Lucy Letby guilty - part 2

[twoandcooplease]

Thread 1 Lucy Letby guilty www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/4875009-lucy-letby-guilty

Just in case anyone wants to keep the conversation going

This whole thing is so frustrating to come on Mumsnet and see people defending Lucy Letby, did you do the same for Ghislaine Maxwell as if you saw the evidence there you would had said it was scant just accepting the victims accounts from years ago, her family argued but thankfully her conviction still stands. As a black woman, I am convinced that because Lucy Letby is a white, blonde woman no one wants to accept she can do this. If this was perpetrated by a black woman, none of this circus and questioning the jury would exist and it would be accepted as normal and the worker would I think been picked up sooner by the management. We know how many people 'normal' people such as even Prince Andrew, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein and there is often no 'theory' about why someone who is 'normal' goes on to commit any offence. Prince Andrew and Ghislaine born into so much wealth and great childhoods (seemingly). There are so many people, Sarah Everard's killer, a police officer himself, no reason and we have to accept that we cannot get into all of this silly speculation about Lucy that has arisen and I am sure her race and gender plays into this. The idea that she might have a diagnosis and that should be taken into account is also silly as we are saying that those with 'mumsnet diagnosed Autism' should have any bearing on the way they view things in court.
I look at this a lot as to why someone can go from a being perceived 'normal' and all of those theories about childhood are not a determining factor. The evidence is clearly there from what I can see of the trial (my view I don't care about any others). Often people commit these crimes and if we do not accept that this is possible from any one, we will never change what might happen in the future.

You could read the police statement about how the investigation was approached. They have confirmed that the evidence and notes for each baby were given to separate investigators, none of whom were told anything about whether an individual was suspected or whatever else. They formed their own professional opinion based solely on the evidence in front of them before convening back as a group where the common threads were noted and the case was built. Seems fair and rational to me?

i think you have misunderstood me. Obviously I do not know how the police investigation was conducted, but the case or prosecution was not centred on the insulin cases. Why was that? It just worked through chronologically child a etc. which all varied with degrees of circumstantial evidence. I don’t believe I could do a better job. You’re being a little presumptuous there with a smidgen of rudeness.

@Lisbeinpar

the media have highlighted the most ridiculous parts of prosecution, the bewildering amount of circumstantial evidence, which I struggle to be convinced with.

People don't seem to understand that circumstantial evidence is not bad evidence.

Almost all evidence is circumstantial, including DNA.

The fact there is so much circumstantial isn't therefore inherently bad / unreliable.

It just means there was an abundance of evidence, which happened to be circumstantial rather than direct.

Added to which, look at the people who MN’ers will swear blind committed crimes they were never convicted of or acquitted of. Michael Jackson, various others who are brought out on the celeb threads where MN’ers say things like “yeah, the truth will out,” and yet here we have an actual murderer, convicted of actual murders, and mn’ers are falling over themselves to question her guilt.

She didn't though, not really. Not as they looked at her behaviour after recognising quite early on that she was the nurse on duty when babies collapsed. She didn't seem distressed enough by the deaths (when the second triplet died and the department had a meeting where everyone was upset, the consultant said to LL words to the effect of "get a good rest over the weekend" and she replied with "oh I am fine, I'll be back on shift tomorrow"). The panorama programme also said she came in all smiley while bathing a baby who had died and talked about how she'd also been present at baby's first bath and how much she'd enjoyed it and the mum said "I just wanted her to shut up" - it struck them even then as inappropriate. The consultant came in and saw her doing nothing as a baby de-satted. The mother came in to her baby screaming with blood round his mouth and Lucy "looking busy" but not really doing anything.

Re coming back to do an extra shift after losing the two triplets - This was after they had suspicions of course, but it seems like perhaps she was so into her heroic/martyr role that she didn't realise where the thoughts of others about her changed from "such a dedicated nurse, so selfless and caring, soldiering on beyond what others can manage" (what I suspect was what she wanted people to think about her - and yes, probably wanting her parents to think this of her in particular) tipped in to "wow, that's kind of weirdly callous, to not need a day off when two of three triplets have died in 48 hours while under your care". And then of course during that extra shift triplet 3 also collapsed.

No one has blind deference, but perhaps just an understanding that people whose actual job this was and lived the case for years might have known a tiny bit more about it and what they were doing than randoms on mumsnet?

I have no idea what you’re talking about now. There were “only” a few hundred muslin cases. How could they just focus on those from the 22 charges she faced ? As for working through the charges chronologically that’s pretty standard, no?

she’s not been wrongfully convicted. There is tons of evidence which has been appropriately presented and subject to extensive cross examination. I bet even her own KC knew deep down she’d done it. She’s bang to righrs, she knows it, and she’s going down for a very long time. Hopefully forever.

