Lucy Letby ( To understand)

[PassingStranger]

What made her kill these babies. Been in the news again today.

It's hard to understand?
Presume as she is in prison and not a hospital, she is not mentally ill?

Will anyone try to find out, I guess if people don't admit they are guilty it's hard too.

Instead of people saying give me 5 mins in a cell with her, surely it's better to stop this happening or maybe it's not possible?
Why does she want to be one of the most hated women in the universe and not give a shit about the babies families and even her own parents?

So much better to be known for doing something nice and have people like you?
AIBU to wonder why she took this road in life?

Stacks of handover sheets, that she wasn’t allowed to take home, did form part of the circumstantial evidence.

So yes, it is evidence that helped convict her.

The management dismissed the claims as there was no evidence to support them

No, they didn't.

They initially dismissed them, before any investigation, then they referred them to investigation.

Then they failed to act on recommendations from the investigation.

Their motivation was made clear by statements re not wanting the unit to be a crime scene with the police all over it, and about the reputation of the trust.

They dismissed claims initially due to incompetence and irresponsibility (and giving them huge benefit of doubt; perhaps due to an initial, genuine, misguided belief that it was a case of staff bullying).

They later failed to act on the recommendations of the investigation due to incompetence and irresponsibility.

They failed to refer to the police, until they could no longer avoid it, due to incompetence and irresponsibility.

While they appeared to dismiss the claims initially, you have absolutely no idea what they really suspected or thought as time went on, and they were forced to realise they could no longer keep rug sweeping, avoiding "outside" action, and doing nothing.

As Tiny says, they were trophies but she was perhaps also using them to pick her next target.

What came out of the trial was that she was targeting babies.

Just because someone has no partner, kids or pets doesn’t mean they have nothing in their life 🙄 how insulting.

She had a good job, her own home, family, friends. Completely normal.

I noticed at the top right corner of the note that has been pictured, a series of line strikes.

I understand that Lucy said she wrote the notes in 2016, after she was suspended from clinical duties but before the police became involved. She said that she was anguished and lonely as her explanation. I don't know whether she said anything more specific about it's particular contents? I'd be curious if she said anything about the line strikes though I expect she didn't.

I think talking about never having children, never having a family "because of that night" is a reflection of her knowledge / panic that she had been discovered and the police would inevitably become involved and she would inevitably be incarcerated. I think the knowledge "the game is up" is something innocent people don't forecast in the same way as they assume their innocence will be discovered when events are investigated.

I agree, and it is particularly ridiculous to say she killed because she had no children or husband, and then say reminds you of a woman who killed her nine children under her husband's nose. It seems there is no life situation that doesn't place a woman in the wrong and make her liable to murder infants.

I don’t share your optimism that the public enquiry will reveal anything, we will see.

I don’t know which doctor it was who put the breathing tube into the oesophagus by mistake in Noah Robinson’s case as they weren’t named. But they also ignored 5 test results including xray assuming the tests must be faulty. The coroner found their assumptions “extraordinary”.

Another case resulted in the CoC paying out £8.5 million in compensation for medical negligence. A baby was incorrectly intubated for transfer to Alder Hey which caused it to destabilise. Alder Hey corrected the errors but alas too late to save the baby from developing cerebral palsy.

That the unit was chronically understaffed and under-resourced is indisputable - RCPCH report confirmed - major gaps in medical and nursing rotas, insufficient consultant cover, poor decision making and a “reluctance to seek advice”. There was also a locum whom nurses reported concerns about who was sent back for shifts on the ward, a decision that was criticised.

The report made clear that the unit did not have the staffing levels to run a unit at level 2 . So it should never actually have been functioning as one. Why the consultants and management didn’t flag this and get the unit downgraded as the hospital board did eventually is baffling.

Going back to why she did it, I wonder how much monotony was involved in her job. I imagine caring for babies is a privilege and vocation, but if you’re not suited to it, it could become a resentful chore in time. I imagine the constant feeding/cleaning/medicating of babies could get wearing if you don’t love your job. Coupled with psychopathic traits, it becomes a perfect storm.

There was no evidence to support the claims either from the clinical notes or from the pathologist’s reports - all of which were reported as natural causes. In evidence-based medicine, the pathology reports determine the scientific cause of death. Thus there was no evidence to support anything suspicious.

