Lucy Letby: have you changed your mind - thread 3

[Typicalwave]

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

There are people who think Jack the Ripper was innocent I think you could fall into a similar category- it becomes unhealthy after a while

That’s why I’m bailing out of this thread - you are truly not alone in being obsessed with highlighting a serial killers innocence there are genuinely people like you across the globe who are infatuated

She did. And legal commentators have given several reasons for experts not being called - one of which you have suggested.

It’s a handful of experts on both sides of the scale. Which are correct?

She would be dropping her in it because there’s more than one way to do something wrong, isn’t there? She would have been illustrating that JW told her something that she was told in a confidential police interview. She would have undermined JW’s ability to be a witness in the baby k case. Johnson would have maligned her as a baby killer sympathiser, just as people do to us. If you can’t see all that I don’t know how further to help tbh!

As regards me not being able to see anything LL does as wrong, I have several times said she shouldn’t have looked up patients (against GDPR) but I don’t think that’s a sign of a murderess, luckily for a lot of nurses few people do think so. I also said she shouldn’t have kept any handover sheets, but again I don’t think that’s a sign of murder either, for the same reason (many nurses do it).

I’m not going to accept that something I don’t think is proof of murder, is proof of murder if the facts and evidence for it aren’t there. I absolutely would accept something if there was something. Bring me actual hard facts that don’t have a completely plausible (and usually far more believable) explanation and I’ll concede that she’s an evil baby killer no problem. I don’t think you’ll be able to though, because we’ve already climbed that particular jungle gym more than once.

I’ll reiterate again, for the folks at the back, dissecting behaviour as if it alone can be proof of murder in the absence of any medical evidence that murders occurred in the first place isn’t compelling and is in fact quite dangerous imo. Proof of murder to begin with is what is most lacking here.

This is all completely irrelevant and bears no relation to anything of substance that’s being discussed. I could just as easily say you’re behaving like someone on the wrong side at Salem in 1692, but I think we can and should give each other more grace in grown up conversations about serious topics of huge public importance.

@Firefly1987 this was a response to you.

A bit of a bizarre comment. Jack the Ripper was never found and convicted, was he? I don't think anyone has ever suggested there wasn't somebody responsible for those murders.
Quite a different scenario.

She would be dropping her in it because there’s more than one way to do something wrong, isn’t there? She would have been illustrating that JW told her something that she was told in a confidential police interview. She would have undermined JW’s ability to be a witness in the baby k case. Johnson would have maligned her as a baby killer sympathiser, just as people do to us. If you can’t see all that I don’t know how further to help tbh!

But to use your favourite turn of phrase-if there were no murders none of this matters? You don't need to think about dropping anyone in it you just tell the police the truth about what happened surely! If no one killed any babies then the rest is of no consequence?

I’m not going to accept that something I don’t think is proof of murder, is proof of murder if the facts and evidence for it aren’t there. I absolutely would accept something if there was something. Bring me actual hard facts that don’t have a completely plausible (and usually far more believable) explanation and I’ll concede that she’s an evil baby killer no problem. I don’t think you’ll be able to though, because we’ve already climbed that particular jungle gym more than once.

What you and others seem to want evidence wise is just not going to be possible in a case like this. She worked there, her DNA was going to be all over the victims either way, she had ample time alone to commit her crimes, if someone saw her injecting something they'd assume she was supposed to be doing it. She had access to insulin. She didn't need to google how to kill someone because she was a nurse, etc. etc surely you realise this is not like most serial killer cases where someone is found with a bloody knife and their DNA on the victim?

Something I’ve wondered is if she were ever to be released… how would she live in peace now?

I didn’t say you didn’t remember about the downgrading of the unit which coincided with the decrease in deaths in 2016. I said that many aren’t aware of that, which is true.

“After that there weren't any deaths to contribute to the high figures because LL was removed/unit was downgraded.”

I think this view takes a certain commitment to a starting point that LL was a murderer and everything follows from there, which is the kind of stubbornness you accuse me of.

