I have a close relative who I believe is a sociopath if not a psychopath. I mean in the “ ruthless businessman “ mode rather than the serial killer. he has done lots of things that most poeple woudo think were deeply immoral but not illegal. I know he has committed criminal offence, but they are of the type that many people think are “ mot really wrong “, like tax and benefit fraud.
I can see some similarities in how he acts and what is reported about Lucy Letby. For expample
he has absolutely no empathy at all, he is completely detached from anyone else’s emotions if they get in the way of him achieving his goals
he is very charming and plausible , you would all like him if you met him, you wouldn’t believe anything I could tell you about him.
He is the most plausible liar in the world. I have been is situations where I have seen something happen right in front of me, he later denies it ever happened and I wish I had recorded it because I doubt my own memory.
he is a very happy person because he is not troubled by self doubt or guilt. He treats other people appallingly and walks away without a second thought. He has none of the uncomfortable feelings that the rest of us have when he treat someone else badly. So in many ways he is happier that other people , he has no regrets.
If you asks him if he did some ( objectively bad ) thing , he won’t say yes or no. He will say “ my conscience is clear “. And I believe him . It’s not that he doesn’t know that, for example, ripping off his employees is wrong. He knows that other people think it’s wrong so that’s why he hides it. But he has a good enough ( in his head ) reason to do it so its not wrong FOR HIM.
So if you confronted him about the morality or legality of what he has done, he would say “ But you don’t understand, you know nothing about running a company “. Not “ I don’t care “ or “ Fuck you “. Which is what people think a sociopath would say.
He would tell himself that you are so stupid you don’t understand business, you are not as intelligent, sophisticated or worldly as him, that the situation is complicated and not black and white as you make out .
That ways he gets to believe that he is a Good Person and others are idiots. It’s very important to him that he is a good man .
He is completely unable to take any responsibility for his own actions. If he is ever confronted he will attack and deflect .
He doesn’t get stressed the way other people would, that makes him excellent at some aspect of his job, he is calm when others are not, he is icy calm in a crisis.
He has an insatiable need for attention and will make every situation about him eg someone else’s birthdays or graduation, the funeral of someone he is not close to.
if Lucy is the same kind of psychopath that he is , then I can see why the Director of Nursing at the trust would assume that she was innocent, if she is an expert and plausible liar. People foolishly think they can tell if someone is lying - they can’t with an expert because they don’t believe in some ways that they are lying.
If Lucy was calm-in a crisis , that would help her in her job, it’s a good quality in a nurse.
If she didn’t have feelings of sadness or guilt, that would enable her to make up memory boxes for the bereaved families, without the feelings of sadness that some other nurse on the ward else might have.
She could have been looking up the brief families on Facebook because she wanted to discover how normal people behave when faced with such a terrible loss. She might be aware that she needed to learn the appropriate things to say and do at such a time. it’s not the same as gloating.
Lucy might feel that she is cleverer than the police and take pleasure in outsmarting them. She might feel that they are lay people who don’t understand the complexities of neo natal medicine.
She might enjoy getting all the sympathy and attention from colleagues when a baby died, making it about her and not the parents.
My relative had a normal happy childhood ( I know all his siblings ), was not neglected or abused. No adverse childhood events. lots of broken marriages of course as you’d expect , but that’s effect not cause.
He was not the neglected kid with the alcoholic father who killed his pets, got expelled from school at 15 and ended up in prison at 20 for stabbing someone who looked at him the wrong way in a pub. That’s a different type of sociopath.