Lucy Letby’s scribbled notes

[Figmentofmyimagination]

At times when I’m feeling acutely distressed, it’s not at all unusual for me to scribble all sorts of dreadful thoughts down on paper eg die die die, hate hate hate, I hate you, I hate you, what’s the point of you, my fault, stupid me, etc etc etc, usually scribbling them all out so nobody can see what I’ve written. I’m pretty sure this is quite a common response to acute mental distress. I agree with this article that it feels very surprising that Letby’s scribblings were used as evidence of a ‘confession’.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/sep/03/i-am-evil-i-did-this-lucy-letbys-so-called-confessions-were-written-on-advice-of-counsellors

Will you come back an apologise if the conviction falls apart?

The reality is that after 3 deaths, rather than address the many problems in the unit and look at their own practices - they looked at the rotas to find a convenient nurse to pin it on.

They did all they could? But not the very things they could have done at the start: 1. Ask the hospital board to downgrade the unit immediately, 2. Report to the CDOP.

The deaths stopped as soon as the unit was downgraded.

Who said there were 17 deaths and she wasn't there for 10 of them? Don't you think that would've been the first thing the defence would've brought up? She probably was there they just didn't have enough evidence-they have to pick the strongest cases plus it was already an exceptionally long trial. There were probably 2-3 others that were explained and non suspicious.

Looks more to me like she has potentially’zoned out’ and just detached and disassociated so much due to the stress which may explain why she didn’t explain things in court like the fact she was advised to write her feelings down. She may very well be in a state of shock often the mind will shut a person down effectively

And I do suspect any markings or codes in her diaries related to deaths may be that she was going to report things herself and was keeping records as well for that reason and once someone became aware of that she was getting the finger pointed at her in a panic to protect others

Absolutely I will apologise (even though I'm not here insulting the intelligence of doctors, lawyers, basically anyone involved in the case but Lucy) but that'll never happen. What will happen is they will find her guilty of a lot more.

There was already a couple who came forward and had a pic of Lucy there with her baby who went on to die. Around 2013 I think it was. He did have more issues than most of the babies, but it wouldn't surprise me if LL attacked him. And another one I remember from years ago way before the trial there was an article about a little girl who had an unexpected collapse and the parents questioned whether LL had anything to do with it. She is fine now thankfully. Tip of the iceberg.

private eye ‘ she was convicted of seven murders but there were ten other deaths that she wasn’t on duty for’

from the guardian :

The police began an investigation into infant deaths at the hospital in May 2017, initially looking at the deaths of 15 babies between June 2015 and June 2016. On Tuesday police said the investigation had been widened to include 17 deaths and 15 non-fatal collapses of babies between March 2015 and July 2016.

which she was found guilty for 7 so what caused the other 10?

What did you find particularly amusing and what do you know that he doesn’t?

I’m sorry you are struggling.
It’s not just the notes, it wasn’t like a diary.

She basically carried out surveillance on those poor, grieving families. Googling, Facebook stalking, taking home notes, hiding them, contacting them- she’s one very sick individual. (In my opinion) and yes I’ve read the New Yorker article.

but that'll never happen

your certainty at predicting the future is a bit like your certainty that Letby is guilty perhaps?

Time will tell I suppose, but the tide is definitely turning

Let’s hear your rebuttal then, starting with why in your view the death rate shot up dramatically in the years when Letby worked there and why in your view all these babies died shortly after being left alone in Letby’s sole care.

Feel free to point out all the factual inaccuracies in the article.

But it's up to her defence to challenge them That's why we have both defence and prosecution able to question witnesses. What did the defence actually do to make the jury think there was reasonable doubt?

Do you have a source for this information?

No, did I say that?

Nobody actually knows how many of the other deaths she was present for. Different media sources have reported different things, all vague, and without clarifying their sources. It’s part of the problem with that misleading chart that was presented to the jury- there’s no possible way of telling what it means because it contains less than half the deaths.

No not surveillance that’s they way it’s been portrayed :

• She searched 31 times for family members, but this is selected from a total 2,287 searches over the same period.
• It's claimed she kept "trophies" in the form of 21 handover sheets related to babies in this case, actually these where picked out of 257 mundane records that she had retained

She also searched specifically for parents of babies NOT subject to the investigation. She is asked whether Letby searched on Facebook for the parents of children other than those listed in the charges. Ms Hocknell confirms that is the case. "There are a lot of searches for different people." Evidence from trial(Hocknell is the Police Intelligence Analyst).

one must ask the prosecution, if these things mean fixation and murder why did she "coincidentally" keep 236 records and make 2,256 searches for people she isn't accused of murdering?

@Figmentofmyimagination ive done the same I have incredibly intrusive thoughts and can flip any situation into being my fault some how. That’s without the responsibility that came with her job.

I really think she was doing it for a reason and if we assume for a moment she’s innocent then what could the reason be on a failing unit where more babies than average are dying and the still birth rate is higher than average in the same time frame - I think she was potentially aware something was wrong and was going to report with evidence , that evidence then was made to make her look guilty.

The conviction won’t fall apart no matter how much you and other so called experts want it to. The only victims in this are the poor babies and their families. No one else.

@tandora and I have clashed previously on other subjects, but I have no reason not to believe they are a scientifically aware person. Tbh it's nice to agree on something for once 😁

@3tumsnot1 we don't know if they were "mundane" because we don't know the extent of her crimes yet. She could've been doing little things to sabotage care all the time. The trial only looked at a one year period. They're investigating something like 4,000 babies she came into contact with.

‘You and other so called experts’ is incorrect. There are Mumsnetters with concerns about the conviction, who are not claiming to be experts, but are basing their beliefs on the concerns expressed by actual experts, like neonatologists, Fellows of the Royal Statistical Society and the researcher who actually wrote one of the papers Dewi Evans relied on and has criticized Evans’ use of it in this case. You are conflating two distinct groups of people in an effort to discredit both.
If you think the author of the paper Evans cited is only a ‘so called’ expert that’s up to you of course.

Better still you go and do your own research then you can refute it yourself.

LL started working at the COCH in 2012. The death rate rose in 2015 and 2016 because the unit accepted higher number of babies with higher acuity when they didn’t have the resources or the staffing to run a level 2 unit. There was poor consultant cover meaning junior and mid rank doctors were left to their own devices, when they should have been overseen by a consultant. There was insufficient nursing staff so in cases where there should have been 1 on 1 nursing there was 1 nurse to 3 babies. And there was poor communication between all staff and “reluctance to seek advice”. There is also the possibility of infection clusters caused by the problems with the plumbing - as the unit had an outbreak of pseudomonas which lives in the water system and usually derives from sewage. Finally I should add if you read though the medical data there is some suboptimal care slash negligence on the part of some of the doctors.

The babies didn’t die shortly after being left alone in LL’s care if you read the medical testimony, indeed in some cases she had left the building or the baby had left the hospital.

“Present” is very elastic in LL’s case. It applies if she has just arrived minutes into a shift, or has already left the building. Then there is the miraculous changing of “spiked“ TPN bags when she wasn’t even there.