I simply think it’s far more plausible that the deaths decreased because the unit was no longer taking such a vulnerable cohort due to the downgrade (and not forgetting upping consultant rounds from a shocking twice a week to twice a day). A rogue serial killer nurse (and murders in the first place) needs to be proven to me before I’ll read into anything like this in favour of your interpretation there.

I think you and I just have different ways of thinking Firefly and I’m not sure we will
ever agree but I do appreciate that you can stay civil! 🙂

She would probably get a new identity and go elsewhere if exonerated. Who knows though.

Evening Kitty

the graphic you shared yesterday and now above - where does it come from?

I have read a lot of these threads and I don't find the arguments put forward by people who think Lucy is guilty to be in the slightest bit rational or logical.

There is a lot of stuff along the lines of you all support a baby murderer, it's all group think, she is evil etc etc which I don't find at all convincing.

Honestly the evidence against her is so thin. That's why no one can put forward sensible arguments as to why they think she is guilty.

It’s also true that ward rounds went from two a week to two a day isn’t it? And that shortly before Letby joined there had been drastic changes to nurse staffing which left the unit short of adequately qualified staff

All you do is respond with hostility to those who disagree with you

I haven’t commented much on this thread but this accusation against @Kittybythelighthouse is just completely and blatantly untrue and anyone with an open mind can see that.

Kitty may have been a bit snarky with one poster (sorry, can’t remember the user name, a man) but with every other poster she has been unfailingly polite, inviting people who disagree to put their views, been patient when pp have been unreasonable or rude and generally fostered a constructive dialogue on these threads.

Very unfair and insulting remarks here. I doubt you've read the entire trial transcripts but in any case there were factual inaccuracies that went uncorrected until well after - door swipe data and phone log times, Letby's presence in order to, improbably, inject air into a baby's stomach as seen on x-ray - except she hadn't met the baby or been on shift, and Evans now concedes there are perfectly plausible reasons for the air being there. What's the betting he would have continued claiming it could only have been caused by deliberate harm, if Letby had actually been present? Letby not calling Jayaram for help - a night apparently forever etched on his memory except that his own emails prove this to be a complete load of hooey.

In any case, the fact that we're on thread 3 rather suggests others are engaging with @kittybythelighthouse in what has mainly been a very informative and courteous discussion. As far as posters not agreeing, that's absolutely fine but I've been genuinely surprised at the level of misinformation and misunderstanding displayed by some. Maybe they don't enjoy having this pointed out.

If the facts and evidence you're so sure of were actually able to stand up to scrutiny, I think that would have become clear by thread 3 and if anything the 'echo chamber' would be in the reverse direction. Generally I find Mumsnet works quite well to weed out nonsense and gives it short shrift, seems to be the case in this instance.

”But to use your favourite turn of phrase-if there were no murders none of this matters? You don't need to think about dropping anyone in it you just tell the police the truth about what happened surely! If no one killed any babies then the rest is of no consequence?”

The prosecuting barrister will always behave as though there WERE murders in a murder trial. Every single person who was wrongly convicted of murder was treated like a lowlife murderer by the prosecution barrister. In our adversarial system that’s their job. Therefore, JW would get treated like a “baby killer sympathiser” when in the stand if LL said, on record no less, that JW told her something she shouldn’t have told her following a confidential police interview, see?

“What you and others seem to want evidence wise is just not going to be possible in a case like this. ”

It can and more to the point such evidence has to be there to prove murder happened at all in the first place. If someone definitely killed the babies and they didn’t just die in the various ways that babies in overstretched and underfunded NICUs sadly die then there would be some proof of that. But there isn’t. There is no proof that murders happened at all, I’m not even talking about whether LL murdered them, but whether they were murdered at all.

If someone is stabbed outside my house then they were murdered. Someone stabbed them. We can then talk about who the most likely culprit is.

If poorly babies in a horribly run and greatly overstretched NICU die in ways that are well within the ordinary ways that babies die in such poorly run NICUs, during a nationwide NICU death spike of similar deaths, then why are we crying murder? Particularly since none of the deaths raised eyebrows at the time and none of the post mortems returned suspicious findings.

