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…

Do people really think that Lucy Letby would have taken tubes out maliciously and then photographed her crime and sent the evidence to the parents?

Is this really easier to believe than nurse does nursing task?

When I was doing my history degree, our tutor showed us an image of freedom concentration camp survivors.

He pointed out how thin they were. How dejected and flat they seemed, in spite of their rescue. How they seemed to huddle together away from the photographer, as if worried they'd been caught by someone worse.

Except he was lying. It was a photo of captured SS soldiers. They looked thin to our eyes, but they weren't actually starved. They were dejected because of capture and they distrusted their captors who were Allied soldiers.

A documentary and a trial are both other ways of people calling your attention to certain facts and hoping you'll agree with their framing of them.

I don't know anywhere near enough about the LL case to proclaim either way.

And are staff allowed to photograph sick babies without consent of the parents?

The behaviour @Bollihobs described

In 2015-16? Probably allowed to photograph,yes. The nurses kept a camera on the ward. There is also nothing here to suggest that the parents hadn't consented to their child being photographed. They didn't object - they kept the photo on display for years.

What's obsessive about that behaviour?

does anyone wonder what the parents think now? I wonder if anyone has doubts.

the alternative to LL being innocent is that their babies weren’t cared for well enough and the NHS has not only covered it up but blamed a scapegoat to the extent of dragging them through one of the most high profile serial killer cases in British history, needlessly. It’s trauma on top of trauma.

The baby in the story was born in 2014, more than a decade ago, and times have changed somewhat.

The parents certainly didn’t think the taking of the photo was a concern at the time, only in retrospect.

And in any case I think we’ve now established that “nurse cleans baby’s face and changes oxygen tubing” isn’t malpractice?

People rarely acknowledge when you have shown them their point is inaccurate, in this case. They switch tack. Because if you believe everything Lucy Letby did was evil, things like "hugging her cat", "asking after a baby's health", "filling in an incident report form" all become evidence that she was a murderer.

There is quite a good article about this case in the Verdict, QUB's student law society journal. The author is particularly interested in how the media shape public reactions to a killer / carer on trial:

The Media’s Interest in the Letby Case

The press has long taken a particular interest in criminal trials because they combine conflict and moral judgement, both of which can be easily translated into compelling narratives for a mass audience. The Letby trial was significantly potent because it involved a nurse, a figure entrusted with a duty of care to society’s most vulnerable. The press used her role and the vulnerability of the babies to create a narrative which can be understood through the moral panic theory. This involves a person being framed as a devil, symbolising broader societal fears. The press’ portrayal of Letby closely resembles the narrative structure commonly found in popular villain dramas. Plots feature a person occupying normal society who is then revealed to be dangerous. The emotional force does not arise solely from the crime itself but from the betrayal of trust. Cohen’s theory of moral panic explains how this structure often migrates from fiction to real world reporting. Once a defendant is cast in this role, individual items of evidence are no longer assessed in isolation but are interpreted through the overarching story of hidden evil.

In Letby’s case, the media repeatedly emphasised her identity as a neonatal nurse, a role usually associated with nurture and protection, thereby amplifying the emotional impact of the allegations against her and transforming the case from a legal dispute into a trial of betrayal. This kind of framing risks encouraging jurors and the public to question their character rather than the evidence shown, undermining the core presumption of innocence that is enshrined in criminal law.

https://www.theverdictonline.org/post/trial-by-media-moral-panic-medical-evidence-and-fair-trial-rights-in-the-lucy-letby-case

We are seeing a lot of that in this case. People think they are seeing clues about murder because they are used to fictions about somebody presenting as normal but with incidents giving them away. Tabloids and tabloid-style podcasts stoke these beliefs by sensationalising every crumb of information they get. So people describe things that we all know are perfectly normal, but they have become convinced they are part of a bigger story about an evil supervillain undercover.

Yes, indeed.

For the mother in the news story we’re just talking about, her memories of her child’s early days are tainted by the stories she’s been told.

I have no idea if LL is guilty or innocent, but discussing the theory of staying close to the crimes, yes it absolutely does happen. It is thought they get a thrill from a sort of god like control.

One of the most prominent theories is the desire for a psychological high. They create the crisis. By causing a baby to collapse, she could have created high-stakes medical emergency where she could be seen "fighting" to save them.

Prosecutors argued she enjoyed the "excitement" of the resuscitation attempts. She was often noted to be present and unusually calm or even "excited" during these life-or-death moments. This could of course have been an uncomfortable reaction in the case of LL, a nurse struggling with the deaths, and feeling torn up that she could not infact save the babies.

