed a 13-year-old girl and now ‘lives as a man in the women’s jail’.
The 33-year-old, who is Britain’s most prolific child killer, became one of only four women to be given a whole-life sentence yesterday for murdering seven babies and trying to kill six more.
She will likely be jailed in the high-security prison HMP Low Newton in Durham after first being kept in the prison’s hospital wing where she will be put on suicide watch and segregated from the other inmates for her own protection.
The maximum security prison was formerly home to some of the country’s most notorious female criminals including Rose West, Tracey Connelly – the mother of Baby P who died after months of abuse in 2007, and also Sharon Carr who became known as ‘The Devil’s Daughter’ when she murdered an 18-year-old stranger.
The most notorious inmate currently in Low Newton is mother-of-two Dennehy, along with Bonser and Kilburn murderer Emma Aitken, who reportedly began dating fellow inmate Dennehy in 2020.
Serial killer Lucy Letby was given a whole-life sentence yesterday for murdering seven babies and trying to kill six more
Joanna Dennehy pictured smiling and posing with a knife (not used in any of her crimes) shortly after murdering three men on a ten-day killing spree
Emma Aitken (pictured) was jailed aged 19 in 2014 for the murder of traveller Barry Smith, whose burnt body was found outside a social club in Kilburn, Derbyshire
If and when Letby is put into the main prison population, she will likely have access to the Rags to Riches shop which sells clothing to inmates.
The top security prison gives killer women the chance to also pet sheep and goats and look after a rabbit and birds as a way to keep them ‘calm’.
READ MORE: Lucy Letby grins for local paper photo hours after she murdered baby boy then tried to kill his twin brother
The general population wing features cells in which some level of room personalisation is allowed. Photographs from a previous inspection show pink towelling and beauty products are also available.
The scheme was revealed in a report last year by the Independent Monitoring Boards (IMB), a group which ensures prisoners are treated humanely behind bars.
During a ten-day killing spree in 2013, Dennehy murdered Lukasz Slaboszewski, 31, John Chapman, 56, and Kevin Lee, 48, whose bodies she dumped in ditches outside Peterborough, where she lived before knifing two more men in Hereford.
Dennehy, who was brought up in a stable family home in the Home Counties, carried out the attacks to gratify her ‘sadistic love for blood’ and the Old Bailey was told the killer had a ‘sexual and sadistic motivation’.
Later she told a psychiatrist: ‘I killed to see how I would feel, to see if I was as cold as I thought I was. Then it got more-ish.’
Experts said Dennehy craved notoriety and wanted to humiliate her victims through sick sex games. Before the killings she had boasted she had already killed four times.
Both Letby and Dennehy were sentenced to whole life orders. The only other women to have faced such a punishment are Moors murderer Myra Hindley – who died in 2002 – and Rose West.
Hannah Bonser (pictured), who has now changed her name to Adam while serving at Low Newton, stabbed 13-year-old Casey Kearney to death on Valentine’s Day in 2012
The Rags to Riches shop featured well-known clothing brands which inmates were able to buy
There is also a library at the prison where inmates can borrow books
Rosemary West used to shared recipes for Victoria sponge cake with her fellow inmates while she was in prison
West was found guilty of carrying out ten murders with her husband Fred West for two decades.
The couple imprisoned, sexually abused and killed young girls inside their home, including their own daughter.
READ MORE: NHS nursing boss denies ignoring doctor’s warnings about serial baby-killer Lucy Letby
West, who is now aged 69, was moved to Low Newton from HMP Bronzefield in Ashford, Middlesex – where Letby had been serving her time on remand – after prisoners were found to be plotting to batter her with pool balls.
She is now at HM New Hall, Flockton, Yorkshire, after being convicted in 1995 of ten murders.
In June 2020 it was revealed that Dennehy, who was transferred to Low Newton in 2018, was dating fellow female murderer, Emma Aitken, who is also serving life.