They worked on each child's case individually and simultaneously. They didn't have a team of officers working on one case then moving on to the next. They worked on them simultaneously, then came together as a team to put forward their findings, that's when they found the patterns emerging. According to DS Paul Hughes.

@DrRuthGalloway but everything you're referencing is retrospective- that's the point!

People look back and say 'ooh yeah, I thought it was a bit weird that she wasn't emotional enough/ was too emotional' etc etc You can retrospectively apply meaning to practically anything! If LL hadn't come back into work after the triplet deaths you can bet your life that people would say 'ah she was obviously feeling guilty.'

The point is, at the moment in time when these crimes were being committed, the only thing that arose suspicion was that she was the one nurse who was always on duty. There was nothing else said about her at the time that marked her out. And the reason it was so difficult to believe was precisely because of that.

When someone commits a crime as an adult they, and they alone are responsible for having committed that crime.

But it absolutely is the case that many criminals had disturbed or difficult childhoods. Not all, but enough that it is a natural step to look at any criminal’s upbringing.

Interestingly very little has been said about LL’s childhood either way. Nobody has come out and said that she had a difficult childhood, but equally there’s been no mention of a normal childhood, of her being a model student, there haven’t been teachers and friends’ parents and so on coming out to express their shock at this because she did this or that at school and was this or that kind of person.

I find that odd.

When someone commits a crime we usually hear a lot more about them once the verdict is delivered, be that good or bad. But all we’ve heard about LL is that she had a bedroom with teddybears and posters. It’s as if she never existed before she started killing babies.

So while people say that she seemed entirely normal, actually I think that she seemed entirely characterless. Because we’ve been given 0 insight into any character other than a few pictures of her clubbing.

@watermeloncougar
No - when the consultant came in and caught her "doing nothing" standing by a cot while a baby's sats went down into the 80s, that was immediately obvious as an unusual thing for a pead NICU nurse to be doing.

I agree to.some extent but I'm not sure its because she's white ,
I think its because she's pretty ,and looks innocent in her pictures obviously it was a long time ago.And we didn't have the internet then but in contrast Beverly Alliit wasn't pretty and rose West was very p!ain I don't recall.there being much sympathy for them.

This thread is a prime example of how people try to create a narrative after the event.

The bedroom for example. The photos of LL's bedroom were shown in court as a factual record of where she stored medical records which she should never have taken out of hospital. She stored them under her bed.

Now of course, when the tabloids published those photos they leapt on the cuddly toys and duvet cover as if these were really meaningful things and proof that LL was weird.

As I said upthread, my mid 20s dd has fairy lights round her bed frame and still keeps a childhood teddy in her room. Fortunately i'm intelligent enough not to be a Daily Mail reader so I don't read anything deep into this.

One of the things I don’t understand is why the consultants didn’t go straight to the police if they were that concerned. If you thought your next door neighbour might be killing babies, you wouldn’t spend months trying to convince the head of the neighborhood watch that this was the case and wait for their permission. I appreciate there are hierarchies and systems in hospitals, but clearly the system in this hospital wasn’t working properly ( I work in one myself, and If there is any suggestion that someone has so much as caused a bruise to a patient, they are removed from clinical duties, a safeguarding enquiry is initiated and consideration is given as to whether a crime may have been committed in which case you involve the police - you don’t need evidence to trigger this, just a concern.
I’m not blaming the consultants as clearly they tried and we’re met with opposition at every point and I’m sure they regret not going directly to the police in hindsight, but these are very senior professionals and I would have thought that between the 7 of them at least one would have had the common sense to report to the police when it became evident they weren’t being listened to and they had grave concerns that other babies may be murdered.
in terms of the trial and guilty verdict, I must admit I didn’t see as much evidence as I had imagined when I read the papers yesterday ( although 10 months was condensed into 6 pages and I really don’t want to get into the trial by internet thing). However, in healthcare we do sometimes see clusters of deaths related sometimes to coincidence but more often due to poorly performing units. If this was murder- which sadly appears to be the case- then I’m quite sure they’ve got the right person, but I’m left with a little niggle as to whether it definitely was murder. I’m not a pathologist ( although I am a doctor) but I would have wanted to here more about the insulin/ c-peptide ratio, and whether this was enough to amount to absolute proof of murder ( as post mortem blood levels are not always as reliable as in the living). Yes, there’s other circumstantial evidence including her being the only person by a mile on every shift- but what unit would have 38 nurses on their roster? - some of these must have been part time or bank/ agency nurses and therefore less likely to be on duty. Yes, there’s the notes, but could be someone under intense stress. Yes, there were no deaths when she was on holiday and after she left, but there was also a spell of 8 months when she was working on the unit and there were no deaths. Again, I don’t know enough to really have a view ( although my view is they almost certainly got it right, but I’m just left with that slight doubt) and I think we’ll have to trust the experts , but if the starting point was wrong ( that this was murder) it’s not unfathomable to see how unconscious bias could have built up a strong case against Lucy let by.

she’s not been wrongfully convicted. There is tons of evidence which has been appropriately presented and subject to extensive cross examination. I bet even her own KC knew deep down she’d done it. She’s bang to righrs, she knows it, and she’s going down for a very long time. Hopefully forever. I think the fact that the defence only called one witness is a fairly clear indication that her KC knew she’d done it.