Digital "Stalking" of Victims' families, while some killers return to a physical location, Letby "visited" her victims through social media. Evidence showed she searched for the parents of her victims on Facebook dozens of times, including on anniversaries the infants' deaths or on Christmas Day for example. This allowed her to witness the ongoing grief of the families from a distance, sustaining the "high" or sense of power she felt during the crimes long after the events occurred. This could again be linked to a mental health struggle in LL, and a feeling of letting the families down.

She injected herself into the grief, and didn’t just distance herself after a death; she often stayed intimately involved.

Some may view LL as a "supportive, grieving nurse" while being the actual cause of the tragedy. It provides a unique power trip for some serial killers, being the person the family leans on for comfort while being the one who destroyed them.

Again, no idea if LL is guilty or innocent, the acts may have stemmed from a misguided attempt to comfort, and mental health struggles with being around such sick babies, and feeling guilt at being unable to save the babies.

However that all being said, the idea that murderers always distance themselves from their crimes is absolutely untrue.

That wasn't a question about Lucy Letby staying close to her crimes. She worked in the neonatal unit, so she was always going to be close to whatever happened there.

It was a question about whether she would photograph evidence that she had done something she wasn't meant to do and send it to the parents, and whether it's not much more likely that she undertook routine care as part of her job.

Sometimes the hoofbeats really aren't six-legged purple zebras.

But I agree with your more general point her proximity to and interest in the families tells us nothing about her possible guilt or innocence, definitely.

It is not so much that I would want people to feel convinced about Lucy Letby's innocence or that she was a good nurse, @ShowmetheMapletree

It is that I think it's really unhealthy that people don't think a bit before deciding that some trivial incident is somehow proof of evil. By all means ask the question - is this normal. But once they are told, yes, pretty normal, people keep kicking and twisting and digging, determined that things must be sinister.

And meanwhile, no questions about anyone else engaged in these behaviours. Only the designated supervillain.

It is absolutely undoubtedly necessary of course, for removal and cleaning of the equipment. It is however unnecessary to take the photograph. Whether it was allowed or not, consent should have been obtained imho from the parents. Obviously it is an unimaginably distressing situation, and even with the best intentions, she wasn't to know how the parents could react to this, or whether it would cause them further upset. I know it would have caused me a lot of distress had this been done with my baby, and the hospital would have heard about it.
If she is innocent, it may have been a way to surprise a distressed set of parents in an attempt to cheer them up. Maybe a case of, baby is doing better, etc. I don't know if LL is in the photo as well though, which I find odd if she was.You are however extremely vulnerable when going through something like that, so it is a risky move.

But if the ward had a camera for such things, and the parents were not distressed, your 2026 view of an event that didn’t happen to you in 2014 isn’t really pertinent. It was normal for Chester, in those days.

And we all know fine well that when you posted this you were working on the assumption that this was an inappropriate extubation and evidence of malfeasance, as did the journalist who published the article in 2023.

We have no information on whether the parents gave consent for photographs, or on what hospital policies were. So this is just speculative stacking of the deck against Lucy Letby.

There was certainly no mention of her being in the photo, and photographing a child does not put their health at risk.

It's a complete non story - irrelevant to the question of whether she is guilty of anything or not.

The parents said they were surprised by it, so it didn't sound like consent, but maybe you're right. I wasn't there, so who knows.
It is just as relevant I suppose in the theory of serial killers keeping themselves closer to the crime than necessary, and an alternative perspective to your "Do people really think that Lucy Letby would have taken tubes out maliciously and then photographed her crime and sent the evidence to the parents?"

🤷🏻‍♀️

Keeping close to the crime is not the same as advertising the crime and handing over evidence of it, though.

Anyway, I think we have more than enough information at this point to say that there was no crime here. Posting evidence of a nurse performing nursing duties as evidence of guilt or dysfunction is just absurd.

What crime, though?

does anyone wonder what the parents think now? I wonder if anyone has doubts

They've been living in a different world to us. We can dip in and out of this case and keep an impartiality as we have no personal investment. I imagine if you've believed for years that your child was murdered it'd be hard to come back from that in many ways.

Just think what they've been through. They had to grieve their child dying from natural causes. Then some time later when they were hopefully doing better the police come into their living room and drop this bomb on them that their child was in fact murdered. It restarts the grieving again, only this time it's much worse. They're in contact with the police about the case. Then they're haunted as they recall interactions with Lucy. They speak to their partner, to other parents and discuss Lucy. Things that they hadn't thought of in years start to become sinister. Memories aren't perfect and can change with influence. So maybe a year after this they have these memories they're convinced are real of her being far more sinister than they once remembered her to be. Then to go through the trial and get the guilty verdict must have felt some sense of justice and relief.

