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Lucy Letby: have you changed your mind - thread 3

983 replies

Typicalwave · 19/08/2025 18:43

New thread for those following or wishing to comment - originally started by @kittybythelighthouse.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
40
Oftenaddled · 20/08/2025 09:37

tinybeautiful · 20/08/2025 09:24

I don't know whether she's guilty or not.

The people I feel most sorry for by far are the parents who will never ever, no matter what happens from here, be able to rest in the absolute knowledge of how their children died. I am a NICU parent and I cannot even imagine their anguish.

The social media 'stalking' doesn't strike me as that uncommon - I have certainly searched for some of our nurses and am even friends with a few on FB. The bit that does strike me as unusual is the specific dates - NICU nurses look after hundreds of babies a year, and sadly some die, it doesn't seem unusual to look up their families to see how they're getting on, but to remember the dates makes me uncomfortable that there was more going on there.

I think - happy to be corrected - looking the families up on particular significant dates only happened in one case, with the triplets. After two triplets died, Lucy Letby was taken off the ward, about a year before there was any police investigation and two years before the arrest. In the meantime, she went through an external review, a grievance enquiry, isolation from her colleagues and weekly sessions with occupational health to deal with the stress of it all.

So it makes sense that by that stage, she wouldn't just be behaving like any other nurse on a ward because that wasn't what she was. She was dealing with all of these issues which were definitely linked to the triplets' deaths, and she became distressed and wanted support coming up to their anniversary. I'm not surprised she was very aware of the date in her really unusual circumstances, or that she looked up the parents and the surviving child on Facebook

Oftenaddled · 20/08/2025 09:56

Quitelikeit · 20/08/2025 06:15

The insulin expert at trial was highly reliable.

One of the things some people keep criticizing Lucy Letby's defence for is working with chemical and mechanical engineers. They're not doing this instead of working with experts in the body's use of insulin, endocrinologists. They're doing it as well. But people still sneer.

I mention this because the prosecution expert on insulin, Hindmarsh, tried to play both roles at the trial. That meant calculating how much insulin would be needed to give the children's test results. This had to take into account how much would be lost by sticking to the plastic feed bags, since everyone acknowledged that this stickiness would matter.

Since the trial, the defence experts have conducted experiments to work this out. That's engineering work. Your local endocrinologist does not have training or experience enabling him to judge how insulin behaves inside a container we never put it in - that's not his area at all. Would you expect your GP to know how much cough syrup would stick to milk bottle?

Hindmarsh? He just guessed, by his own admission, a figure of 10% sticking to the bag. He gave the court an artificially low estimate of the insulin that would have been needed, playing down the problem that no insulin went missing from the wards stock by pretending so little was needed.

I wouldn't call him reliable.

Unforgettablefire · 20/08/2025 10:00

No. A 10 second clip of her facial expression didn’t “inform” me of her guilt. Like I said, the evidence presented. also her reaction to being arrested I found strange. That doesn’t mean she’s guilty of course not, but I found it suspicious and I stand by it.
Everyone has an opinion and that’s mine. Shitty comments saying I looked at her face and decided she was guilty won’t change my mind.

Typicalwave · 20/08/2025 10:20

Unforgettablefire · 20/08/2025 10:00

No. A 10 second clip of her facial expression didn’t “inform” me of her guilt. Like I said, the evidence presented. also her reaction to being arrested I found strange. That doesn’t mean she’s guilty of course not, but I found it suspicious and I stand by it.
Everyone has an opinion and that’s mine. Shitty comments saying I looked at her face and decided she was guilty won’t change my mind.

I apologise that my incredulity translated as shitty.

I will continue to feel the same way whenever I come across people who try to pinpoint how someone reacts in one moment (without the context) as a sign of guilt.

