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?

I think the combination is questionable on the evidence provided. I don’t see how anyone can say she definitely did it based on the evidence. Countess of Chester was a failing hospital, friend of the family’s daughter nearly died under their care and will need lifelong support, fully admitted by them. I have little faith in them. I don’t know if Lucy is guilty or not, but I’d struggle to convict based on the evidence provided.

She wasn't convicted on them alone.

I don’t read tabloids at all but thanks for that.
-Babies F and L were both found to have traces of medical insulin that would not have been produced naturally.
-The handover sheets were from the days babies died and were printed by her account and tracked to a printer. 251 sheets were recovered and 21 related to babies she was alleged to have harmed.
-Doctor A- who was targeted with ongoing unrequited messaging had an interim anonymity order in place
-She photographed one sympathy card and parents received others.

I don’t know why you felt the need to come at me alleging I don’t know anything about the case but that’s your opinion. Everything I’ve stated is fact and in court transcripts. Claiming my facts are “tabloid nonsense” I’m sure is much easier and an attempt to quash facts. Would you like to come back regarding any of these? I’d love to hear why you stated insulin deaths didn’t exist when it’s a fairly easy fact to check and one of the key points left out of the NY Article.

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

this is exactly the same as me. When I first heard the case reported in the media I assumed she was guilty because that’s how it was presented and I had no reason to doubt. What initiated my doubts was a documentary I watched about the case - which was very much from the standpoint of Lucy is guilty. I watched it and got to the end and thought - hang on there’s literally no good evidence she did this whatsoever. So I started reading and researching more into the case, assuming there was something missed. No. all evidence of guilt is entirely vague/ speculative. The “statistical evidence” is complete bollox and deeply problematic, and the medical evidence is not definitive at all- Full of assumption, hypothesis etc that cannot be proven one way or other.

Theres no good evidence that a murder was committed in this case at all, let alone multiple murders that can be specifically attributed to Letby.

@stopthepigeonstopthepigeon

They would say that wouldn’t they as the article undermined their entire podcast.
They are just journalists at the end of the day, without enough science to question the science it seems. The New Yorker is far superior journalistic source fact-checked to oblivion.

You’d be better off reading the doctor’s blog - 400 pages of evaluation of the clinical data from the trial; and listening to Dr Michael McConnell’s podcast.

Same here. I started following the trial in my lunch break to get some insight into a deep disturbed mind. I waited patiently for the evidence.. which never came. Initially I thought that they’d included some questionable cases and we would eventually get to cases for which hard evidence, but we never did. I entirely agree there is no evidence of murder in any of the cases nor any evidence to link to LL in particular. I have said many, many times this case stands and falls on the scientific evidence or the lack of it.

Babies F and L were both found to have traces of medical insulin that would not have been produced naturally.. I’d love to hear why you stated insulin deaths didn’t exist when it’s a fairly easy fact to check

Because babies f and l didn’t die. There were no insulin deaths. Why did you say there were?

The information I have on this case mainly comes from the podcast The Trial of Lucy Letby. It states that a number of people working at the hospital had concerns about Letby (which were mostly ignored by the management) long before she was arrested. Baby’s who were healthy and getting better would suddenly inexplicably become ill when she arrived on shift and it kept happening again and again. Again they were recovering not badly clinging to life.

I think the point is someone injected them with insulin not whether they died or not.

A small handful of handover notes taken home accidentally eg in a pocket, over a long period might be understandable.

Even then, if you did it yourself you'd probably destroy them or return them to the hospital.

That volume of handover notes, taken home regularly .....and retained, is off.

As other posters have said, it thus formed part of the (circumstantial) evidence.

Re. the "she was just a hoarder" theory....

She would hoard everything, not one specific thing, would she not? Was general, disordered hoarding noted? If so, why wasn't it mentioned in the defence?

Even if it had been, as this poster has highlighted, it was not her property or materials to hoard; she knew it was wrong to have taken it out and she knew it was wrong to keep it.

Why are we still discussing this? Again, it literally says nothing about how or why those babies died. The fact that it was wrong to take the notes home has nothing to do with whether she murdered babies.
Yes, we can speculate about why she took those notes home, and that’s all it would be- pure speculation.

@stopthepigeonstopthepigeon I read, I think in the New Yorker article, that it's not certain about the insulin

Why are we still discussing this?

Because other posters want to discuss it.

Again, it literally says nothing about how or why those babies died.

This is true.

The fact that it was wrong to take the notes home has nothing to do with whether she murdered babies.

Incorrect. Conversely, it's part of the picture of circumstantial evidence the juries were being asked to consider. Criminal trials are strict about what evidence is and is not permissible; in addition, the courts require that this be disclosed from the outset. Had the evidence not been permissible then it would not have been admitted into court.

Yes, we can speculate about why she took those notes home, and that’s all it would be- pure speculation.

Indeed, and it's part of the job of the prosecution to 'suggest'. It's speculation, but in any trial the prosecution/defence will invite juries to infer (or reject) inference on the basis of the evidence they have seen.

Leaving aside any speculation, the facts are that Letby retained these notes knowing full well this was against hospital protocol. She will have been fully trained as to how to deal with sensitive information, and expected to include those instructions in her practice. She did not. This at the very least is a serious breach of GPDR which can leave the institution for which that employee worked susceptible to fines of millions of pounds.

The notes also correlated with babies whose families she'd searched for on the internet and babies who had mysteriously collapsed whilst under her care in the unit.

