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

I agree that the more salacious titbits from the trial were reported in the media. There's many a poster on this thread that have admitted to be 'overly invested' in the case, one even went on Ancestry to find out more information on Letby's mother - I call that stalking.

That's how killers in the medical profession get away with it - because when sick patients die it's very difficult to prove that they didn't just die of their illnesses or some medical oversight. That's how "Dr Death" in the US got away with killing/crippling patients for so long. It's difficult to prove malicious intent. However, the baby insulin case was clear and beyond reasonable doubt.

@WhyAreAllTheGoodUserNamesUsedUp

Okay so consultants go to the police. The hospital tell them extensive enquiries have been undertaken, a group of doctors have been found to be bullying a nurse and have had to formally apologise to her. The medical director (most senior doctor in the hospital) has investigated and found no evidence. The hospital are considering reporting the consultants to the GMC for their actions. An independent review of the unit has been commissioned by the hospital to be undertaken by the Royal College of Paediatrics and child health.

You think that hugely underesourced CID teams in a County police force would have started investigating?

I need to wear my bloody glasses when typing. I meant only a few insulin cases.

@BeenThereDoneThat101

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.

Sorry to disillusion you. A barrister I know rates himself as good as his last win and the more likely the person is to be guilty the more pleased he is with himself if he gets them off.

Would people on here who defend Lucy Letby want her to take care of their babies in NICU?

One thing the podcast touched on that hasn't been mentioned much was that before LL bought her house, she lived in staff accommodation, she had no dependents and was saving to buy her house, meaning she was the first to volunteer for extra shifts and overtime. I would like to see more of the rotas showing how often she actually worked, it seemed like she was always there, and yet one of the babies she was accused of being with, by a parent, the records said she didn't swipe onto the ward until some time later. So either this parent was mistaken or LL spent time on the ward "unofficially". I don't know how that would work in practice, how many people would clock that she wasn't on the rota? On the one hand, the more shifts she worked the more likely it is that she'd be there when a baby collapsed, and the other side is did any babies collapse when she wasn't officially at work, but had just called in for some reason.. I'd like to think she wouldn't get near the babies when she wasn't working (was she in uniform?).

It's almost unbelievable to me, as a parent of a NICU baby who spent months on wards like this. We trusted the staff implicitly.

The motives mentioned on here ring true, my experience of a similar SCBU, which wasn't designed for the sickest babies, is that a lot of the time it's very very quiet, babies sleeping, feeding, crying some needing meds and regular checks but overall pretty peaceful. After LL went to train at the other hospital, and had a taste of the real action, so to speak, it fits the timeline that the collapses started when she returned to the CoC and that level of life or death action was not there anymore, and she started creating it. Horrifying.

The motive you mention seems very possible. Just a note- she spent the weekend away with the married doc (God I hope his wife has booted him) so she did have an actual affair but having an affair with a married man is very often because of feelings of inadequacy and jealousy of attached people.

re her looks, I actually think she looks quite scary- her eyes.

Sorry I've not read the full thread. I did read the last one but some of the responses are infuriating me so much. I've following the trial daily since day 1 and remained on the fence for several months. I've read the live reporting every day since day 1 and think I'm pretty well informed but wouldn't be so arrogant to think I know all of the evidence because there was 10s of thousands of pages of it and a live blog isn't going to cover even 70% of what happens over several hours.

What convinced me:
Letby being on duty for every event. We've since discovered she was also on duty for EVERY SINGLE DEATH (13 in total) over the 12 month period

The babies were mostly stable with a good prognosis until they had sudden unexplained collapses. These babies suffered air embolism, severe internal injuries and insulin poisoning. The defence accepts the insulin poisoning cannot be accidental.

Letby horded handover notes. Hundred of them, while shredding her bank statements. She Facebook searched the parents of her victims on special anniversaries, she Facebook searched the parents of a child she killed while their twin was still in the ward

When she was removed from the ward the deaths stopped. Even before the unit was downgraded. Many of these babies were over 32 weeks and would have still been treated in the ward after it was downgraded. Since then there's been one death in 7 years.

To the posters referencing Richard Gill: the man is a crackpot who has destroyed his credibility. He has no medical background and is so ill informed on the evidence he even accused Dewi Evans as an elderly consultant of causing the deaths. Dewi Evans did not work at COCH. He thinks Allit is innocent.

Thanks to the poster who linked the Guardian article ‘trust me I’m a nurse’. It gave me the chills. Kafkaesque indeed.

It just beggars belief that ‘Letby had been just six days from returning to work on the neonatal unit at this point’ (when 2 consultants had been forced to apologise to her & threatened by LL’s father that they’d be reported to the GMC). The consultants then went to the police (as it was apparent that hospital executives were not going to do so & clearly had their own agenda).
I really hope the non-statutory inquiry holds the execs accountable - they clearly have blood on their hands.

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

This is a very good point.

Apart from her friend who swears blind she's innocent despite 13 convictions for murder or attempted murder we've heard nothing from anyone else.

Her friend says they all stand behind her. The others not publicly. I question why?

I'm 43.

I still have teddies in my room.

They were brought for me as a teen by my mum who has passed away.

It doesn't make me weird or a killer!