OP posts:
Kittybythelighthouse · 20/08/2025 10:26

Unforgettablefire · 20/08/2025 10:00

No. A 10 second clip of her facial expression didn’t “inform” me of her guilt. Like I said, the evidence presented. also her reaction to being arrested I found strange. That doesn’t mean she’s guilty of course not, but I found it suspicious and I stand by it.
Everyone has an opinion and that’s mine. Shitty comments saying I looked at her face and decided she was guilty won’t change my mind.

I’m sorry if anyone was unkind to you. You’re entitled to your opinion of course. That said, by the time of the arrest video you’re talking about she had already been under investigation for 14 months, had been removed from the unit long ago, and been questioned several times by police already. The arrest wasn’t a brand new or totally unexpected event. That’s the full context of it.

Imperativvv · 20/08/2025 10:39

Oftenaddled · 19/08/2025 22:45

I do think the recent Panorama Documentary did one useful thing - they got him to expose himself. These clips of his part in it make fascinating viewing

I honestly wonder why he's still agreeing to things like this. Regardless of whether LL is guilty or not, his reputation has clearly taken a battering and he doesn't need to do it any more since he's retired. One would think he'd see the advantage of moving in silence as he counts his money.

thebrollachan · 20/08/2025 10:52

CCTV gets a mention in the 11/2016 RCPCH review, although LL was not in the reviewers' sights at that time:

https://pdf4pro.com/cdn/www-coch-nhs-uk-7537c.pdf

See top of p15, extract attached.

Lucy Letby: have you changed your mind - thread 3
Typicalwave · 20/08/2025 10:54

Oftenaddled · 20/08/2025 09:56

One of the things some people keep criticizing Lucy Letby's defence for is working with chemical and mechanical engineers. They're not doing this instead of working with experts in the body's use of insulin, endocrinologists. They're doing it as well. But people still sneer.

I mention this because the prosecution expert on insulin, Hindmarsh, tried to play both roles at the trial. That meant calculating how much insulin would be needed to give the children's test results. This had to take into account how much would be lost by sticking to the plastic feed bags, since everyone acknowledged that this stickiness would matter.

Since the trial, the defence experts have conducted experiments to work this out. That's engineering work. Your local endocrinologist does not have training or experience enabling him to judge how insulin behaves inside a container we never put it in - that's not his area at all. Would you expect your GP to know how much cough syrup would stick to milk bottle?

Hindmarsh? He just guessed, by his own admission, a figure of 10% sticking to the bag. He gave the court an artificially low estimate of the insulin that would have been needed, playing down the problem that no insulin went missing from the wards stock by pretending so little was needed.

I wouldn't call him reliable.

Edited

This.

I guess unless people know the range of professionals involved in the research and development of drugs, medical therapies and treatment protocols they might question why a chemical engineer or mechanical engineer might know anything much about the interactions and dosing and monitoring of things like insulin in the human body.

https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/what-we-do/medals-and-awards/medals-and-awards-news/2018-macdiarmid-medal-medical-testing-on-your-virtual-clone/

OP posts:
Kittybythelighthouse · 20/08/2025 10:59

thebrollachan · 20/08/2025 10:52

CCTV gets a mention in the 11/2016 RCPCH review, although LL was not in the reviewers' sights at that time:

https://pdf4pro.com/cdn/www-coch-nhs-uk-7537c.pdf

See top of p15, extract attached.

It was specifically the idea that Lucy Letby had protested to the installation of CCTV that was under question. A sub question to that was whether the unit had seriously considered it given the expense vs their failure to stock even basic crash kit items regularly needed on a level 2 NICU.

placemats · 20/08/2025 11:48

It must be horrendous for parents of babies who have died due to failures in other hospitals, not connected to a convicted serial baby killer, to see how much money is being spent on the Thirlwall inquiry. Money that could be spent on improving maternity and NICU units.

I still believe that the conviction is unsafe. To clarify in the edit.

Kittybythelighthouse · 20/08/2025 13:01

placemats · 20/08/2025 11:48

It must be horrendous for parents of babies who have died due to failures in other hospitals, not connected to a convicted serial baby killer, to see how much money is being spent on the Thirlwall inquiry. Money that could be spent on improving maternity and NICU units.

