Lucy Letby - have you changed your mind thread 4

[MistressoftheDarkSide]

With thanks to the original poster @kittybythelighthouse and @Tidalwave for continuing the discussion.

One has to wonder how much use it is to examine someone's behaviour unless its being done by people who actually have the expertise to assess what constitutes normal in such circumstances. Does anyone on this thread fall into that category? If not, I'd worry it would turn into an exercise in Dunning Kruger. It would be fine to post analysis from people who know what they're talking about, but that doesn't seem to have happened?

You're ignoring the medical evidence.
Finally I understand!

And somehow I’m the one who needs to “wake up and smell the bloody coffee” 🤡😂

To be fair to you, at least you’re open to there being a retrial.

Nobody here is talking about busting her out of HMP Bronzefield tomorrow either.

I am wondering where this came from:

”Yes, some people want to take on the challenging work, but it was noted that in cases where most people would need a few days away from that environment after particularly harrowing cases she seemed eager to get back in there.”

Where was this “noted”? And can you point to a source for the assertion that she called anyone to inform them of baby deaths?

If emergency responders and those working in fields where awful things happen every day had to take ‘a few days off’ every time the next awful thing happened our emergency services and hospitals and hospices would have very few staff in the trenches.

I can’t recall my father ever taking ‘a few days off after finding a family in a gutted house, or a murder victim dumped and charred, or pulling a suffocated teen out of a grain silo, after pulling out their colleague who died trying to rescue him….

Quite! Well put.

In any case I expect that @GingerPower is referring to nurse Jennifer Jones-Key’s WhatsApp texts with Lucy Letby about her desire to move back into nursery 1 after two deaths in a short period. We would have more clarity about this in the public sphere if nurses at COCH hadn’t been warned off from speaking in support of Lucy Letby at trial, but they were warned off.

Most people don’t read anything coming out of Thirlwall, so they are unaware that Jennifer Jones-Key herself described her response to Letby’s desire to return to nursery 1 in her Thirlwall Rule 9 response. She said that when she used the word “odd,” she meant because she does not work in intensive care so does not have to face situations like this, not that she was implying anything odd about Letby.

“I had no concerns regarding Lucy's responses in the WhatsApp messages [NQ0000101] about wanting to go back to Nursery 1, after she was put in Nursery 3 and found her behaviour to be normal for the situation. When I said "odd" in the WhatsApp message, I was talking about how I would feel odd myself because I do not work in intensive care. I did not mean to say that Lucy was odd for wanting to go back.”

She also said “I never reported any suspicions of Lucy Letby because I never had any.”

“I had no concerns regarding Lucy's conduct whilst she was on the neonatal unit. She was a professional, hardworking, caring, and compassionate nurse, who offered the best care to the babies she looked after.”

So, quite a different picture to that painted by the prosecution during the trial where JJK was not able to speak for herself.

@Firefly1987 you could do with reading this too.

Source: https://thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/uploads/thirlwall-evidence/INQ0017998.pdf

I've just watched the Lucy Letby analysis video with the interview with Stephanie Davies. Very interesting.

I have a bunch of work zooms today so haven’t had a chance to watch it yet.

New private eye is out.

Yes, i've changed my mind. I've been following this case since 2018/2019. I can't remember exactly, but whenever the news first broke. I'll be honest and say my knowledge certainly isn't as indepth as other posters, and most of my trial knowledge came from the Chester Standard. I am, however, a neonatal nurse, but not in UK

In the beginning, I, like everybody else, was absolutely horrified that all these poor babies had died. But I don't think I'm too different from the previous descriptions of Letby,

I worked lots of extra shifts when I was single and buying my first home, as I had no other commitments.
I'm socially awkward (later diagnosed ASD), and had comments regarding my communication skills while being assessed as a student nurse.
I've definitely had a few handover sheets (not medical records, and not 100s of them) in my work bag.
I've sent messages to my colleague to ask how babies are doing, and to pass on awful news if it happens.
I remember dates of significant events (asd). If a baby dies on my shift, I'll remember the date, and think about them on the anniversary etc

I'm just a couple of years older than Letby. She must be 100% innocent. I was sure of it. That obviously lacks any sort of critical thinking, but I just couldn't imagine myself, or any of my colleagues committing such crimes.

Even reading these threads i'm reminded of the "evidence", and for a lot of these events i. CAn explain them away. Quite often it's because I work in NICU and I'm aware of the day to day practices. For example, the insulin use and the fact the twice as many vials were ordered from pharmacy. Once opened vials must be used within 6 weeks. After 6 weeks they need to be returned to pharmacy and a new vial ordered. So even if only a few units were used, the whole vial will essentially "be used" and replaced. And if it's replaced with a new vial that's short dated, that new vial might also be returned to pharmacy and a new one ordered without having ever been opened. So ordering of twice as many vials of insulin does not prove that they actually used twice as much.

The statistics are clearly flawed. And anyone can have a bad cluster. I've had a few myself over the years. But only because I've happened to be rostered on to those particular shifts and as the most senior/experienced nurse I'd look after the sickest baby.

I was aware of Dr. Lee, and have read several of his papers over the years. He is a world renowned neonatologist. I fully appreciate what the expert panel have come up with. But it still seems a bit unlucky that the babies died. Often from simple causes... or some very rare causes (another cluster I suppose)

Overall, no longer 100% sure of innocence. But an unsafe conviction, and a possible exonerated due to that?

