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?

It's not true that most psychopaths are intelligent. On average people with high psychopathy traits are of slightly lower intelligence and people scoring high in psychopathy traits are over represented in incarcerated populations - suggesting they do often get caught when they engage in criminal activity.

The super intelligent psychopath has just gained a lot of mythos in popular culture (think eg Hannibal Lecter) because it's really chilling to imagine another human being of superior intelligence to yourself not held back from harming you, and very possibly incentivised to harm you (from the thrill, power trip etc) by their psychopathic traits including an absence of empathy. It frightens us on a primal level because it reminds us of being prey in relation to a predator.

I have been listening to that podcast. If all the stuff they are saying is true, then it seems like she has a strong case for ineffective council.

i am not convinced either way, but based on what I’ve heard I don’t think it’s a safe conviction.

the other podcast shows Dr Ravi jayram in a very different light - and him saying he wished he’d go to the police as not just regret but him actually not doing his job - taking the case for every ‘unexpected’ death to the review board to discuss and learn. And that board had a police officer sitting on it.

^ This

No you’re not. There was a very good thread recently about the serious problems with this case. I’d say in about 10 years it will be found to be one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in U.K. history. Possibly leading to reform of the way trials with copious and complex scientific evidence are conducted will be reformed.

She was deemed not so mentally unfit as to escape criminal culpability but she still had psychopathic tendencies. Trying to understand her is as pointless as trying to figure out why a cat kills a mouse.

I don’t doubt she is guilty.

The rate of deaths at that unit have made me consider the idea that she was not the only one.

The major problem with her defence is that they called no expert witnesses to counter the prosecution ones. Whether that was due to the legal aid budget which cost roughly half of the prosecution (expert witnesses for multiple charges would be expensive), or poor strategy it’s unknown. The other problem is the defence chose not to counter the ludicrous bad science of the air embolism theory or the insulin theory for which there was no evidence.

Both Jayaram and Breary failed in their job to report to the Child Death Overview Panel.

Wasn't she present at ALL the other deaths too? They just didn't investigate her for those. It'll all come out she's responsible for far more I have no doubt.

I don't know but I hope there is a special place in hell for her.

Fucking awful human beings exist unfortunately. There's not always an explanation, they're just awful human beings.

It had nothing to do with the legal aid budget

She's a psychopath in my view. No sane person would commit a crime like this without being seriously mentally disturbed. Narcissists are described as being completely devoid of empathy. But, I understand that's seen as a personality type rather than a mental illness.
When it comes to murdering little babies you just cannot be of sound mind. I find it odd that ant professional would suggest she's not mentally ill.

I wonder if it began way before, a near miss, a genuine accident, and gradually over time more risky situations. As you say, hardly registering that she’d slipped from simply ‘not intervening’ to actually deliberate harm.

If it happened gradually over several years she didn’t even realise at first (and then thinking that nobody else had realised, wondering how far she could push it)

I read that a serial killer (Ted Bundy?) was surprised that people looked for his victims; he didn’t think of them as important, and assumed others would be the same and not notice they were missing. (Classic psychopath I believe, not understanding how other people think)

I’m 💯% certain that if she were a non white man, next to nobody would be seeking to understand why he did it. They’d be calling him scum and after sentencing we’d hear no more until maybe his face had been slashed in jail. There also would be nobody protesting his innocence outside of the court.

Those poor families and babies. Not only have they already suffered so much. They have to watch/read people claim she either didn’t do it or she was ill, just because she is a white blond woman.

Even if she had been caught on CCTV there would be people claiming it wasn’t her.

I have never seen any evidence she was present for the other deaths. In fact, if they did show that evidence it would be compelling. Even just to put it on their roster chart. The fact they didn’t provide evidence of the other 10 deaths her being there makes me suspicious. Also seems like ineffective council to not question that, or show that she wasn’t there for those other deaths.

Expert witnesses are expensive and Legal aid is not unlimited. It has fee caps which has resulted in many experts refusing work and a drop of 25% in criminal defence solicitors willing to work. An expert may charge 5x the amount allocated to pay them, by way of example.

The Law Society published a report recently commenting that the system is near collapse. Last winter the High Court ruled against the government for their cuts to criminal legal aid.

Presumably you’ve not heard of The Innocence Project then?

It’s odd. She can’t have felt unloved or unnoticed as she had a group of friends, at least some of whom are still loyal to her and her parents were obviously very openly proud of her.

No babies died that had been given insulin.
Those charges were attempted murder.

Nobody claimed Myra Hindley, a blond, white woman, didn’t do it, but they may have thought she was mentally ill, as no one can fathom how anyone who isn’t can do such things. It’s more that LL does not fit the usual stereotype of loner or someone everyone says was always a weirdo who used to pull the legs of insects, which is so often the case with serial killers, so it’s bound to make people wonder how her mind works.

I think people are expecting evidence that's not really possible because it took place in a hospital and many things can be explained away by negligence etc. but all the evidence together paints a very compelling picture of her guilt for me.

Extreme self loathing that made her believe she was evil and therefore had to carry out evil acts. What could be more evil that killing a vulnerable baby?

Or

A thrill and feeling powerful. Presenting herself as a caring nurse and hiding the secret monstrous acts of killing those in her care. 'If only you knew' giving her some kind of perverse pleasure.

Or

Angry at the world and feeling a failure and committing cowardly acts of harm and murder as a means to feel some kind of superiority at getting away with it.

Who knows? Only she does.

It's kind of like - why do the script writers of TV drama so often make the choice to torment and/or kill off characters? Why do we like to consume this artificial drama, artificial suffering?

It's because it's entertaining, it's because it makes the audience feel something, and even if what is felt seems to be bad such as shock/fear/sadness, it's still feels good to feel.

In the case of TV, the characters are not real, so however emotionally invested the audience there is a fundamental disconnect / antipathy that comes from knowing the characters aren't real. And of course, them not being real also makes it morally okay to write tragedy into their storylines.

I think that being a psychopath on some level involves living your entire life with that kind of emotional disconnection from other people, a lack of empathy/regard/remorse for them and that disconnection also makes things kind of...boring. So that there is a need for some excitement through a dramatic "storyline". And psychopaths to a lesser or greater extent lack some of the most important inhibitions that hold us back from inflicting suffering onto others (chiefly empathy, guilt etc).

Nevertheless psychopaths are exposed to our culture which explains right Vs wrong, noble Vs wrongdoer and they my wish to see themselves as noble. Hence why psychopaths may choose to be law abiding and get their kicks through a high stakes profession or hobby rather than through criminality. Some (possibly LL) will do both or graduate from one to the other.

Yes I have but this is not the same so please don’t try to gaslight me. The innocence project often deals with closed cases featuring poor men who’ve been forgotten about. Where there’s more holes in the case than Swiss cheese but they got sent down quietly, sometimes for decades.

During their trials there were never conspiracy websites and people flooding social media trying to sew seeds of doubt. There weren’t complete strangers to them staging large protests outside the court.

This is completely different.

So you keep saying but legal aid aren't going to refuse funding for expert witnesses, for a start assessing claims for experts goes through a different department of the LAA to the one that assesses and pays the litigator fees, they aren't going to know how much legal aid is being spent on other areas of her defence. Even the department who deal with paying her barristers didn't know how much it would cost , well is still costing

I'd be very surprised if there were no payments to expert witnesses at all