I still believe that the conviction is unsafe. To clarify in the edit.

Edited

It’s unclear what protective measures against serial killing nurses Thirlwall could aim to introduce.

  1. WHISTLEBLOWING PROTECTION: protected whistleblowing avenues already exist, but the doctors who believed Letby to be a murderer just didn’t use them. They engaged in email tennis with management for a year instead while a serial killing nurse stalked the ward.
  2. MANDATORY CORONER REFERRAL: it is already mandatory for consultants to refer unexplained deaths to the coroner. The consultants at COCH didn’t do this despite later claiming that the deaths were not just unexplained, they were in fact murders at the hands of a serial killing nurse. These deaths weren’t flagged and all but one had post mortems. None of the post mortems found murder as a cause of death.
  3. CCTV IN CLINICAL AREAS: this is likely a no go for a variety of legal and privacy related reasons, and given there were generally several people in the same tiny room while she was killing babies totally unseen it’s hard to see what benefit it would offer against such superpowers anyway.
  4. CLINICAL GOVERNANCE/ACCOUNTABILITY: the fact that the doctors claimed to have a “drawer full of doom” of evidence against Letby, which they refused to share with management, demanding instead that she be fired based only on their word, are we to expect clinical governance and accountability measures that force managers to fire any nurse solely on the word of any doctor without any evidence being presented? Because that’s what the consultants at COCH were demanding.
  5. DATA RETENTION: preservation of shift data and death spike data etc for statistical analysis. I actually support this one. Had a proper statistical analysis been done here it would have saved everybody a lot of time, money, and heartache because the death spike was a normal random cluster, not a statistically remarkable spike signalling a murderer at work. This also would have revealed the fact that the nurse who was “always there” was there more often due to the fact that she worked more shifts than anyone else and a proper analysis would have shown that she was not “always there” anyway.

Meanwhile mothers and babies continue to die in maternity & neonatal scandal after scandal. I think Thirlwall is an astonishing waste of money in the context.

FrippEnos · 20/08/2025 13:43

Quitelikeit · 19/08/2025 23:30

Guilty!

There was the insulin issue (no it wasn’t disproven by a different expert) and also many coincidences and other factors that added up to something sinister

Confirmed by those in court who were viewing the case in real time

Plus additional charges are coming her way!

The other issue with the insulin is how it was supposed to have administered to the babies.
Which if memory serves is a theory put forward with no evidence by DE.

Oftenaddled · 20/08/2025 13:45

Kittybythelighthouse · 20/08/2025 13:01

It’s unclear what protective measures against serial killing nurses Thirlwall could aim to introduce.

  1. WHISTLEBLOWING PROTECTION: protected whistleblowing avenues already exist, but the doctors who believed Letby to be a murderer just didn’t use them. They engaged in email tennis with management for a year instead while a serial killing nurse stalked the ward.
  2. MANDATORY CORONER REFERRAL: it is already mandatory for consultants to refer unexplained deaths to the coroner. The consultants at COCH didn’t do this despite later claiming that the deaths were not just unexplained, they were in fact murders at the hands of a serial killing nurse. These deaths weren’t flagged and all but one had post mortems. None of the post mortems found murder as a cause of death.
  3. CCTV IN CLINICAL AREAS: this is likely a no go for a variety of legal and privacy related reasons, and given there were generally several people in the same tiny room while she was killing babies totally unseen it’s hard to see what benefit it would offer against such superpowers anyway.
  4. CLINICAL GOVERNANCE/ACCOUNTABILITY: the fact that the doctors claimed to have a “drawer full of doom” of evidence against Letby, which they refused to share with management, demanding instead that she be fired based only on their word, are we to expect clinical governance and accountability measures that force managers to fire any nurse solely on the word of any doctor without any evidence being presented? Because that’s what the consultants at COCH were demanding.
  5. DATA RETENTION: preservation of shift data and death spike data etc for statistical analysis. I actually support this one. Had a proper statistical analysis been done here it would have saved everybody a lot of time, money, and heartache because the death spike was a normal random cluster, not a statistically remarkable spike signalling a murderer at work. This also would have revealed the fact that the nurse who was “always there” was there more often due to the fact that she worked more shifts than anyone else and a proper analysis would have shown that she was not “always there” anyway.

