Kathleen Folbigg (Australian mum convicted of killing her four children) and Lucia De Berk (Dutch neonatal nurse convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder 3) both wrote similar ‘incriminating’ notes in diaries. In fact they did so more than Lucy Letby did, but neither of them actually committed any crimes.
Both were eventually exonerated - Folbigg was released in 2024, De Berk in 2010. Both were initially suspected because of suspicion based on a misunderstanding of statistics - the idea that this ‘couldn’t be a coincidence’, which led to confirmation bias in building cases around them. Both had poor medical/forensic evidence overstated, massaged, or misinterpreted used against them. Both had diaries or personal notes misinterpreted in the worst possible light used against them.
In both cases once the statistical evidence and medical evidence was dismantled by experts and all that was left was the subjective interpretation of weak circumstantial evidence many still clung to a belief that those evidences were strong enough, in the absence of actual evidence of murder in the first place, to prove guilt. This is despite the fact that in both cases such supposedly clear evidence of guilt would not have been enough to investigate let alone convict in the first place without the (by then discredited) statistical and medical evidence that there were any murders at all.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Side note: Roy Meadow, a now disgraced paediatrician, was the dangerous fool behind “One sudden infant death is a tragedy, two is suspicious, three is murder unless proven otherwise.” statistical mistake that led to several women in Britain (and elsewhere) including Sally Clark and Kathleen Folbigg, being wrongly imprisoned for life for murdering their children. Many families and lives were utterly destroyed by this foolish misinterpretation of statistics that is convincing to the average layperson as ‘common sense’ on its face.
That's the problem in starting a case due to a ‘common sense’ misunderstanding of statistics, using confirmation bias to fill in the picture, and then, after all of that falls apart, clinging onto weak and subjectively interpreted circumstantial evidence that you wouldn’t even have without the rest. Again, sound familiar?
Important footnote:
Roy Meadow was known to Dewi Evans and admired by him. They together co-signed a letter to the GMC against “frivolous complaints” by mothers accused of Munchausens by Proxy.
Dr Jayaram and Dr Gibbs - two of the COCH consultants who testified against Lucy Letby - signed several letters in support of Meadow when he was struck off for utterly destroying so many lives.