Lucy Letby thread

I’ll add this. Mark McDonald asked Letby if she would allow the experts to see all the evidence and come to their own conclusions, even if that meant they found her guilty.

She didn’t hesitate and allowed them. Surely if she were guilty, she would be scared these experts might find her out? That’s not the action of a guilty woman - to allow experts to seek out her guilt. And these doctors have decades of academic research behind them. While I wouldn’t presume Letby is stupid, she doesn’t have their expertise and she’s not clever enough to cover her tracks.

Chase's research shows this insulin-binding antibody is only present in neonates, gestation, and birth weight contribute to higher levels of the antibody, as do gender, sepsis, and a few other factors I can't remember. I wouldn't expect a pediatrician to be aware of the unusual C/I ratios neonates can show, which is why we should not be hiring retired pediatricians to play act at being expert neonatologists.

Neonates are not the same as full-term babies. They are not fully developed.

Well I certainly seem to have a better grasp than you. Yes, science can move on significantly in 3 years. And I will take the findings of researchers who have gone through robust IRB processes and been published in rigourously peer reviewed journals over the so called evidence presented in this trial, yes. The fact that you don't seem to know that would suggest you need to listen to the people on here who, by your own admission, are more educated than you. You have defended Dewi Evans, claiming he knows better than Shoo Lee, a man whose research Evans misused to add weight to his opinion that this was murder.

Your comment that LL is narcissistic and arrogant= your opinion. Your pattern of throwing out the same allegations, calling names to people who disagree with you, equating doubt with belief in innocence, and using histrionic language when challenged= fact. See how that works?'

@Firefly1987 Why do you keep saying the symptoms the babies had, as identified by Lee et al are "never seen before in babies"?

They have been seen before, and there is evidence to prove that. Not only have they been seen before, but they are also common. Are you honestly saying sepsis is a novel disease less common than murderous nurses?

Do you know what is not common? Serial killers.
Do you know what has never been seen before in babies? Insulin poisoning delivered by a TPN bag. That is a "crazy theory" which is yet to be studied. We don't even know if insulin can be delivered by a TPN bag or if it would just stick to the sides of the bag.

You're right about Chase, though. He is not an endocrinologist; he is a medical engineer who has spent much of his career researching the effects of insulin and developing new tests and treatments for insulin disorders, with a focus on neonates. I would argue he knows a bit more about insulin testing in neonates than an endocrinologist does.

And a paediatric endocrinologist also doesn't know this? How plausible do you think that is?

Can you provide proof the babies were suffering from sepsis as covered in court? I asked someone before and they never got back to me with a source.

Do you know what is not common? Serial killers.
Do you know what has never been seen before in babies? Insulin poisoning delivered by a TPN bag. That is a "crazy theory" which is yet to be studied. We don't even know if insulin can be delivered by a TPN bag or if it would just stick to the sides of the bag.

How do you propose anyone test that theory without harming babies?

Why do you think an endocrinologist would know more about laboratory tests for insulin than someone who is an expert in laboratory tests for insulin?

It would be trivially easy to add insulin to a PN bag, attach it to a pump and run it at the same rate as an infusion, and collect aliquots for testing in a lab. I hope someone has done this.

If the results showed the method (including spiking through a wrapper and tamper evident cap) is feasible I would reconsider my opinion.

If it’s not clinically relevant - and only seen in pre-term neonates - it’s not certain that a paediatric endocrinologist would be sighted on this fairly recent research.

https://thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Thirlwall-Inquiry-19-November-2024.pdf

Ctrl + F and search sepsis. Even the consultants knew the babies had sepsis.

Then your email to Dr Newby gives and others,Dr Murphy, Dr Jayaram: "I have reviewed Child D's care with Eirian and looked to see if there are any common threads in the deaths. I emailed an action plan to Ravi yesterday. Child D's death appears to be due to an early neonatal sepsis after PROM.

Some of the babies - children F and M for example - tested positive for sepsis. But most neonates with sepsis don't have positive cultures. They are treated on other symptoms and markers, because without this treatment they may die without ever having a positive test. That's why you won't get an unambiguous sepsis positive test result for most neonates needing treatment for sepsis, in Chester or elsewhere. Less than 10% of cases yield positive cultures, looking across the literature on the topic.

So we apply the same standard to Chester as anywhere else and go by clinical signs noted / identified by the doctors treating the children.

She had over 250 handover sheets which you think doesn't mean anything and I think are trophies or sheets to identify potential victims. That's a lot of babies.

What's the chance of not one of so many murder attempts leaving standalone proof of harm (clear enough to convict on its own)? On a busy open ward, often with others in the room, or as a closely monitored student? For illustration, if the chance of one attempt leaving such proof is 5%, then the chance of 50 attempts not leaving any is 8%.

They have been seen before, hence the research studies on it. You can't research something that's never happened.

She displayed strange behaviour. All these weird notes saying she was guilty. (Her therapist told her to do this. Hmmm.) Keeping record sheets. Googling parents of dead babies. All the evidece shows a pattern of a serial killer. She's guilty imho.