Meanwhile mothers and babies continue to die in maternity & neonatal scandal after scandal. I think Thirlwall is an astonishing waste of money in the context.

Edited

Phil Hammond's idea of an impartial external team of appropriate medical experts to review units with significant spikes in mortality is a good one: already implemented in other countries and works with the kind of statistical analysis David Spiegelhalter presented at the Inquiry.

This will obviously pick up on and help address need to improve standard of medical care, which is the major problem units like Chester's face.

With an official body and response unit like this, many lives could be saved and Letby would, I am sure, never have been arrested.

Kittybythelighthouse · 20/08/2025 14:05

Oftenaddled · 20/08/2025 13:45

Phil Hammond's idea of an impartial external team of appropriate medical experts to review units with significant spikes in mortality is a good one: already implemented in other countries and works with the kind of statistical analysis David Spiegelhalter presented at the Inquiry.

This will obviously pick up on and help address need to improve standard of medical care, which is the major problem units like Chester's face.

With an official body and response unit like this, many lives could be saved and Letby would, I am sure, never have been arrested.

Yes, there are definitely positive changes to be made, but Thirlwall’s narrow terms of reference aren’t particularly helpful towards that end, if strictly adhered to.

Luddite26 · 20/08/2025 14:10

Oftenaddled · 19/08/2025 19:15

Thanks for this, @Typicalwave

Just listening to quite an interesting new interview with David Davis, who is confident that the legal system won't insist on strict application of the "new evidence" rule. I hadn't realized before I started following this case that he has campaigned on quite a number of similar issues. Good clear stuff:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=rlTe1feUm0M

I agree with you. I've never been a Tory but I have a big soft spot for David Davies after my mum once said he's a bastard like me (I'm illegitimate and I believe he is not that it matters just saying what my mum said!)! It was his campaigning on this case that made me look at it differently . I don't think he would have opened his mouth had he an ounce of doubt.

Kittybythelighthouse · 20/08/2025 14:10

FrippEnos · 20/08/2025 13:43

The other issue with the insulin is how it was supposed to have administered to the babies.
Which if memory serves is a theory put forward with no evidence by DE.

There is no evidence for TPN bags being poisoned with insulin whatsoever and she wasn’t even there anyway.

bumbaloo · 20/08/2025 14:18

Frequency · 20/08/2025 08:35

It baffles me how people have such blind faith in the system. She was found guilty; therefore, she must be guilty, no matter how many highly regarded, highly qualified people are unsure of the safety of her conviction.

Even the people who designed the system do not have such unwavering faith in it, which is why the CCRC exists in the first place, to rectify the mistakes those in charge acknowledge have happened.

Since 1997, 876 cases have been referred back to the appeals courts, of which 595 were successful. That's almost 70%. The system admits it made a mistake in 70% of the cases referred for appeal by the CCRC, but Letby is guilty because the system said so, and we should all stop talking about it?

What’s amazing is people like that will stick to their beliefs even when later courts find them innocent.

they’ll say ‘she was found guilty in a court of law and treats enough for me’

until a court of law finds them innocent and then they start backtracking saying you can’t trust courts

isthesolution · 20/08/2025 14:22

Haven’t changed my mind at any point - I’ve never seen her as guilty.

