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?

Very sensible point. I hadn’t thought of it that way.

This is the biggest mystery of the whole case to me....the motive.
I actually thought this might be the downfall and she might be found not guilty.
Just because there is nothing in her past at all to explain how this behaviour came about, and her friends spoke up for her etc...
I would love to know.
I bet the poor parents of the babies would like an answer to that question too..
Just why?

She was the only nurse present for every single suspicious death that made it as far as court.

Im not defending Lucy at all, but this bit of evidence doesn’t add up. Of course she was the only nurse present… because those were the cases that were chosen for prosecution. There were other deaths, but they weren’t brought to court as they didn’t fit the evidence.

The part that confuses me is those diaries. I can’t imagine an innocent person writing that, even if they felt guilty or upset.

It’s so hard to get your head around. There seems to be such a fine line between evil and mental. We’ll never know for sure why because we can’t get inside her head. Psychiatrists can only theorise.

Scapegoat springs to mind here. I have followed the trial very closely and read into evidence that wasn’t allowed to be published in the uk (reporting restrictions). I would be very concerned if I was a nurse in an nhs hospital. I just don’t buy it. As mentioned above the insulin can be explained and everything else is circumstantial. Something doesn’t add up.

I don't like this idea that people think she did it because she'd never have a family. It's a bit offensive to childless women tbh that people would think anyone would resort to that, without any evidence pointing to it at all. She was what 26 when she did most of her crimes? Maybe as young as 24 when she actually started (will we ever know when it began?) how many women are planning a family or writing themselves off at that age? If she was 10 years older maybe I could understand it, but not in her mid 20s.

I think she had issues around her own difficult birth, maybe confounded by the way her parents acted towards her (not blaming them at all) or perhaps something happened through no fault of her own with one of the babies and she discovered she enjoyed all the attention. I wish I studied psychology more, it will be interesting to know what the experts think triggered it all.

She's the definition of looking like butter wouldn't melt and wishy washy wouldn't hurt a fly, I do find it hard to believe when I really think about it. I 100% know she's guilty though.

I haven't read too much about it because it is just so distressing, but that doesn't ring true to me. I'm not sure I have come across that. My take is that people find her completely despicable.

Definitely needs help but I don’t have any idea how that can happen. I’m certain that at least two medics have tried to help her consider a therapeutic approach. I say two because twice she has initiated official complaints against doctors and the way she talked about both (was extremely angry) made me think ‘ah, you didn’t get the intervention you wanted and worse than that they suggested seeing a counsellor’

If you completely lack empathy for others, if their feelings and lives mean literally nothing to you, and you thought you could get away with it, then the thing is you don't need a very strong reason to commit murder.

Like I don't need a compelling reason to commit murder of NPCs in a video game - I don't empathise with them and they are of very little consequence to me. They don't feel like real people like the way I am (obviously in the case of NPCs in a video game that's because they're not!).

I believe for some people who score highly on scales of psychopathy / very low on scales of empathy, other people are literally like NPCs to them. They are just of no consequence beyond what they can provide materially, or as amusement. I have read that psychopaths may actually seek out and/or manufacture emotionally charged situations and/or engage in risky behaviours because their baseline is not feeling much and that's boring for them.

This is what I suspect could be going on with LL but of course, I can't know. It's not a mental illness as such, it's just how some people are. People can score highly on psychopathy scales and still lead law abiding lives - perhaps because they fear the possible consequences of not doing so, or perhaps because they have chosen they're going to be law abiding much as I might decide not to murder any NPCs in a video game as I might have decided to play it as a "good guy". It's that element of reasoning and choice that means somebody is criminally responsible Vs being mentally unwell.

I've explained this in a further reply - to a normal person these are huge achievements which is why I think she went under the radar. To someone like her I can't imagine even this would be enough. There was so much focus on her wanting to be a hero and good at her job etc, I wonder if notoriety was a part of the evil she went on to action.

The recent trial I can't believe the jury couldn't come to a decision. She moved away from her home town to get away from her parents. Now they want to move to be closer to her in prison.

There could be so many reasons. We will never know. If I were to speculate I’d say she has some kind of conduct disorder and possibly tried to hide how she felt and stop herself doing what she has done (that we know of and there very well could be other incidents not involving babies that only she knows of).

There’s a possibility she wanted to keep this side of her hidden and she just couldn’t. Her seemingly perfect image may have been an attempt to normalise herself because she had some awareness of her thoughts being so far from normal .

Of course it could have been for attention of a dr or to be a saviour but I feel it was just an overwhelming urge to harm that she couldn’t overcome.

"Our Lucy can't be guilty, can she? Look at her - I can't understand it. I can't imagine someone like her doing such. She doesn't look like a killer. There must be a reason. She's mentally ill. She must be innocent! Oh please help me understand why this particular killer killed...IF SHE DID, ANYWAY. The evidence is sketchy".

Some psychologists say she was born that way. Apparently everyone has the potential to become a killer but we don’t because there is no triggering the switch. In LL’s case she probably didn’t realise it herself until she started harming babies. Then she enjoy the trill, power and control.

Apparently people with those tendencies also work in high powered jobs to get their kicks,.

She doesn’t care about anyone but herself, not the babies, parents, colleagues or her own parents.

There are youtube discussions about it.

It's quite possible that she was overcome by jealousy at other women having families, to the point of wanting to cause misery.

During my working career, I've seen some horrific bullying from women who have been jealous of other women.

If she'd had any moral decency she would have killed herself the moment she conceived of killing babies. It makes me want to cry just thinking about those poor innocent lives lost.

What is also difficult to understand are the actions of the hospital managers who tried to sweep the whole thing under the carpet. If only they had approached the Police sooner.
They should also be in the dock.

yeh, i'd say the first time she crossed the line and CREATED that vulnerability, i'd say she hardly registered that she had done that. The outcome (drama, validation, bringing her doctor in) that's what was real to her.

I don’t think she did it. The whole thing makes no sense. Conviction is dodgy.

And based on spurious statistics. And in a unit that had more deaths than average.

I’ve known a handful of people with conduct disorder say they have to fight it every day the urge to harm is there and in a couple it was from a very young age (but they suffered extreme trauma at a young age so not sure what LL upbringing was like? Fine by all accounts but if it’s this something went wrong somewhere)

@TheYearOfSmallThings @ComoSeDicePepino Both your comments make sense, I could absolutely see it playing out that way.

Quite. 15-17 deaths in total. (It’s not clear whether 2 were declared). She was accused of 7. What was the cause of the other 8-10 deaths?

The Royal Statistical Society wrote a letter regarding the misuse of stats in the trial. The chart presented to the court was a statistical abomination. If you took all 15-17 deaths and the total 60 “incidents’ Dewi Evans “identified” - (note without any scientific definition of what an incident consisted of), she was not present at all of those. If you took any individual nurse and clustered all the “incidents” for which they were present, the charts would look identical.

Ahhh I’m glad I’m not the only one.

I wonder whether there would have been ‘signs’ throughout her life that she was wired this way- lacked empathy, liked to be in control etc. Although she didn’t appear to struggle with personal relationships so was she just very good at hiding it and ‘performing’. Or did it simmer under the surface until the trigger was switched?

I didn’t follow the trial too closely. After she was FIRST arrested (or spoken to by police) and released, did any more deaths or near misses occur?