To think Lucy Letby could’ve done more to help herself if she really wasn’t guilty?

[Seymorbutts]

Just watched the new Lucy Letby documentary on Netflix. I think there’s one of C4 too, don’t know if it’s the same one? I’m leaning slightly more towards that she did it, but only about 60% sure she did it. 40% sure she didn’t do it. On this doc there’s a lot of footage of all her arrests and police interviews. What strikes me as odd IF she’s innocent, is how little she protests her innocence, how calm & composed she is. It’s the same during her arrests. I understand she must’ve been in shock when she was arrested so that could explain it. But she was interviewed for hours. Not once did she say “I didn’t do this” (unless directly asked, which she just answered with “no”) “I’m innocent”, “I could never kill a baby”. Nothing like that. Very little crying too. I know she’s supposedly very quiet and reserved and I’m sure was very scared, but I don’t think personality can account for a total lack of defending herself (or maybe she was just following the advice given by her lawyer). But still, if it was me I’d be absolutely raging, and protesting my innocence at every opportunity and giving clear, detailed reasons why I couldn’t have done it when they put it to me that I did. Or maybe she did do it and she’s a psychopath and unable to show remorse, which could explain her lack of any kind of emotion at all 🤷‍♀️ I really don’t know. If she is innocent though, I feel like the way she behaved made her look guilty. Interested to hear if people think she did it or not and why/why not…

I haven’t watched the documentaries.

I know however, that in her shoes I would have been hysterical. And I think most people would be. Even if guilty, but especially if innocent.

Innocent - you would be shocked, horrified, that someone was saying this horrendous stuff about you. You’d be in a panic about what this meant for your life and your career.

The truth is that none of us knows how we would respond in such a pressured and stressful situation. There have been many people wrongly suspected or accused of murder based on affect. Look at Amanda Knox for instance. People react differently and often unpredictably

Some people do freeze/shut down when stressed. That in itself doesn’t mean she’s guilty (though I think she is)

I'm sure you don't mean it this way, but this whole line of thinking - "this isn't a normal way to behave after X situation, so she must be guilty/lying" - is one that is very commonly used against women to defend rapists and perpetrators of domestic violence.

"She couldn't have been raped/abused - look how she's talking/texting with the alleged perpetrator, look how she went back to him", etc etc.

Trauma affects people in very different ways, so there are all sorts of "odd" behaviours that might be plausible for her.

From the diary notes etc, she appeared to be pretty mentally unwell at least, so also not a time when she'd have been most rational and with it.

I have no idea whether she did it or not, but I'm not going to read into her demeanour in an exceptional situation that is unimaginable to all of us. That kind of pseudo-psychology only ever leads to bad places and miscarriages of justice.

And as to your last point - psychopaths may not feel remorse, but they are very good at acting in ways that serve them, so lying and pretending remorse in a situation where it would clearly be appropriate would have been more "normal" for a psychopath. I suspect shock, trauma and disbelief are more likely for why she didn't defend herself - those are likely to have been strong emotions that were very present for her whether she did it or not - either at the false accusation or at the knowledge she'd been caught.

I thought exactly the same, I couldn't understand why she didn't protest or exclaim how she was innocent and could never do something like that. She just went along with it, she did look terrified , but she just seemed resigned to it. They seemed to go to her house 3 times to arrest her and each time she just accepted it reluctantly and barely said anything.

Fight, flight, freeze, fawn, flop

Women have reacted in one of these ways to threatening situations since records began. I'm sure they've always been condemned for it too.

You don't really know how you would act.

And you don't know how she reacted in the seven years between her first accusations and the trial. You're only seeing less than an hour's worth of footage picked for a documentary

If she was guilty, surely there was nothing stopping her from shouting about being innocent, anyway?

I feel like the way she behaved made her look guilty

Your feelings are wrong. There is no such thing as guilty vs innocent behaviour. The whole body language, demeanour stuff is proven to be as scientific as phrenology was in predicting who’s the murderer. (Which is to say completely unreliable and useless).

She was taking antidepressants wasn't she? They can cause flattened affect which might explain unemotional responses. (Have not watched doc though.)