If the doctors had really believed there was, they should have gone to the CDOP and requested forensic autopsies. But then their own actions would have been scrutinised too.

Which “investigation” are you referring to? If the RCPCH, the conclusions are outlined above. The RCPCH recommended an external objective review (in which clinical data in each case would have been analysed with a fine tooth comb.) That never happened. If it had I think the outcome of this case would have been very different.

You think handover sheets are proof of murder do you?

I think it’s absolutely bizarre that people think that the notes and the handover sheets are the smoking gun that proves the case. This is exactly why wrongful convictions happen.

The notes she wrote were after she was being blamed, investigated and had been suspended from her job working in the ward. There are many other ways to interpret their meaning, beyond a specific confession to murder- Eg, she felt like she had done a terrible job as a nurse and was responsible for the babies deaths- she felt these things because that was what she was being accused of!
She also wrote in the notes that she had done nothing wrong and she wasn’t responsible, so as a pp said you can’t extract one part of the notes, decontextualise her words and say they prove anything, or you might as well just do the same with the bit where she wrote that she didn’t do it, and say that proves her innocence.

As for the handover notes, they say nothing whatsoever about her role in the death of those babies. It’s literally not evidence of anything (except perhaps that LL was a bit of a hoarder) - just pure speculation that they were “trophies” etc.

They don't prove the case, of course they don't. I agree they don't meet the criteria for a confession. But they're an extra layer on the mountain of circumstantial evidence. The certainly do more to support her guilt than her innocence. When absolutely all pieces of evidence do more to support someone's guilt than their innocence, that is because they are guilty.

People claim that she was normal and there were no signs, so she couldn't be a serial killer. But then they gloss over her bizarre behaviour that is absolutely consistent with being a serial killer.

It is clear to me that you and others will be convinced by absolutely nothing. There is no point continuing this debate but it is wrong for you to put words into people's mouths. Noone has said the handover sheets are proof but they are evidence that supports her guilt.

Noah Robinson case

Despite his size he was given a good chance of survival. But an inquest heard he died less than four days later after doctors mistakenly put a breathing tube into his gullet, which connects to the stomach. It should have gone into his trachea. They also ignored five warning signs – from X-rays and other equipment, which they wrongly assumed were faulty. Mrs Robinson, said there was only one senior doctor on duty when Noah began to deteriorate on March 22.

See also the negligence case

Responsibilty for which is shared between the maternity unit and the neonatal unit.

She also required transfer to Alder Hey Children's Hospital for abdominal surgery. She was intubated by the Countess of Chester team in preparation for transfer, but this caused her condition to de-stabilise, which needed correction by the Transfer team when they arrived. <>

Finally, post-natally, intubation should not have been attempted by the Countess of Chester neonatal staff given the risks of being unable to ventilate the baby properly, who was in any event stable on CPAP such that intubation and ventilation were not urgently indicated. This further period of marked metabolic acidosis materially contributed to his brain damage

No handover notes are allowed to leave the hospital so what other reason did she have them at her home? She is a qualified nurse she knows this,it wasn't an error.

Sorry are you saying that you think Letby couldn’t possibly be guilty because she’s pretty and white and the hospital framed her?

But then they gloss over her bizarre behaviour that is absolutely consistent with being a serial killer

Demeanour “evidence” is extremely dangerous to justice processes. It has no place in a court of law and is behind almost every wrongful conviction - Amanda Knox being a classic example. It is entirely subjective and can/ is always used against the defendant.
Literally this type of stuff should be put down entirely.

What needs examination is the statistical evidence- which is resoundingly recognised by experts to be bogus, and the medical evidence which is vague and contested.

um no, I don’t think you will see any reference to her being “pretty” or “white” in any of my posts. (I don’t even think she’s pretty , not that that has any relevance to anything whatsoever).

Of course it would have been ideal if they went to the police when they first had suspicions of LL
The problem they faced was being accused of bullying and potentially being the cause of a very expensive legal battle for the Trust.

Insight is all good but when you are facing the situation, as the main consultant explained, you battle with doubt about your suspicions. You wonder if what you see is subject to bias.

The risk of accusing someone of murder without 100% certainty is huge. They already not believed, had to officially apologise. If they had been wrong, this could have seriously impacted them and the hospital.

