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…

Seems more normal for women to behave 'wrong' in these situations than right.
Lindy Chamberlain, Amanda Knox, now Lucy Letby.
On the thread about the Australian boy swimming 4km there were loads of comments about his mother acting 'wrong' in the TV interviews.

The documentary showed only a few excerpts from hours and hours of interviews. She could well have denied involvement, protested her innocence, cried etc and they just didn't show it? She will also have been advised by her solicitor to say as little as possible. I really wouldn't judge her guilt or innocence on this.

Amanda Knox and Lindy Chamberlain co-operated with the police and didn’t lie during their interviews. I get the point people are making but there are differences in how those two wrongly convicted women dealt with things and what Letby did or didn’t say. Letby also lied during her trial.

I’ve had several experiences where people didn’t believe I was feeling or experiencing what I was because my demeanour didn’t seem to fit. Notable two labours where I got turned away because I wasn’t carrying on about it! I mean you’d think they’d know that not every labouring woman wails and makes loads of noise. At work I told a manager I’d found a particular time period very stressful (and it really was, I was having nightmares/physical manifestations of stress etc) and he just said “oh, you didn’t seem stressed.” I guess because I wasn’t crying and taking time off? Famously I cut my hand open once and when I looked at the huge gash flapping open on my palm I said very calmly “oh dear. I think I need to do something about this” and didn’t bat an eyelid the whole time we were cleaning it, going to minor injuries and so on. But I cry at adverts so am not unemotional! I just get very calm in an emergency situation, so can totally see myself being like LL.

I will also say the legal system is innocent until proven guilty - the burden should not be on the accused to prove themselves innocent by acting correctly or saying the right things! The “truth” is often highly subjective (as this case shows) and what is interpreted as a lie by someone else might be meant as the truth by the person saying it (anyone who’s even spoken to a teenager knows that…”did you leave your plate in the kitchen?” “No!” “well what are these doing there?” “that’s a BOWL” etc)

You don't know how you'd react in that situation unless you've experienced it.

When I got my cancer diagnosis my emotions immediately turned off completely. I just responded with 'ok' as if they'd told me the time. I stayed that way all the way through. It's only now I'm out the other side that I'm crying constantly and the full weight of it all has hit.

I used to work 12 hour shifts days and nights like nurses and I have thought she was probably innocent from the start once I heard the main evidence was she was there at all the deaths. I have since discovered that isn’t even true as the police only investigated deaths where she was working and ignored other deaths where she wasn’t.

When the consultants first came to the police and said she is always working when these deaths happen the answer should have been so? Does she work overtime? does she work when they are understaffed more? The police never investigated everyone on the unit not even the consultants as far as I can see. They just went along with the consultants.

As to Letby’s reaction I just take it as someone completely beaten down by it all. Experts on statistics can explain it better than I can but once I understood the shift pattern shown at court could have been produced for every nurse and consultant working there with the method used and it wasn’t even the actual shift pattern I was thinking something has gone seriously wrong here.

Terrifying to know that half the posters on this thread would’ve considered her guilty because she didn’t cry enough for their liking!

No one knows how they would behave in this situation. No one.

I thought the same. I appreciate she was probably in shock but there was a complete lack of any emotion, anger, disbelief - any reaction at all really. She had the presence of mind to say an emotional goodbye to her cat though!

I was surprised when she said she couldn't recall the events surrounding baby 'Zoe'. I work in an entirely desk-based paper pushing job, but the cases which go badly are etched in my memory. I cant believe for a minute you wouldn't recall something as horrendous as a baby dying.

Not quite the same but I’ve had a few incidents where my children have been very very unwell. I wasn’t crying when I was told my son had a dangerous heart condition and needed surgery immediately. I basically cry at adverts so for me to be kind of matter of fact about that was an odd reaction. Not everyone’s reactions are going to be the same.

I’d be absolutely terrified if I was arrested and I’ve no idea how I’d react.

@BlossomingSlowly That's very similar to how I reacted when I was falsely accused of something. When I look back, I'm amazed at how calm and quiet I was and can't understand why I didn't argue and protest or scream and cry. We never know how we'll react until we're in that situation.

Considering the premise of this thread is ao daft, some of the replies are refreshingly sensible.

oppingPavlova · Today 01:07
* She was released after a short time and pardoned and received compensation*
That can't be right! Pardoned means you did it, but you are relieved of some or all of the punishment. She wouldn't be compensated!! Do you mean exonerated?

But she worked in a hospital department where babies did die because of how unwell they were. It may be that doctors / nurses in NICU don’t remember every single death?

She’s completely dissociated. It’s a sort of freeze response and you can’t predict how people will react under extreme stress.

I remember Diana's funeral and some idiot in the crowd shouting out to William and Harry that they should be crying. Nobody knows what someone else is feeling and everybody expresses their feelings in different ways. It sometimes seems we haven't progressed much since the days when they judged someone's character from the shape of their head.

You're probably right. I guess if you get too invested in every baby you wouldn't be able to do the job.

Yep.

I watched my then 8 year old son become unresponsive and go into cardiac arrest in hospital. I didn't scream, I didn't cry. Not for the 17 long minutes they worked on him to get him back. I completely shut down emotionally and was in utter shock.

A week later when he was still critically ill in intensive care due to septic shock, I was told that he had cancer and which type they suspected it was. I responded calmly with ''I've heard of that one. I feel like cancer is the least of our worries right now'.

People really need to learn that women can respond to traumatic situations in different ways other than crying hysterically and that it can also be a perfectly normal response to a traumatic situation.

I recently watched a Netflix documentary about a kidnapped girl. The Uncle was suspected of kidnapping her as he acted weirdly infront of the press and failed a polygraph test. He explained that he had been awake since the girl went missing days before looking for her. When I go through periods of sleep deprivation with my DS I sometimes forget words, struggle to hold a conversation, I don't want to be around people, I feel overwhelmed easily. We cannot predict how we react under intense stress/sleep deprivation/fear.

Relying on body language to decide on a somebody's guilt is so dangerous! It scares me how there is a belief she is guilty because she behaved in a certain way. Decide on her innocence/guilt by other factors. Her body language and demeanour really doesn't seem to me out of the ordinary at all with what she went through.

Just because she didn't behave like what others would have done doesn't make her guilty. It's shocking to me that anyone can be so sure she is guilty by how she presented herself.

Exactly.

My son was in PICU for 7 weeks and they remember him well but only because he survived against all of the odds. I'm not sure they would've otherwise as sadly, when you work with some of the most complex and critically ill children and babies, death is a big part of your job and it isn't unusual.

Yeah I feel like I would be screaming, crying, yelling out reasons why I couldn't have done it. Saying it's a disgrace you think this about me. I'd probably say some angry words about the state of the hospital. Like WTF is going on?!

But I guess she was suspended from that ward and had been going through this accusation through the hospital before the actual arrest. So by that time she was all protested out?!

I don't know. But you're right it seems like an unusual reaction from anyone, especially If innocent. Even if guilty you'd think you'd fake those emotions of shock and indignity, to try and look less guilty? So maybe she just cannot express emotions easily. But that doesn't mean she definitely did it.

I don’t think anyone can say how they’d react as people do react so differently under extreme pressure. I am very good in a crisis for example, the adrenaline spikes and I have a clarity of thought that is reliable. My husband on the other hand (who normally deals with a lot of stress at work) is bloody useless. I have always said to my children, if anything disastrous ever happens listen to me and not him. But, I also seem to react weirdly when I’m upset and laugh inappropriately. One of my children does the same as well.

People react differently. The end