Hi there.

What’s your take on the opportunity of being able to get insulin into PN bags, undetected?

I can't guarantee that the TPN bags used in CoCH are exactly the same as what I would have been familiar with in 2015, but from the court evidence and photo that a PP provided I would imagine it highly unlikely to be able to contaminate a bag with insulin and nobody notice any tears/leaks in the packaging, and have the tamper roof seal intact

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly6yz463kyo

Also an interesting article for general purposes.

Thanks that’s really helpful.

Peter Sullivan’s life is all but over.

And the support he’ll get to try to rebuild from a system that wrongfully imprisoned him will be zilch of next to zilch.

It’s sickening.

Thank you for joining the discussion, I really think it's helpful to have insights from someone working in the field.

May I ask what tips you away from
100% innocent?

Also, with regards to the overfeeding / pushing air into an NG tube assertions, which have become very murky over time, would it be possible in your experience?

Thank you in advance 😊

It really is. I expect we've all seen the runaround Andrew Malkinson has been given for his compo too.

Sullivan is a tragically great example of the structural problems we have when it comes to remedying MOJs. Some miscarriages of justice are inevitable in a system run by humans. It's awful, but inevitable. With that in mind, we need robust structures to quickly identify them, and we do not have that. Which is why the entreaties to people who think there's been one here to shut up and let the system deal with it are so grotesque.

I can't read that unfortunately, a lot of it is too blurry for me.
What did he say about why the defence didn't call witnesses?

There's a reddit thread summarizing and discussing it here
https://www.reddit.com/r/LucyLetbyTrials/comments/1n7e3jz/private_eye_today_expert_witness_pretrial/

I'm probably still 99% convinced, but I wasn't there...and a jury has found her guilty. I was shocked they found her guilty beyond reasonable doubt though. I suppose the juror who was discharged was opposing something...

None of it makes sense. Certainly some of the care practices and medical management are odd, and would be considered inappropriate in the NICU in which I work.

Regarding the air aspirated via NG tubes, many babies will be on CPAP of 6/7/8cm of water. Which might result in maybe 9-12 litres of air per minute being pushed into their nose. We would usually leave an NG/OG tube on "free drainage" to allow air that gathers in the stomach to escape, and this works well. If a baby were to desat we would aspirate the tube as one of the first steps, after increasing oxygen, so i. An understand the air jn stomach=collapse theory, but I think you would need to be pushing a massive amount of air into a baby via an NG to cause a collapse. More than 9-12L/min for example. Although the number would vary per baby.

Thank you.

"The defence simply didn’t have the experts to contest every case, as they have now"

What I really want to know is why they didn't have the experts though 🤔 I understand that now they have access to a lot more and probably people willing to work pro bono at that, but it still just seems like at the time they just didn't even try.........

I’m really glad you’ve joined the discussion. It is really helpful. As regards the deaths being unlucky, are you aware of the presence of pseudomonas on the ward and raw sewage backing up into the sinks, including in nursery 1? Did you know about the damning RCPCH report & the consultants only doing 2 ward rounds per week? Or that Lucy Letby (barely out of college) often was assigned to the sickest babies?

The babies who died weren’t all assigned to her though. She wasn’t even on shift when some of them died or started deteriorating. The “on shift” metric used by the prosecution became very elastic in places, sometimes stretching out to a couple of hours before or after her shifts.

PP mentioned the air in stomach method of murder, but since that’s been walked back by the prosecution post convictions anyway - he still maintains she killed them somehow, but not via that method.

Apologies, my previous post is incorrect in relation to the volumes of air. The entire volume of air from the CPAP wouldn't be entering the baby’s stomach, but a percentage would. It can cause issues. But this would be normal to some extent, and babies will push air back up the NG tube. I don't have any references to volumes of air that would definitely cause issues though

Duplicate post

You mean like this-https://www.bromsgroveadvertiser.co.uk/news/national/23732336.lucy-letby-motivated-pathological-desire-attention-expert-says/

Dr Dominic Willmott, a senior lecturer in criminology at Loughborough University, said the former nurse’s text messages showed she wanted to “garner sympathy” from colleagues after the children’s deaths.
The expert told how there were “clear similarities” with the Letby case and historic cases of killer nurses, such as Beverley Allitt from the UK and Charles Cullen in the US.

“Other evidence that she had to be repeatedly asked to focus on other patients around the time of the death of other babies and her passing on death notifications to family members seems to indicate her desire to be personally involved in the case, even when doing so was likely to raise suspicions about her involvement.

James Treadwell, professor in criminology at Staffordshire University, also said he believes there are similarities between Letby and Allitt.

Prof Treadwell suggested a number of reasons why Letby could have committed the crimes, including that she is a narcissist; Munchausen syndrome by proxy; she enjoyed the risk; she used the offences as a means for attention from the doctor prosecutors said she had a “crush” on; or evil.

“It’s with the ‘how’ question you can prevent these things happening again. We had Allitt and Harold Shipman in medical situations, if you don’t answer the ‘how’ question, tragic history, terrible history, bereaved families could happen again.”

And-s