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 take your point but she was also generally reticent during the trial. She hasn’t said much at all about any of this, has she? I think that, right from the beginning, her tactic was the old ‘never complain never explain’ move. Didn’t want to further incriminate herself.

I think this was the whole approach of the defence actually. It backfired, as it looked as if she had nothing to defend herself with and it convinced me at the time she was guilty.

I think you have to consider though how anything she said could be used against her. If she and another person remembered things differently, she was the liar. If two other people remembered things differently from each other, no big deal. If she referred to something in her notes that didn't match the prosecution story, she was accused of making things up.

Add to that that she was heavily medicated, unable to eat before leaving her prison call in the morning because of travel sickness, diagnosed with PTSD and - obviously - facing extremely aggressive questioning based on what must have seemed like a nightmare fantasy is she was innocent.

She gave quite a lot of information in examination and cross examination, if you read it, but it's not surprising she seemed overwhelmed or defeated at other points.

Her recall of detail was similar to other witnesses' - patchy and cautious. That seems natural six and seven years after the events.

Yes, indeed,

I have been really surprised throughout it all at both how many people seem to think it’s as simple as ‘she said she did it, so she did’ and how few people seem to understand how anti depressants work.

Point is she wasn't rushed and the trackie was appropriate. They would have let her change if it was a nightie. Like they did in Hereford.

I would genuinely say that was rushed even if we say for arguments sake she’s guilty as sin.

I just don't believe we have the information to make that judgement. We (and certainly she) can't know what would have been allowed if she asked, especially since the policewoman went on to say, nothing but the shoes can be touched, moved etc. And a tracksuit is more or less appropriate for a woman to wear outside the house of course depending what's under it.

As Lucy Letby said to Johnson, it was all rushed, and that is certainly how that dialogue reads. Perhaps, if they don't want these trivialities blown up into accusations, the police should give a clear statement of what you are entitled to do when you are arrested? Because I'm not seeing a discussion, or permission to get dressed in that exchange, even if Lucy Letby had that right.

Posting again the link about baby D / Zoe in case people haven’t read it. The baby she said she couldn’t remember.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-63497920

Another example of many of her lying.

None of that proves she would remember the child 3 years later though. She was sad, shocked and numb after the child died, and texted friends etc. She was never in charge of that child's care though.

She was in charge of another child in that small nursery room (four cots), so if it was her that the mother saw hovering with a clipboard, she was presumably monitoring her charge. I don't know why she'd be criticised for that.

I don't know what it is in this link that you are saying proves she was lying.

I’ve just read that article.

I really am not seeing what you are seeing. I am seeing a very detailed description of a very traumatic birth and baby who was subsequently very unwell, and a hospital that didn’t listen.

I am seeing a mention of LL ‘standing over the baby’ which to be honest is hardly remarkable, given she was a nurse at the time.

And expressions of sadness in a text exchange.

The ‘lying’ that she didn’t remember the baby - I’ve no idea how you’d prove that one way or another.

I mean she was able to in Hereford. Don't see why she wouldn't have been in Cheshire. Fact is it was a tracksuit. No matter what was underneath.

Even Amanda Knox states it was all very polite British.

I’m saying that at that particular time in the history of the unit, that death of a baby who’d has a traumatic birth would have been memorable years afterwards for pretty much every nurse, is my assumption. Particularly one where you feel compelled to message your colleagues about it, when you’re not working. And go onto search for the baby’s mum on Facebook, hours after. Of course I can’t prove she’s lying, that’s irrelevant.

We are just speculating though - and I think the onus is on police to be clear in these circumstances. No matter how polite they are, they arrest people at dawn precisely because that's when our defences are down. And you probably notice you are being arrested and taken into custody much more urgently than whether police are polite or not.

Why is that your assumption?

It's your assumption, but common sense assumptions about memories, especially around traumatic events, aren't accurate.

If you can’t work that out from my post and the BBC article then I can’t help you.

Also she’s lied before about aspects of the case, the most risible being the ‘I don’t know what go commando means’.

Not sure how this relates to the point she wasn't taken away in her Pajamas.

Do you work in that particular unit?

Because honestly, I think that unless you do, you can’t possibly definitively say what you do and don’t remember.

I don’t think anyone is saying that they think LL literally had amnesia and remembered nothing about the baby in question, but what does happen is that memories become confused and merge with other memories; you remember something happening with one baby that actually happened to another baby, you get dates mixed up, events confused and so on.

I am a teacher. I have two year 8 classes; since I’m part time, I share them both with other teachers, ‘Mrs Jones’ and ‘Mr Smith.’ I am constantly having to double check which class I share with Mrs Jones and which class I share with Mr Smith.

To put it another way, if someone said to me ‘you teach class 8b4 don’t you?’ I’d have to double check. If someone said ‘that class with George Williams and Olivia Davis are yours, aren’t they?’ I’d say yes straightaway.

Detail and what we remember and in what way do tend to be a strange one. I can just imagine myself, cross examined by the police.

you taught 8b4 in 2026, didn’t you?
umm … I can’t remember
you don’t remember George Williams?
oh … I think I do remember him actually

<discussion online>

’she is clearly a liar!’

Regarding her shit defence strategy, does anyone know why none of her friends testified on her behalf? I can’t find anything about it online.

Neither the post nor the BBC article tell us the reasons why you make that assumption. Nor does your second paragraph here.

They don't explain what you think your qualifications are, whether you have any experience of neonatal nursing either in that unit or elsewhere, or knowledge about how the human memory works.

None of which is to say you aren't entitled to bullshit in the absence of any idea what you're talking about, of course. That's your right. But a BBC article isn't going to tell us whether that's what you're doing or not.

There’s quite a lot of discussion about it - this sort of adds to the above point. I don’t for a moment think you’re lying but if someone wanted to they could claim that.

The other nurses were advised against it, I believe. And certainly LLs story is a chilling warning to anyone who wants to bring a grievance in the NHS, isn’t it?

Why should she know what going commando means? She wouldn't be the first to laugh along with a risque joke she didn't get.

Or she didn't want to discuss underwear and her sex life with Nick Johnson in front of the world's media. I might lie in that scenario myself.

This is a long thread and I’ve been on a few Letby ones over the past couple of months, can’t remember every detail of this hugely complex case.

Thanks, I can understand why the nurses didn’t testify, although she had some friends who weren’t nurses. I always wondered why no ex-boyfriends testified, maybe she’d never had any.

If you put on a tracksuit over a nightie to answer the door, chances are you haven't removed the nightie to put on a bra, or taken the time to change your underwear. So when the policewoman arresting you says that what you are wearing is probably fine and hustles you along, saying you can't touch or take more than your shoes, I think a lot of women would indeed perceive that as being taken to the police station in their nightie
You could argue the semantics but I really don't think we have proof of a lie here.

We do have proof she was not carted away in her pajamas.