There’s a difference in the two scenarios, right? Usually if there’s a murder it’s obvious because people don’t generally stab themselves in the street for example and there’s a dead body with stab wounds in the street.

In a place like a NICU, where deaths sadly do happen, a series of deaths that look like ordinary deaths in similar NICUs need strong proof that they were murders to begin with before they can be treated like murders. That’s what’s missing here.

I was thinking about the Amanda Knox case this morning. The reason I thought she was innocent was it seemed quite clear someone else had killed Meridith. At which point all the stuff about her weird behaviour, which was probably wildly over exaggerated, was frankly irrelevant.

In Lucy's case what convinced me that she was innocent is the fact there is no real evidence any of the babies were harmed in the first place.

I am also sure by the way that being a reasonably, attractive young white woman is quite the opposite of an advantage when it comes to being falsely accused of a serious crime. The press become totally obsessed by the idea that such an unlikely looking person could be a murder and publish huge amounts of prejudicial speculation. I also think we consistently underestimate the levels of sexism in society.

Completely agree. I thought that post was grossly unfair actually.

Nobody is looking for DNA or anything similar.

As a starting point, we would need evidence that anyone was deliberately harmed or killed at all. Given that every one of Evans's theories falls apart with a little scrutiny, we don't have that.

Lucy Letby certainly would know there were no murders, but she also knew she needed witnesses who showed her innocence to be trusted by the court.

I think the best single post I've read on Reddit about this is about Lucy Letby, Ravi Jayaram, Baby K and (to a lesser extent) Joanne Williams. You can see how Joanne Williams played a part in undermining Jayaram's story - and that is before we got to see his email saying Lucy Letby had actually called him for help. Really worth a read, if anyone has time.

www.reddit.com/r/LucyLetbyTrials/comments/1irru42/who_what_when_why_how_the_evolution_of_dr_ravi/

@Firefly1987 you have a right to believe what you want to, but when I see how Dr Jayaram's story kept changing here, I worry about what happens when police are chasing a conviction. I hope something like this might help you understand that other people really do have serious worries about this, even if you don't agree with them.

On the facebook searches-she searched baby K's surname over 2 years after their death (at Arrowe Park) when she wasn't even the designated nurse. Why would she need to do this if she had no connection to baby K? Unless she was worried she'd be accused of harming them?
The prosecutor questioned the defendant why, 26 months after Child K's collapse, she had searched the infant's surname at around midnight on April 20, 2018. Asked why she had conducted the search, Letby said: "I can't answer that. I don't know why."
The prosecutor suggested to the defendant that by then, although it would be another three months before she was arrested, she 'knew' police were asking questions about her. She denied she was friends with Child K's designated nurse, Joanne Williams, who the jurors heard was interviewed in March 2018.
Asked if she was telling the truth when she agreed it was 'just a coincidence' she made the Facebook searches a few weeks after Nurse Williams had been interviewed, the defendant said: "I am."
"The truth is you habitually searched for the parents of the children you have been convicted of murdering or attempting to murder," said the prosecutor.

@Firefly1987
Your favourite tattle actually solved that mystery!
There was a social media page linked to the COCH which had referenced that baby on that very day she searched for her. Presumably LL saw the post and that's what made her search for the family.

“In Lucy's case what convinced me that she was innocent is the fact there is no real evidence any of the babies were harmed in the first place.”

@DoubledTrouble yes! Exactly this. Thank you.

It's the madonna / whore effect, isn't it? I read an article specific to criminal cases that I can't find again explaining that there's a tipping point - we may be slower to suspect pretty young women of crime, but we vilify them all the more when they are convicted.

Oh very interesting. And the chances that she'd remember why she did that search would have been pretty slim. Thank you!

Good reflections.

I personally feel she was scapegoated to cover up NHS failings. I think she was targeted by the doctors. I can’t believe she’s gone to prison for such a long sentence based on circumstantial evidence.