I feel sorry for the defence barristers in these cases. They have to put forward a defence, do their best to create reasonable doubt,and they often have to do so in the knowledge that if they succeed in creating reasonable doubt, then a killer could walk free.

And I’m not just talking about LL here, every notorious criminal who goes on trial has a defence, even in cases where the evidence is overwhelming.

No - when the consultant came in and caught her "doing nothing" standing by a cot while a baby's sats went down into the 80s, that was immediately obvious as an unusual thing for a pead NICU nurse to be doing.

This is that he said retrospectively. He didn't report this at the time. And this was part of the disputed evidence because apparently the alarm didn't sound - as it should have done - and it came about that after switching it off and working on the baby earlier, a doctor thought he may have forgotten to turn the alarm back on.

Seeing as we’re talking about her school…

She wasn’t actually in the catchment area for her secondary school, but her parents would have wanted her to go there instead of her local school (a failing school). Lots of my friends went to her school in the 90s, it had a great rep. Back then, it was a nice, big, friendly, fairly high achieving comp, and my friends who attended there until 16 went to top unis after sixth form college (including Oxford). Then the headteacher left around 2000 (LL would have started 2002ish) and it plummeted; it’s never been better than RI since. I used to hear stories of horrific bullying: a teacher from the college next door had to intervene in a bunch of girls pulling another girl’s hair out just off the school grounds. She would have had a torrid time at school around that time if she was fairly studious.

That's their, job though I have a relative who.is a,KC ,and has defended some quite high profile criminals its his job to get the best out come for his client .

I'm suprised that the ward sisters/ward manager didn't pick up on some of her odd behaviour with respect to her work attendance. Letby frequently attended her (12hr) shifts hours early and left hours late - even when there was no real reason to do so (emergency etc). She was coming into work on her day's off (for no pay or real reason) to check on patients and parents - this was in addition to the large amounts of extra shifts she did. That may have been the culture of the ward/unit or seen as a good/helpful thing, but even leaving aside her crimes, the best care is never going to be provided by hugely fatigued nurses working a changing shift pattern (I know there are staffing issues across the NHS)

Also her anger when she has taken out of room 1 for a bit to another part of the unit for duty of care reasons (followed the murders) as it was assumed she would be distressed and need a break from the NICU. She was literally agressivley demanding to be rotated there and saw it as a slight when she wasn't.

So what?!? She's not the only innocent-looking blonde who has committed unspeakable crimes. What about Erin Caffey - the pretty blonde teenager who had her whole family killed for no reason? What about Darlene Routier who out if the blue committed the most horrific murders? There is overwhelming evidence of Lucy's guilt. Absolutely no doubt about it. The fact that she's a pretty blonde with no (known) history of crime doesn't change that. Plus, police are investigating further cases of baby deaths in her care at a previous hospital. She could have killed many more but was just never caught.

Also she abused her positon to look up parents of patients address details to send them sympathy cards etc - that in itself would be serious disciplinary case.

I’ve never said that I think she didn’t do it. I am quite clearly stating the evidence was weak. Which it is. With exception to the insulin cases, fortunately there was only a couple of those. But quite clearly points to someone on the ward with malicious intent. That’s very strong evidence. The prosecution with all this evidence, which im referring to what as been released by the media, I’m sure there is other stuff I haven’t seen that would be on the court transcripts. But how can anyone be confident with their conclusion was, when their evidence included she stalked the families on Facebook and sent a card. Seriously?? Perhaps the coverage of the case is where I think things should have been better, you know like telling us all of this strong evidence the police have.

I know, doesn’t mean it’s easy though. I know at least one barrister who has stopped doing defence work because of the need to defend some abhorrent criminals. He just couldn’t continue to do it. But some do, and we either have to believe that they are human beings who do the job they are qualified for but who will absolutely struggle with the need to defend the most depraved criminals in our society, or that they have depraved minds themselves and want to defend them.

Personally I like to hope that it’s the former.

There are many similarities, the main one being the statistics used to point out how often Lucia de B was there on the ward when the deaths took place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucia_de_Berk