Imperativvv · 20/08/2025 14:30

bumbaloo · 20/08/2025 14:18

What’s amazing is people like that will stick to their beliefs even when later courts find them innocent.

they’ll say ‘she was found guilty in a court of law and treats enough for me’

until a court of law finds them innocent and then they start backtracking saying you can’t trust courts

I actually don't think it's that surprising. There's a need to cling to systems, and many people don't like feeling they were wrong. It seems to be a fairly normal part of miscarriages of justice, after all there were people who wouldn't have it that the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four were innocent for some time afterwards.

If LLs convictions are ever quashed, if anything I'd expect there to be more people who won't change their minds. Because of the convictions playing out in the mass social media era. Or if it's not her, whoever the first high profile miscarriage of justice convicted post smartphone era ever is. We've not seen that with Andrew Malkinson and mostly not with the post office victims because they were convicted too early.

Insanityisnotastrategy · 20/08/2025 14:35

Imperativvv · 20/08/2025 10:39

I honestly wonder why he's still agreeing to things like this. Regardless of whether LL is guilty or not, his reputation has clearly taken a battering and he doesn't need to do it any more since he's retired. One would think he'd see the advantage of moving in silence as he counts his money.

I think he's very pissed off that his wisdom is being publicly questioned. I can imagine it's quite a new and uncomfortable experience.

Typicalwave · 20/08/2025 14:44

Imperativvv · 20/08/2025 14:30

I actually don't think it's that surprising. There's a need to cling to systems, and many people don't like feeling they were wrong. It seems to be a fairly normal part of miscarriages of justice, after all there were people who wouldn't have it that the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four were innocent for some time afterwards.

If LLs convictions are ever quashed, if anything I'd expect there to be more people who won't change their minds. Because of the convictions playing out in the mass social media era. Or if it's not her, whoever the first high profile miscarriage of justice convicted post smartphone era ever is. We've not seen that with Andrew Malkinson and mostly not with the post office victims because they were convicted too early.

And we’re still awaiting the conclusion to the inquiry for Malkinson - it’s been ongoing for nearly two years. I’d never even heard of it.

OP posts:
Imperativvv · 20/08/2025 14:51

Insanityisnotastrategy · 20/08/2025 14:35

I think he's very pissed off that his wisdom is being publicly questioned. I can imagine it's quite a new and uncomfortable experience.

Not that new, given the Court of Appeal judge's remarks in 2022! But yeah, he's evidently pissed off. And hasn't clocked that he's digging himself a bigger hole. I notice that even the people particularly convinced of LLs guilt tend not to go to bat for him. People think she's guilty in spite of him not because.

PlainSinger · 20/08/2025 15:21

Unforgettablefire · 19/08/2025 22:55

The evidence that was presented. The notes, I think it’s more than what the defence say she meant.

Also the video of her being arrested. She looked resigned to me and not in the least bit shocked, as if she was expecting it.
Maybe she is innocent but I don’t think so.

I’m really horrified that someone would judge someone as guilty of mass murder based on them looking “resigned” when arrested after a long investigation.

On the notes, those of us who have lost someone in traumatic circumstances understand that guilt and self blame are common reactions even when no blame is attached. I actually thought it was common knowledge generally tbh but maybe not.

PinkTonic · 20/08/2025 15:38

Imperativvv · 20/08/2025 14:51

Not that new, given the Court of Appeal judge's remarks in 2022! But yeah, he's evidently pissed off. And hasn't clocked that he's digging himself a bigger hole. I notice that even the people particularly convinced of LLs guilt tend not to go to bat for him. People think she's guilty in spite of him not because.

He must have a hide like a rhinoceros. When John Sweeney asked him about the letter from that appeal court judge and was very specific about the criticism, Evans just said ‘I know, unbelievable isn’t it’ in a WTF tone. He genuinely didn’t seem to have self reflected for a nanosecond.

Quitelikeit · 20/08/2025 15:58

All the nonsense being spouted on here is as per usual ridiculous

Especially the insulin argument - she could have challenged this view with her own expert but she decided not to

Just because another few experts have come out and said they disagree with Hindmarsh it doesn’t mean anything. There are many who agree with him!!

Letby herself accepted this was true