Not only did Lucy Letby kill and badly hurt babies…

[determinedtomakethiswork]

She also prepared the memory boxes for parents of the dead children. Can you imagine having a memory box with photos and footprints of your dead child which had been taken by his or her merger?

That goes way beyond the murder. I just don't know how the families are coping.

No, it is you who is wrong. A personality disorder is the result of abuse and neglect, it is not biological.

She must have only been about 25 when she started this. It's so bizarre to think that such a young, seemingly normal women, with her whole life ahead of her, would do something like this.

Not even comparable. Abortion is about the life and health and rights of the woman taking priority over those of the unborn child. Once the baby is born, there is no conflict of interests and so no need to hurt the baby in order to protect the mother.

In fact, killing these babies also harmed the mothers profoundly by causing life-long grief and shattering their trust in nurses. Abortion is to help the woman, and Letby harmed those women as well as their babies. Letby has no place anywhere near any patient, whether a pregnant woman wanting an abortion or anyone else.

We can't say for sure how much of antisocial personality disorder is nature and how much is nurture. We don't know enough about how brains develop.

But given that you can have one sibling with APD and another without it, I'd suspect at least some genetic component because siblings tend to be raised fairly similarly.

I think the mother's histrionic reaction to the police arriving to arrest Letby is telling: 'I did it! Take me!' It shows an emotional/logical dysregulation issue that could easily run in the family.

I don’t think much of him, he’s wheeled out a lot as a ‘talking head’ and clearly didn’t think she was going to be found guilty at the time of filming.

Now the evidence as been heard and she’s been found guilty, he’s speaking about her having Munchausens, which is not even current terminology.

The detectives in the case have given a better account. I’m sure more will come out that couldn’t be disclosed before.

They did that because, at that stage, they didn't know she had done it! They certainly didn't want to believe she had and I can understand that. Imagine if she had been found not guilty, what being under suspicion for such a dreadful crime, never mind going to trial, would have done to her.

I don't think you can hold that against them, it took a long time for the police to build a case and a lot of people felt she was innocent, that it was coincidental she was on duty when the poor babies died. Now it's easy to say they always had suspicions, people always do that, but who wants to think a trusted colleague, one who appears to be quite ordinary but competent, would commit murders of innocent babies?

It's too awful to contemplate. There was a Panorama edition about it on TV last night and, honestly, I could only watch the beginning of it.

Who can we trust? I can't imagine how the parents are feeling now if they watched it, it's just so shocking.

Right! I think to my self there has to have been signs? I just read about the case. How she sent a card to some parents it's like she was rubbing salt into the wounds.

This struck me too. Like a kid pinching their little sister to make mum come into the room and give them attention.

I think prejudice has had a part to play in many of these poor babies being murdered. She got away with it so long because she’s a young middle class blond white woman. Nobody imagined she was capable of such crimes.

If she’d been a 25 year old black man, she would have been watched and suspected from the first unexplained death.

Even now she’s been found guilty, people are scrambling around for ‘reasons’. If she were a black man, it would just be cries of ‘monster!’. There would be no analysis into his backstory.

This. I just hope that action is taken against those that allowed this to happen for so long.

When healthcare workers are serial killers its usually a god complex. They get off on the power over life and death, and the way their actions affect everyone around them so profoundly. I believe that is what was wrong with Harold Shipman, and that he refused to explain himself and ultimately killed himself as a way of holding onto the power until the last. Its true he did benefit financially from some of his murders, but that came later, he'd been killing for years when he started altering wills. There's a sort of variation on it that's more of a hero/martyr complex - deliberately making patients much sicker so you can 'save' them at the last second and be lauded as a hero/above and beyond the call of duty/best doctor or nurse ever. These people aren't necessarily trying to kill, but they inevitably end up killing people as byproduct.

Have you ever seen the (pretty regular) threads on here "new man told me he was falsely accused of rape"?

And a whole load of posters respond about how their dad/brother/cousin/boyfriend/friend was also 'falsely' accused of rape?

It's pretty incredible because false accusations are statistically rare yet so many have a friend/family member/boyfriend who was 'falsely' accused 🤔

More likely they will need to put her on suicide watch.

look at what happens when a deranged gunman lets loose in a school, shopping mall or church. Their last act is to turn the gun on themselves.