@Seymorbutts I really hope you're never on a jury

And how would we know how we'd react to this? It's so simplistic to say she didn't react in the right way.

If she did protest her innocence, there’d be calls of “the lady doth protest too much”.

I think people expect people to react as if they are in a TV drama. Hysterics and resisting arrest, impassioned arguments, scathibg responses under questioning.
Maybe some do.

But I suspect that the majority of people particularly innocent ones, go quietly because we have been brought up to respect the legal process and to assume that it will find the truth and reach a correct verdict. I would be thinking,its fine, I didnt do it, this will all be sorted out.

Interogation, I imagine is terrfiying and wears you down inducing passivity and helplessness. We have also only seen short cherry picked segments of hours of interview

I saw an interesting perspective on this from a healthcare professional today on Reddit, where there is a long thread on the subject (https://www.reddit.com/r/LucyLetbyTrials/comments/1r114xb/if_letby_is_innocent_why_does_she_never_insist/)

So I think one of the more significant oversights by the police was not appreciating the sheer enormity of everything that had happened to her prior to her first arrest, as well as the fact that with suspected health care killers, a completely different set of rules apply.

Mere hours before the start of a night shift, she was called and asked not to come in to work, after which she never returned to clinical duties. That’s how her removal was initiated, very abruptly. It is exceptionally unusual to be removed from clinical duties like that, exceptionally unusual to be removed from clinical duties at all. Normally any disciplinary action puts the absolute fear of god into healthcare workers. But to be removed from work because some of your colleagues think you may (in whatever way) be responsible for the deaths of babies you’ve care for, would be an unimaginably hellish experience.

She’d been deep into this kafkaesque nightmare for two solid years before the police came knocking. But the thing is, I don’t think she was ever sure that she hadn’t done something wrong, that’s a very, very normal response for a healthcare worker. That’s the fundamental difference between letby and any regular murder suspect, she very much had been involved in the deaths of these babies (well, the evidence that she was involved prior to the cardiac arrest for two of the infants is dubious), as had many others on the unit. Unlike a regular innocent suspect, she can’t completely distance herself from these deaths. An open mind that maybe she did do something wrong, after all, the establishment certainly seems so think so, is entirely normal.

I’ve attended coroners court on only one occasion. I was very junior, and I was very nervous, struggling sometimes to answer straightforward questions, nothing accusatory, the coroner was very congenial. If he’d become more pointed I would probably have crumbled, even though I really hadn’t done anything wrong, at the time I wasn’t so sure of that.

This is all relevant, as I think the police failed to recognise what they were dealing with, and we saw that in the documentary. A look of shame, or dejection, speaking in hushed tones, none of it is suggestive of guilt in the same way that it might in regular murder cases.

The prosecution barrister even went after her about texts she sent that she was having a mini meltdown after being told to not come into work at short notice. Highly highly unusual practice, and I think many of us would freak out if the same thing happened.

I was arrested a long time ago on false charges. I subconsciously went into self preservation mode and shut down. Being locked up in a cell was incredibly intimidating and so outside of anything I had ever experienced. I didn't scream or cry or protest my innocence. I was very passive and when questioned I answered calmly. I could barely breathe and keeping myself calm was my only coping mechanism, so I could focus on the questions and properly think through my answers. I knew what was at stake if I didn't answer with clarity. It wasn't until I was released that I broke down.

Lindy Chamberlain was falsely convicted and incarcerated for the murder of her baby Azaria. The famous " a dingos got my baby "line ( btw Meryl Streep had the worst attempt at an Australian accent ever).
She had a flat affect, didn't cry and scream and was judged for it. It seems very similar behaviour. She was released after a short time and pardoned and received compensation.

@Paddington1234 She was released after a short time and pardoned and received compensation

Was over 3 years, not sure she would agree it’s a ‘short time’, being away from her usual life including her other children (2 or 3 others from memory).

