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

If it is true that there is an absence of any convincing evidence against her, why do you think the jury (who actually sat through every single scrap of evidence over the course of 9 months) were convinced of her guilt?

Service varies across the NHS widely. Off the top of my head the Royal Surrey maternity unit is outstanding. Medway is good Queens inadequate. Its the same nhs.

Because she has no expert whiteness supporting her case so of course the jury went with the prosecution ( who has expert whitenesses ) plus the statistics were cherry picked to make her look present and guilty. They made her look like she was the only possible reason, when actually ten other babies died sadly at the same time…

Yep in 2016 (- for the whole hospital though, whereas the RCPCH report focused specifically on the neonatal unit-), finding was “needs improvement”.

A plumber testified at the trial that sewage had backed up the sinks.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-65904884

While I would hope that you never find yourself accused of a serious crime, if it happened, how would you assemble your legal team?
When there's a smoking gun, the accused attempts to find experts who can analyse test results, compare hard evidence etc.
The chart is superficially helpful, showing those working on the ward on 25 cherry-picked dates spread over more than a year. Had the full data been presented, there would be no convincing pattern.

What concerns some of us - irrespective of Letby's guilt or innocence - is that novel theories, mixed with witnesses with a strong appetite for media exposure, miscarriages of justice become more prevalent.

& the last time you either worked in maternity or neonatal unit? Even the original poster said she was mistaken after a number of people said it wasn’t possible. So you would rather have lied to prove a point. Think you’ve got a problem.

Honestly I don’t think these kinds of cases - that rest on evaluating complex scientific (eg medical) evidence are well suited to jury trials. The jury was faced by senior doctors saying “this is what the medical evidence says”. What basis did they have to challenge that? The defence failed to put on their own expert to explain how what the prosecution experts were saying actually made no sense. All they heard was - this is what experienced doctors think.
Nor did the defence offer an expert to challenge the misleading use of statistical inference presented to the jury- all they saw and heard was LL was the only one always on shift . And there were various bits and pieces of other evidence missing - eg the findings of the RCPCH report of the systemic failings of the unit , the evidence of bacteria outbreak on the ward, the fact that the “confession” notes were written as part of therapy services offered by the hospital itself (!) etc. I’m sure the jury did the best they could , but this trial was a mess.

Seriously?

She didn’t say she was mistaken.

And sarcasm is lost on you.

I’ve worked in a hospital where sewage backed up in the sinks in the bays. The ward never shut. In fact the bays never shut. We just taped bin bags over the sinks when it happened and told the women in that bay not to use the sink. There would be some poor woman in a bed 2ft from the sink. With a newborn in a cot!

Foul water (which would be assumed to be contaminated with toilet water) coming up into the sinks is indicative of the design of the waste water system being inadequate. This applies to the whole building. I would have expected separation of sewage / sluice rooms from other waste waters (sinks/ kitchen/ autoclaves).

There was obviously no pressure equalization which would potentially require significant modifications to fix, and should have included a systematic review of all the other sinks.

I have had a look at some of the old Amanda Fox threads. Given how events have turned out in the meantime some people with Very Big and Certain Opinions need to have the humility to admit they had it completely wrong. The murder of Meredith Kercher was heinous disgusting and vile- but Amanda Fox was, regardless of her perceived faults, absolutely innocent of having anything to do with it. Although at one point she and Rafaello Sollecito were convicted of murder.

Which is not a claim of Lucy Letby’s innocence.

The defence’s failure to put foward the witnesses to support the defendant is utterly baffling then, don’t you think? Particularly as they now all seem to be queuing up to rubbish the prosecution case to any news outlet that will have them. I wonder if they get paid for their interviews to the press…

I haven't followed the case enough to say either way but what is written here has made me wonder about the possibility of her being framed. Not necessarily because someone else murdered the babies, but more perhaps hiding the hospital's failings so taking the heat off themselves.

It sounds ridiculous, but I've been in a bullying situation at work where I can see exactly the framework how this could happen.

I had one person who commented about bully 1 in a meeting "I don't agree with that, but if he wants it, they it will be passed". A year later they told me "no one is influenced by him, we all know our own mind."
They went from recognising he manipulated people not not recognising they'd been manipulated by him and believing everything he said without question.

I was often framed by them, by things like they'd say something needed doing and I'd say "oh yes, not a problem. Would you like me to do it?" And they'd say "Oh, yes please, that's great." So I'd do it, and next thing would be my line manager would call in to say "you really shouldn't have done that. You should have checked first", but I had no witnesses, and when I said "he asked me to do it" I was clearly not believed. Then I'd have other people commenting to me "you know you should check before doing this", and he'd phrase it so it sounded like he was so patient and I was just doing it my own way without any thought, despite me having talked it all through,
If I said I didn't have time to do it, or similar, he'd reply "no problem, totally understandable" then I'd get my line manager saying "you know when bully 1 asks you to do something, you should do it."
So I couldn't win.