@Viviennemary they refuse to look at any of that, it shatters their illusions.

That's just a lie though isn't it because as you well know we have discussed this all to death and looked at it repeatedly.

We just don't think it proves she harmed babies.

@kkloo it makes it a lot more likely than someone not doing all those things. Shame you can't blame Evans for all that stuff eh.

Not really, it doesn't. All of the circumstantial evidence is evidence of nothing.

Strange behaviour - subjective, not quantifiable. I happen to think eating cheese and onion crisps is strange behaviour. They smell like sweaty feet. Anyone willing to put them in their mouth is weird as fuck. It doesn't mean they're all serial killers. It's also worth pointing out that this strange behaviour was noted retrospectively of the accusations. People were looking for things to label as strange. This is nothing more than confirmation bias.

Keeping record sheets - not record sheets - handover notes. These are informal notes passed from one shift to the next and disposed of at the end of the day. If we arrested every nurse and carer who accidentally took home handover notes, the prisons would be overflowing within hours. I last worked in care over 5 years ago, but I wouldn't be shocked to find a stray handover note wedged behind a drawer or under the washer. This is evidence of Letby being a hoarder, not a murderer.

Googling parents of dead babies - Again, if we arrested every nurse or carer who has ever looked up the relative of a patient who died/moved to another facility, we would need a prison the size of the UK. This is evidence of Letby being a normal, curious (nosy) human.

Keeping record sheets. Googling parents of dead babies. All the evidece shows a pattern of a serial killer.

A serial killer would show more interest in those she harmed than in the rest. Letby's handover sheets and searches weren't more focused on those allegedly harmed than on others, so the pattern there is actually exculpatory. Doing that many searches, or collecting that many sheets, may be odd, in the sense that most people don't do that exact thing. But by this definition of odd, many people are odd in some way, and most of those don't commit serial murder. So it's not meaningful evidence of being a murderer.

Struggling mentally and some facebook searches and handover sheets?
No it really doesn't.

When police build a case it's a pattern of evidence. It's looked at as a whole. Why was she found guilty if she's innocent. She's guilty imho. But if there is concrete evidence to contradict the guilty verdict where is the evidence and why wasnt it presented at her trial.

The evidence has been submitted to the CCRC.

That has already been covered on the thread. Some of the evidence was excluded by Goss (evidence of poor care, deaths prior to Letby joining, and the babies not included on the indictment were all excluded)

In the case of Lee's report, all the research they used was available at the time, although Lee has since updated his original paper and included new cases. However, it is worth bearing in mind that Lee put together a panel of 14 leading experts from across multiple medical disciplines. There is no way the defence could afford 14 experts, never mind 14 experts of the calibre of Lee's panel. No single expert, no matter how experienced they are, would be able to disprove all of Evan's theories. They span too many disciplines.

In the case of Chase and Shannon's work on insulin poisoning, some of this was technically available at the time, as there were papers evidencing high insulin/low C-peptide levels, but this research was relatively new and wasn't focused on insulin poisoning necessarily, so the defence's inability to find it is understandable. Chase was aware of it as he was working on developing more effective ways of detecting and treating hypo- and hyperglycemia in neonates and noted the C/I levels during that research. He has since written a peer-reviewed paper with Shannon, which proves the levels testified to in the trial are not unusual.

Exactly, and if the medical evidence does not prove murder and there are alternative explanations for the deaths the circumstantial evidence would need to be extremely strong.

@Firefly1987 said I've said before but if the experts can't agree (and they obviously can't) there's nothing else to do but look at the circumstantial evidence so that's what I've done

If the medical evidence can't stand up to challenge then the whole case will fall, the circumstantial evidence proves nothing. It is not enough to keep someone locked up for any amount of time, and certainly not on a whole life order.

She made facebook searches for the families, 31 searches for the babies families out of 2318 searches, so what is this proof of? Certainly not proof of murder, it's proof she was extremely nosy and searched for many, many, people.

She took home handover sheets, that's proof she was unprofessional when it came to that matter, that is not proof of murder.

She wrote notes where she wrote highly conflicting statements, what's that proof of? They prove she was stressed and distressed? Is that proof of murder? No, how could it be proof of murder, when if she didn't murder anyone then what she was going through was something that was extremely stressful and distressing anyway, and it could easily be due to that.

Texts like 'I'll be back in with a bang lol', what's that proof of?

etc. etc.

None of those things and even when they're added together get anywhere close to proving she murdered or harmed anyone. A perfectly innocent person could do and say all of those things. They're not particularly odd or unusual in any way. Sure some of it was unprofessional but many people are unprofessional, that doesn't prove murder.

Just found this thread about why she possibly didn't call anyone-

https://www.reddit.com/r/lucyletby/comments/1m0kdow/courtesy_of_triedbystats_on_x_insight_into_why/

At the start of the trial, on Day 3, the defence made a motion to call three of their expert witnesses. The prosecution objected because they wanted Letby to personally testify first, in part because Dr Hall specifically identified problems in the prosecution narrative but Letby had accepted them during her 30 hour police interrogation.