I too have always wondered this, not that it excuses the horror of what she did.

I have heard a couple of theories so far but nothing official:

1. Munchausen by proxy
2. Rumours she was having an affair with a married consultant and she wanted him to be called in on an emergency 🤯

@iloveeverykindofcat your example of Harold Shipman is very relevant, especially the power he craved in the context of medically vulnerable people, in his case at end of life, in LLs case at the beginning of life. They basically have no regard for human life, not even their own.

Also just read @iloveeverykindofcat theory

“a hero/martyr complex - deliberately making patients much sicker so you can 'save' them at the last second and be lauded as a hero/above and beyond the call of duty/best doctor or nurse ever.”

Which sounds plausible to be honest!

Sending cards etc is typical of this type as well - its part of the power trip, hanging around to see all the devastation their actions have caused.

I feel for the parents, but her Mums
reaction was bizarre and so was Lucy’s she was more concerned about her knee than being arrested for allegations being a baby killer.

Lucy was an only child and first one in their family to go university.

Very sad. Parents look heartbroken in all the photos I’ve seen of them, they attended trial everyday and seem to be in denial.

Hope no one attacks them. Not their fault. How could they have known she would do this?

She would have covered this side of her up, even senior management in hospital didn’t suspect her and went against 7 doctors. Made them apologise to her etc.

Ridiculous 😭

The professor on the documentary, who profiles serial killers, calls her an outlier in terms of healthcare killers as she was social, had friends, made relationships at work and out of work and that no-one viewed her as ‘odd’. He said that was very unusual.

She does seem to have been very cosseted by her parents. And was very unwell a couple of times in her life. And she didn’t seem to form romantic partnerships. She was single and seemed to have been infatuated with another doctor.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66104004
From the article from the BBC reporter who watched the whole court case:

It wasn't until February [trial started in October] that I first saw a hint of emotion from Letby. It wasn't prompted by an upsetting piece of evidence, or harrowing testimony. It was the voice of a doctor that caused the nurse to break.
She couldn't see him - he was hidden behind screens to protect his identity - but she could hear him speak, and his voice seemed to trigger feelings we hadn't seen before.
Later, Letby admitted she had "loved him like a friend". We were shown flirty texts between the two, which suggested that although the doctor was married, it might have been more than that. The prosecution painted him as her boyfriend.
I found it interesting that while the nurse remained composed throughout months of evidence relating to the terrible suffering of tiny babies, her first sign of emotion seemed to be borne out of pangs of longing for this doctor.
There were only a handful of other occasions when tears came to the surface. During evidence about being taken off nursing duty, when excerpts of her post-arrest interviews were read out, and when it was mentioned she'd had suicidal thoughts.
Much later, when lead prosecutor Nick Johnson KC got to his feet to start cross-examining Letby, his first question was one I'd been wondering too.
"Is there any reason that you cry when you talk about yourself," he asked, "but you don't cry when talking about these dead and seriously injured children?"
"I have cried when talking about some of those babies," Letby replied.

The article also talks about what she was like in the witness box which is interesting. But the reporter felt she never saw what Letby was like on any level really. Never felt like she had an idea of what she was like as a person. Which I think is telling in its own right.

Professor on the programme said she didn’t have social difficulties. She was social with groups of friends in and out of work. Agree about the rest though and not having had a romantic relationship and being cosseted by her parents . But a lot of stuff marketed at adult women is fluffy and twee, isn’t it? Walk round a nightwear department and teddies and twee sayings abound.

So am I. He, married, testified against her apparently, source is Mail though. They continued to meet up after she was suspended/ moved and he was the usual doctor on call. Prosecution suggests he might be her motive, that she wanted his attention. She says relationship was platonic. Would assume he would would have been on duty at the hospital based on this.
The note shows mental distress but tbh I wouldn't read it as a confession. She claimed to be feeling victimised, these could have been comments on her feelings about the way she was seen. Diary had numerous entries proclaiming her innocence.
Her coldness could be compartmentalizing.
The most compelling evidence that terrible crimes had been committed is non accidental cause of death. Injecting with insulin, air bubbles etc. My heart goes out to the parents of these babies but I'm not completely convinced that she was the perpetrator. About 70 percent maybe?

I would imagine they will be but am not sure of the offence- aiding and abetting?

Yes it's reminiscent of the Beverly Allitt case.