Aitken is serving a minimum term of 12 years after being jailed aged 19 in 2014 for the murder of traveller Barry Smith, whose burnt body was found outside a social club in Kilburn, Derbyshire.
Aitken and Dennehy were said to have passed the time in jail together by making trifles and cheesecake while other prisoners stay in their cells.
The murderers have even gifted each other embroidered cushions with each others’ names on, reported The Sun.
Bonser, who has changed her name to Adam while serving at Low Newton, stabbed 13-year-old Casey Kearney – who was on her way to a sleeper – to death on Valentine’s Day in 2012.
She was jailed for life and told she would serve a minimum of 22 years after her victim died from a single stab wound in Elmfield Park, Doncaster.
Tracey Connelly, the mother of Baby P, and Rose West were all former inmates at the prison
Baby P’s mother Tracey Connelly was released from HMP Low Newton last year. She was also eligible for the petting scheme
Bonser, who had a history of mental health problems, had repeatedly informed medics that she thought herself to be dangerous.
Bonser first became known to social services when she was just nine years old after the death of her morbidly obese Mormon mother. She was then referred to 16 psychiatrists and 20 mental health workers.
The future killer was hearing voices and speaking to rocks by the time she was 17, developing an obsession with druids and a belief birds were people coming to get her.
Sources said Bonser’s gender switch angered fellow inmates on the high-security F-wing as guards now had to address the wing’s prisoners as ‘ladies and gentlemen’ instead of just ‘ladies’.
The prison was also formerly home to Bernadette McNeilly, who was jailed for 16-year-old Suzanne Capper’s murder.
McNeilly was reportedly the leader of a gang in the 1990s that held Miss Capper captive then beat her, injected her with drugs and subjected her to brutal torture over seven days.
The 16-year-old was then driven to the woods in Stockport and doused in petrol and set on fire. She survived long enough to be able to name her attackers.
A court heard how McNeilly said ‘I’m Chucky, Chucky wants to play’ as she injected Miss Capper with amphetamine.
She was given a life sentence at Low Newton in 1993 before being released in 2015.
As of April last year, there were reportedly 242 prisoners at HMP Low Newton, which holds women from 18 years old and upwards.
Low Newton — a maximum security jail and Young Offender Institution — is considered a leader in changing the behaviour of dangerous female offenders.
Lucy Letby will be in HMP Low Newton in Durham alongside Joanna Dennehy, who stayed three men during a ten-day spree in 2013
Former inmates at HMP Low Newton include House of Horrors killer Rose West and Baby P’s mother Tracey Connelly
It is home to the ‘Primrose Project’, designed to treat women with ‘dangerous and severe personality disorders’ — the only women’s prison in the UK with such a unit.
It is thought to be the only high security jail in the country to be operating a ‘petting’ scheme, although some lower category prisons do.
During the period of the IMB report — March 2021 to February last year — the jail had 10 pregnant inmates and introduced ‘memory boxes’ for prisoners to help them cope with the stress of being separated from their child.
In 2016 it was reported that a female prison officer admitted to having a lesbian affair with an inmate at Low Newton.
Melissa Priestley had messages on her phone proving her affair with Leonie Kinnish, who was sentenced to five years in January 2015 for a robbery at a house in Lancaster.
HMP Low Newton is also next door to the so-called Monster Mansion of HMP Frankland, which holds Soham murders killer Ian Huntley, Wayne Couzens and Levi Bellfield.
Before yesterday’s trial, Letby was held HMP Bronzefield in Surrey, which is the largest women’s prison in Europe and home to the al-Qaeda fanatic Roshonara Choudhry, who stabbed the Labour MP Stephen Timms in 2010.
For the trial the 33-year-old was then moved to HMP New Hall near Wakefield, where the serial killer Rose West is an inmate.
In a final insult to her victims’ families, Letby refused to appear in court for her sentencing yesterday to hear how she ruined their lives.
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