These are all facts which any prosecution should present and any jury that's awake should consider seriously. They're not just a benign sheaf of documents which somehow ended up in Letby's possession by unhappy chance.

The above bears in mind, also, that this is a tiny part of the body of evidence under consideration.

Circumstantial evidence, especially an accumulation of it, can be used as evidence of murder, yes. Which is what those ‘stacks’ of paper are.

And yes, I think it counts towards the proof of murder, with all the other evidence.

*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.*

Par for the course for the NHS in my experience.

However the deaths didn't spike and stay spiked til LL joined, and you still haven't explained how understaffing, incompetence and negligence caused baby's deaths on specific milestone dates.

I've asked that around 6 (?) times now, with no response.

There was also a locum whom nurses reported concerns about who was sent back for shifts on the ward, a decision that was criticised.

Just like LL was allowed to continue working and reinstated in spite of the fact that she was being noticed to be present for every unexpected collapse, was being noticed doing nothing about a collapse when she'd have been entirely reasonably expected to be doing something urgently, and was making parents and some other staff members deeply uncomfortable with her comments and behaviour.

So, the management was generally incompetent; something that's a common thread throughout.

Ironic that when it suits you to criticise the management in support of your "case", you state they were incompetent; they didn't exercise correct judgement or make correct decisions eg to downgrade the unit when they should have, so the ward was understaffed and there was negligence .....so LL was innocent.

But when it comes to claiming that management didn't merit the claims against LL, they dismissed them ... so LL is innocent. The management are then assumed by you to be competent, worthy of trust and their decisions valid.

They can't be both, according to when it suits your "case".

I've read around this in fits and starts since the trial began well over a year ago. Like many of us, I have a somewhat prurient interest in criminal cases and have dipped sporadically into these over the years, without any pretensions to expertise.

The New Yorker is indeed a superior journalistic source. The US likes its freedom of expression. I have no doubt that they will have been into their laws with a fine tooth comb and deemed it safe to publish the material without legal redress. Nor is anyone that I can see disputing that the facts it contains are correct (the above wouldn't have applied if so). The problem is that they don't present the entirety of the picture of evidence. And I still maintain that, reputable a source as they may be, they acted irresponsibly and unethically in publishing such a loaded, mainly opinion piece ahead of a live criminal trial, irrespective of whether that this was happening overseas, therefore outside the jurisdiction of the US and the laws by which it must comply.

On the contrary, the Mail is a tawdry little rag but the journalist Cheetman is thorough, dispassionate and correct in the way she presents her facts, not least in the way she carefully adheres to the law and the instructions of the court when reporting on legal cases. To quote her words: 'I am not Miss Marple'.

I'm not a medical doctor. I've no intention of reading a 400-page blog: I don't have the time. I did, however, read the document (also long) which detailed the reasons why the appeal had been denied.

On that basis, the credence of the US article is more than shaky and their ethics on this occasion dubious. It certainly, IMO, does not cast doubt on the safety of Letby's now 15 convictions.

Why the consultants and management didn’t flag this and get the unit downgraded as the hospital board did eventually is baffling.

We don't know whether the consultants did or not.

We do know that their concerns and requests in this case were dismissed, repressed, sidestepped and delayed. One only has to look at the communications in black and white to see that.

Whose ultimate decision would it have been and whose role to pursue it? I'm guessing not the consultants, who - as you point out when it suits your case, were working an understaffed unit.

There are 15 convictions, and the babies are anonymous, which can make all the letters confusing, it’s understandable if people (i.e. laymen on this thread) sometimes confuse the murders and attempted murders. Is it necessary to be so accusatory?

The fact is LL was found guilty of the attempted murder of babies L and F via insulin poisoning. LL evens says herself the bags must have been tampered with.

What about the doctors ? Do they even need to record their movements about the hospital

I don't actually think anyone in this thread; has said they think she's guilty because of just those notes.

I work in the NHS. Having patient notes under your bed at home is so extreme and the grossest of gross misconduct. This is not normal behaviour by any stretch of the imagination. You do not do that.

Babies don't suddenly start dying at 5 times the previous rate, on milestone occasions, for no reason.

The consistent milestone dates point to someone (or more than one person) harming them deliberately.

If one serial killer is rare, then more than one in one unit is even more so. So it's likely to be one person.

Rare doesn't mean 'never". There have been numerous cases of medical professional serial killers to date. Across decades and millions of people; it's possible.

An NHS unit being understaffed etc. is common and not mutually exclusive with the existence of a serial killer.

Incidents of medical negligence are not rare, unfortunately. I can think of several cases of medical negligence/incompetence involving babies off the top of my head, locally. They happen.
Again, they are not mutually exclusive with the existence of a serial killer.

@BouquetGarni224

Interesting response, thank you.

With regards milestone dates, do you have any examples or can you point me to a source. I'd like to learn more about this.

You do not need to be a doctor to read the doctor’s blog, you just need basic science. I’m not sure if you even need that tbh - he writes very clearly. You certainly do not need to be a doctor to listen to Dr McConville’s podcast. That is all presented for the layperson.

That you take the gossip of a DM journalist and a media consultant with a background only in regional reporting, over a staff writer at the New Yorker and an actual doctor as sources, speaks volumes of your discrimination and your actual interest in the case. You have enough time to fantasise about serial killers online but not enough to read through the trial data.

(Btw - You’re offended by a thoughtful serious piece of journalism published ahead of trial, but make no comment on the endless burn-the-witch articles which were apparently not prejudicial to judicial process).