She could have been manipulated into dealing with babies that had shown signs of deteriorating. Other person looks at baby, sees signs of deterioration, thinks "doesn't look good". Says to Lucy, "Lucy, can you look after Baby A today.". Then comments to another person "Oh I feel so sorry for Lucy, she asked to look after Baby A just before they died. It's funny, but when I saw baby A they were doing so well. Strange how that happens sometimes isn't it?"

And also being guilty gives you an edge over everyone else. Generally people don't like accusing people, and will tend to think the best. That actually gives them the best chance of not just hiding their guilt, but also of framing someone else.

If someone was trying to hide it, then people say "weren't you doing baby A's medicine?" and they reply "Oh yes I was, I gave it to them and left Lucy watching them on her own. She's lovely with the babies."
Or "Oh yes, I was meant to handle the food bags yesterday, but when I came in Lucy offered to, she could see how busy I was, so I left her doing it."
The listener will assume the person is just talking, because why would they say Lucy was there if she wasn't... then if Lucy says "but they asked me" or "I wasn't there" they see it as a sign of guilt.

And actually Lucy may not have even tried to defend herself. She may think "they're mistaken", "they didn't mean it the way it came out" and things like that. I thought like that for over two years before it became obvious that it was deliberate and targeted. I just thought I was being paranoid when it felt that way.

Ime that people very quickly pick up that and even start thinking that they personally saw Lucy doing whatever etc. People would swear I'd been in a place at a time I wasn't in the building, even on one occasion I pointed out I'd been talking to them as I left earlier. They responded "well, you could have come back, I suppose." Even when I said I couldn't possibly as I was on a train 40 minutes away by that point, they just thought the bully had been mistaken on times, not that they were deliberately setting me up.
Because they're not thinking the speaker is anything but totally innocent, they don't see that they would say anything that isn't true, so believe them.

Yes, people will look at this and cry "conspiracy story", and I'm certainly not saying that is what happened, or even what I think happened. However from my personal experience, I would say that it is possible that if someone, especially someone who was superior to her, wanted to frame her to either deflect attention from themselves or the situation in the hospital, I can see how it would happen.

This thread is not about Amanda Knox (not Fox as you call her), but I didn’t think she was guilty.

I do think LL is guilty.

It would be better for everyone if she wasn’t. Who wants those poor babies to have been attacked? Who would want Child N to have a nasogastric tube shoved so hard into his mouth that it causes trauma and made him bleed so much? Who would want Child O to have been hit so hard on his liver it was akin to a road traffic accident?

The most palatable reason would be natural causes. But the evidence points to Letby.

I find it hard to believe a ward/hospital as bad as some people here describe would get away with “needs improvement”. The CQC have the power to literally shut services down.

This thread is not about Amanda Knox (not Fox as you call her), but I didn’t think she was guilty.

I do think LL is guilty.

Same. I didn’t believe Knox and Sollecito were guilty but I do think Letby is. The arguments against it just seem like conspiracy theories to me. The idea the Trust framed her, for example, just seems to far fetched.

The unit literally got downgraded so they can no longer treat babies with such high needs because they are unable to provide good enough care for them.

I’m honestly surprised that didn’t end up in the papers.

Wikipedia (which may of course be wrong) says that it was the hospital managers who downgraded the unit not the CQC.

Yes, because they knew the unit was in that bad of a state. You're arguing that it can't have been that bad, but it was clear to the ones there that it was.

She could have been manipulated into dealing with babies that had shown signs of deteriorating.

LL was asking to work with the highest needs babies. It was normal for the nurses to work shifts in the lower needs areas of the unit, to get a break. She didn't want that. She said it was "boring". She was pushing to always be out in the highest needs area, in spite of her shift assigner offering lower needs (in fact not even offering, it was standard but she was asking not to do those standard shifts in lower needs areas).

She was also recorded as being found in higher needs areas/rooms when not assigned there. When she should have been elsewhere.

You have projected, to an unfathomable degree, your personal experience onto this case.

So many posters who post on these threads about LL make me think that they could not possibly have read around the case even to a minimal degree.

No I’m saying it’s strange the CQC didn’t shut it down if it was so bad (especially if there was sewage everywhere).

It would appear the hospital mangers felt the death rate in the unit was unusual and were trying to work out the cause (concerns about Letby had been raised by this point but were dismissed). They called these other agencies in to find a cause but they couldn’t really so the managers downgraded the unit.

I think it's very important to remember that when they decided to downgrade the unit, the police investigation - which took around a year - was in its earliest stages, and they had no clear picture of what (or who) was causing the spike in collapses and deaths.

So they did what seemed sensible/wise/cautious to attempt to ameliorate the situation, until they found out what the police had to say etc. Which took about a year.

I don't think anyone - especially not the managers who didn't work on the unit - thought that a serial killer would be likely. So of course they took other measures before the investigation was complete.

**When I say anyone, it's clear that the consultants suspected LL was at best dangerously incompetent & at worse deliberately harming babies.

@cadburyegg"A plumber testified at the trial that sewage had backed up the sinks."
But the babies did not die from a bacterial infection