Now a decade after the babies died, to contemplate that she's innocent, it's a lot to expect from them. Some have previously said she's evil and that further examination of the cases is disrespectful. Many have also said it's caused them PTSD and depression. I'm not aware of any who have doubted it.

If they were to change their mind, with it comes the realisation that you've been put through all this hurt and emotional turmoil for no good reason. That would be hard to take.

I feel for them and don't think people should expect anything of them. I was recently listening to a podcast and the host said a few times "If I were the parents I'd..." which I found annoying as you've no idea what you'd actually be like in that situation.

If all of them believe she's guilty it still shouldn't affect the outcome for Lucy as we can't keep her in prison based on their feelings.

We are seeing a lot of that in this case. People think they are seeing clues about murder because they are used to fictions about somebody presenting as normal but with incidents giving them away. Tabloids and tabloid-style podcasts stoke these beliefs by sensationalising every crumb of information they get. So people describe things that we all know are perfectly normal, but they have become convinced they are part of a bigger story about an evil supervillain undercover.

This is such an important point.

I don't have a problem with people thinking she did or didn't do it, but the level of Dunning Kruger in discussions about this is off the charts. It's so important to spell out to people when they're bullshitting. Human brains like patterns, it's how we've got as far as we have. There's a reason these type of programmes are so popular. But it deludes people into thinking they know things they don't.

I think this partly what keeps me invested in the outcome of this case.

The absolute horrors that can be wraught by systems on people caught up in them. The realisation that while no system can be perfect, due to its very nature, the way they are run can be actively, and occasionally maliciously used to demonstrate power.

The institutional gas-lighting, sensationalised by the media hoopla of the modern world with much further reach than in the past. The desensitisation to the fact that these are people's lives, and the impact of an abusive system has far reaching, long term consequences, that the current zeitgeist asks us to suck up or shrug off depending on your role in the "drama" without proper consideration of the devastating harm that can be caused.

People are routinely ignored, vilified, othered and discarded in favour of the next spectacle. These sorts of cases leave people having to contain an elephant in a room that takes up their living space if the issues are not addressed honestly and humbly by institutions that have failed.

Often those of us questioning the safety of this conviction are attacked for "not caring" about the babies, or their parents. I think many of us do care very deeply, some through inherent decency, some through lived experience that gives us an inkling of the trauma inflicted when truth becomes the casualty in an adversarial system, and when one's perception is actively manipulated to suit someone else's desired narrative. Loss of the highest magnitude has been compounded by this case. PTSD is an absolutely predictable result, along with loss of faith or trust in institutions where we believe we are "safe" - until it's demonstrated we are not.

This is why the medical evidence is crucial, and the circumstantial needs a far more circumspect and rational approach.

When my son was in PICU, he had 'cares' every 4 hours which included cleaning his mouth and eyes. They would also use that time to make any changes to his NG tube or ventilator if necessary.

Of course, we don't know if she randomly removed it or if it needed to be changed and that is when she took the picture.

Oh I absolutely don’t expect anything of them. Just genuinely curious as to whether any of them have doubts. They’re so close to the case, knew Letby and spent time at the hospital. I don’t expect anything of them, of course. Just wondering about them and I feel empathy for them because either option — Lucy’s innocence or guilt — is absolutely awful.

But once they are told, yes, pretty normal, people keep kicking and twisting and digging, determined that things must be sinister.

It's because you don't have the official last word. You act like you're some sort of authority on everything. People are allowed to think she shouldn't have removed those tubes and took that photo. The parents themselves think that and we should respect their view. They had another baby since then and realised what she did never should've happened. And I see you completely avoided talking about the other incidents where the baby had something unusual happen just in her care or when she was about to hand over. I mean how many times does this need to happen before you allow your mind to think "hmm just maybe she WAS doing something?" None of these things were happening to other nurses.

I respect other people's rights to have views, but we need to look at the information objectively and without selection bias. It's important to be aware that we have absolutely no sense of how many incidents happened at Chester, or any other hospital, which parents could have found suspicious or noteworthy if they had later found the nurse had been accused of murder. These events weren't suspicious in themselves. They're being viewed years later through the filter of "that nurse could have been a murderer". I am sure that if another nurse had been accused, we'd have another set of stories.