Trying to rationalise the unthinkable is much harder than we think.

The Liz Hull/Caroline Cheetham podcast, which has run from the beginning of the first ten-month trial, has addressed the issue of the New Yorker article in some detail. It's also addressed some of the abusive messages both journalists received from Lucy Letby's crackpot supporters. Both journalists publicly answered those accusations on the podcast. They are not amateur detectives: their job is to report events as they unfolded. This, they did - in very detailed, fair, balanced reports.

These two journalists have sat through every moment of the evidence in the two trials. They reject unequivocally the claims made in the article, claiming the author had cherry-picked a tiny amount of the overall evidence in order to prove their case. Researchers are well-versed in doing this and most could likely easily make the case for the opposing position should the need arise.

They also said they 'voiced up' every word said by the defence and Lucy Letby whilst on the stand. We heard what they heard. The reporting was very thorough.

As to the 'confessions', they were merely part of a very large picture of circumstantial evidence. Of course a defendant is not going to be convicted on this sole basis. My own reference to a 'smoking gun' above was simply made on the basis that, if I'd done what Letby had done, I'd assume that leaving such material for the police to easily find would have very likely incriminated me. Who wouldn't reason in such a way?

What Hull and Cheetham are saying about the 30 or so Letby supporters attending the trial, wearing their little yellow butterflies in support of her, must have only compounded the anguish of the parents of Baby K. They have a lot to answer for.

NB. I am not well-versed in press freedoms related to UK cases where the material happens to be published outside of the UK. That report could have prejudiced the trial. It's ethically reprehensible, but I doubt the UK has any powers of recrimination. That's a pity.

So what ? It provides zero insight into how or why those babies died.

Who knows why she had them in her home, developing a theory around that is entirely speculative.

Irrespective of her guilt or innocence I do find it disturbing how many people seem to assume that ‘oh, she said she did it, so she did’ means it is a foregone conclusion. It’s far, far more complex than that. Whether she’s guilty or innocent those notes were clearly someone under enormous stress and in a great deal of anguish.

I have not followed the trial closely.

Either way it’s more shocking than I want to dwell on: an unthinkable act or a terrifying miscarriage of justice.

But did they actually establish it was an affair with the married doctor? The snippets I heard sounded more like a crush on her part.

So what is the reason you don’t believe she’s guilty then? She can’t possibly be a serial killer because..?

There is no smoking gun. That's the problem. Standing still for the few seconds that a dr burst into a room in an emergency isn't a smoking gun, and relies on his self-report and sense of time. There's no CCTV, no evidence of her tampering/stealing insulin, no evidence of anyone seeing her do anything incriminating or hurting the babies, even in a small unit with other staff around.

When I first heard about the trial, I knew nothing about it and just thought they must have some clincher evidence to know it was her, and then the trial kept being reported and I kept waiting and waiting, and it never came.

That note is not a confession and cannot be treated as such, given she has also written that she didn't do it and says she is innocent on every court appearance.

I am not convinced she is innocent myself at all, I simply don't know. There's no smoking gun though, there's a lot of statistics and a note, and that's not a lot to convict her when none of the babies was initially identified as an abnormal death/murder.

I mean it is all possible, the evidence so far is not compelling for me, although it was for the jury. I don't count the last trial as by then it was impossible for her to be fairly tried so I'm astonished it went ahead.

Even mass murderers usually have a defence team that put up alternative theories and evidence so I have no idea why they did not, it can't be because there were no alternative theories because there clearly are some!

Very disturbing case on more than one level.

It is statistically incredibly, incredibly unlikely that someone is a serial killer.
This becomes even more unlikely when they have no clear motives nor childhood trauma.

It is a fact that the NHS trust was struggling, that mistakes were being made, that staff were overworked, and that this would have led to babies not receiving the care they needed and babies sadly dying.

Just look at the doctors who were inserting breathing tubes incorrectly.

Without smoking gun evidence, and try as I might I've not seen anything convincing, I'm going to strongly question this conviction.

People have been wrongly convicted many times in the past and it's important we scrutinise convictions. This isn't a "slap in the face" to the victims, if anything it is quite the opposite.

If indeed LL is innocent and the babies were a victim of a crumbling healthy system, this needs to be found out.