Yes, and Joanne Lees was suspected of murder for seeming calm and controlled too

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2007/jan/11/penal.australia

She was arrested multiple times for heinous crimes, was heavily medicated, and acting according to legal instruction which almost always is “do not give detailed explanations because the more you talk, the more you give them rope to hang you with” even if you’ve done nothing wrong or are just a witness during cross examination. Nobody knows how they’d acting in those circumstances, and unless you’ve watched all of the hours and hours of unedited footage of her arrests and interviews, you barely know how she reacted either. Cherry picked clips are not the whole picture.

How would “I could never do that to a baby” help exactly? The police aren’t exactly going to say “oh, our mistake. Off you pop then” are they. Raging just comes across as combative and obstructive and people don’t generally cry when they’re in shock or in fight /flight/freeze.

It’s terrifying to think this is how some people reach conclusions, and then go on to serve on juries.

Didn’t we learn anything after Amanda Knox judging behaviour? I would be protesting, but imagine my 18yrs old DD would shut right down and say nothing. Just depends on personality.

Hee defence seems to be that some babies died while she wasn’t on shift … but sadly some babies do die, but the amount that died while she was there is overwhelming!

I’m assuming this is the edit plus I expect her solicitor has advised her

If you know you didn’t do it, maybe you honestly can’t image people p
believing you did?! I’m only guessing of course, hence calm demeanour. Although I thought she looked dazed and later on really exhausted, I guess there are only so many tears you can cry etc

This whole “she didn’t show emotions” thing is rubbish…

Her former boss - the head of nursing at the unit - believes she is innocent and said she would cry hysterically in her arms after doctors first started pointing the finger of blame: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/feb/16/lucy-letby-former-head-nursing-countess-of-chester

As other commentators have pointed out, lots of people (including journalists like Judith Moritz) totally overlooked the trauma of what she had been through prior to her first arrest. (And also that she will have been heavily medicated by the time of the trial!!)

OP when my now 25 year old DS was a child
he had a serious an accident incvolving a full kettle of boiling water. He was very badly scalded.

His scream haunts me to this day. The skin on his arms and hand was hanging.

I got him in the bath and ran cold water and called an ambulance. To my own ears, I sounded calm and detached. Very matter of fact. That's all I remember of that bit up to the moment the First Responders arrived.

Now, you would have thought I would have been crying or in tears. Hysterical even. But I wasn't. I couldn't summon a single visible emotion that demonstrated either concern or distress. I mean I couldn't even respond to my own traumatised crying son with any soothing emotion. I behaved totally detached. My facial expression felt set in stone. My voice was formal and flat. It was like I didn't give a shit about my own son's obvious pain and trauma.

In the back of my mind I remember thinking that they might think I am a neglectful parent or an abusive one because I am not showing appropriate emotions and that I ought to show some feeling so they can see I care. I care about my son. I tried to summon something. But I couldn't for the life of me. I got in the ambulance and sat there like a cold statue. I couldn't even hold my son's hand.

Then I felt a squeeze on my shoulder and it was the First Responder. She gave me a look of sympathy and said 'he's going to be alright, it's worse than it looks and he's not the only child I've attended to this week'. I've never forgotten her for her kindness and perception 20 years later. Yet I was mute and didn't even acknowledge her kindness at the time.

Got to the hospital was (rightly) quizzed by nurses and doctors repeatedly about what happened. All I had was a flat tone, flat expression, flat, just flat, like don't give a shit flat. Seemed totally divorced from my child. I truly couldn't muster any rousing emotion. Social services could have been called and taken my son away temporarily under suspicion of neglect and I wouldn't have been able to demonstrate any appropriate caring or reactionary mannerisms.

Thank god the staff probably realised this and no one concluded that I must of intentionally harmed my child (well there was one nurse who did get frustrated at my seeming casual 'not bothered' stance and got angry and said 'look how bad it is mum!!' as if I wasn't fully aware of it, and I couldn't even reply to her, either).

I was in shock. Deep internal shock. You have fight, flight, and freeze.

I was in freeze.

It took me three days before I cried about it.

If the police had come to my house to arrest me for the crime of murder, I would have likely been the same as Lucy. Flat, unable to summon emotion, looking like I don't give a fuck about my innocence or the babies for that matter. But completely shut down with shock on the inside.

You cannot tell if someone is wholly guilty or innocent of a crime by their level of perceived emotion.