Personally I don't believe it's "one bad apple" which can taint a whole organisation; it's the knowledge that, all too often, nothing will be done about them which creates that

Add on the usual arse-covering and resistance to public accountability and we have a perfect recipe for public unease - and quite apart from the needs of service users that disadvantages the countless decent members of staff, many of whom would also like to see the back of those rotten apples

Well, that’s assuming there were other friends. We’ve seen no evidence of them. None of them have spoken out, nobody has mentioned them.

If there were other friends I can understand why they wouldn’t be coming out to defend her publicly, the woman who did was incredibly stupid to do so, she’s put her family at risk by doing that, her children at risk of bullying when they’re told their good mum is a murderer etc etc.

Having said that, that interview for Panorama would have been some time ago, I haven’t seen her quoted since the verdict, and I have 0 doubt she will have been approached by the press, so perhaps she’s finally seen the light.

You'd have to be mad to publicly support her now even if you did think she was innocent. Just imagine your name and face becoming known to the world as the one who defends evil child killer Lucy Letby.

To add to my previous post. The jury has sat through almost 10 months of evidence and over 100 hours of deliberations.

They've sacrificed almost a year from their careers, no family holidays in that time. Two have had bereavements. Many have experienced illness.

They are the people who know this case inside out. Not people who have listened to podcasts or read the Guardian. Not Richard Gill or the Reddit crackpot who set up their own subreddit after being removed from the main sub for blatant bullshitting. They found her guilty on 13 charges. Three unanimously.

Letby's excellent KC couldn't find a single expert witness to refute the medical evidence. Her defence was Letby herself and a plumber.

I'm sure the length of this trial has taken a huge toll on the victims families, and the jury, I hope they are all getting good support.

Re. not having colleagues as character witnesses.. I mean, would you put your career and reputation on the line, so many years later, if you had even a 0.1% doubt in your mind? I've got a lot of good friends that I've worked with for years, but would I stake my career on my judgement of them?

I have friends who work in similar fields. Been friends with some for 30odd years. I would be utterly shocked if they ended up guilty of anything like this, so I suspect many of her friends are in a period of adjustment, where their view of her has been completely rocked. Even if privately, they are struggling to believe it, there's no way you'd say it out loud.

To a lesser extent, this happened with a bloke I worked with. Nice guy, dead normal, got no vibes from him at all. Turned out he was grooming young girls online. I'd always been convinced I was a good judge of character etc, etc. However, the evidence was unequivocal. Made me realise how our 'instincts' aren't always right. Although maybe that's because he wasn't actually a threat to me.

Someone addresssed that upthread when they queried where the senior nurses were in all this

I obviously don't know, but wonder if it's possible they left the "7 consultants" to handle it, believing their seniority would protect them from the intidation which followed?

If a safeguarding enquiry involves the police, the police will do their own investigation independent of the hospital. I do however see why it might not have gone anywhere after one of the consultants said “ oh no, not Lucy” after the third death and seemingly without any other evidence at that stage. There were either extremely foresighted and dared to think the unthinkable but likewise it does seem a bit odd to jump to that conclusion based on one person being on 3 shifts, and I wonder if this set the tone with the managers that their was a “ witch hunt” that they then failed to take seriously even when there was mounting evidence. I’m not making excuses for the managers - there were clearly serious misgivings, but I’m just trying to understand how things may have happened.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page I absolutely wouldn’t. But even if they weren’t called as character witnesses, why was nobody from her department or indeed previous hospitals brought in to talk about the quality of her work, her dedication, the way she interacted?

That wouldn’t be the same as being a character reference, it could all have been factual evidence but which could have been used to cast reasonable doubt.

I absolutely believe LL is guilty, I wouldn't defend her in the slightest. I believe her on the strength of the circumstantial evidence presented to the court. Not because she had fairy lights round her bed, or because I'm constructing some weird narrative that at age 25 she was jealous of married couples with kids, or because she was an only child, or simply because 'I could see it in her eyes.'

It's important IME that it's recognised that LL presented as very ordinary, 'beige,' 'Nice Lucy', just a regular member of nursing staff. It meant people thinking the unthinkable to piece together the fact that she was the common link to the babies' deaths. It's dangerous territory to start retrospectively thinking that teddies on the bed, or other nonsense is significant. Its like the whole idea the hospital management seemed to go along with... that someone presenting as normal couldn't possibly be committing evil acts, and that there should be 'signs' that we should have been able to spot all along if we'd looked hard enough. It's bollocks.
The only thing which would have helped (and it's tragic it didn't happen) is if cctv had been placed in the rooms once the increased death rate showed up.

I think this is also why she's not appearing at her sentencing. Having to police rent a mob that will no doubt turn up to to understandably bay for her blood and throw eggs . I would imagine she will appear via video link .

Wolves come in sheep's clothing. It's usually the ones you would never think that commit awful crimes / deceive others .

It does. I can't understand why there haven't been psychological reports done. No-one bar LL and Beverley Allitt have ever done such a thing. We know Allitt was extremely unwell and remains in a psychiatric hospital. I have never read anything about her illness other than she was diagnosed but I would be very interested to learn more. How can we improve safety if we cannot recognise risk factors?

I would go so far to suggest that these two nurses have even convinced themselves they are innocent. It is such unusual behaviour.