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…

Possibility? No. You could have a serial killer in a hospital with a perfectly average death rate; even a below average death rate.

Glad we agree on that.

But you can use statistics to consider whether events are likely to be consistent with natural causes.

If you can't rule out a serial killer based on stats I don't understand the point in using them.

When statistics have been used as part of the case for convicting someone, it is sensible to present evidence that these statistic were flawed. So you need to do an alternative statistical analysis.

You could in theory just send in your new medical evidence and arguments, but why leave other prosecution arguments unchallenged when you can undo them?

Hold on a minute, the consultants were raising concerns, but did it in such a bizarre way that immediate opportunities to conduct forensic post mortems etc was missed. They were so convinced that she was "doing something" yet treated it as a management concern. Brearey had a "drawer of doom" that he never divulged the contents of. So Lucy Letby clearly wasn't the expert manipulator you describe, in fact, wasn't part of her grievance that she was being spoken of in terms of being a serial killer in the canteen?

In what world does a professional with such suspicions fart around letting a suspect keep allegedly killing babies because they're not sure of the protocol? You'd think following yet another "suspicious" death, they might be looking at the medical evidence there and then.

These consultants are just as culpable in the deaths of these babies, be it by allowing an alleged serial killer to keep going, or by medical negligence.

If you can't rule out a serial killer based on stats I don't understand the point in using them.

If you are going to use "this is an unusual number of deaths in these circumstances, someone must be causing them" as a key part of the prosecutions case, this is the type of working you need to show.

If a hospital had an otherwise below base rate death rate, but had a serial killer present, it would be other statistical work that would be needed.

In this case, claiming the hospital had a cluster that needed explaining is completely unevidenced, because this specific work was not done.

You said yesterday that "nothing will convince some people that she did it" and I replied that there is plenty that would but it's completely missing. It's this kind of thing I was referring to.

Expert reports about individual cases for court cases or CCRC applications? No they wouldn't be published or peer reviewed, they're not proposing new science, they're making forensic reports for a court based on their expert opinions with the current science.

The CCRC may well commission independent experts to review, critique and provide opinion etc kind of like their own 'peer review', but it's just for the purpose of the case.

We will see if Lady Thirwall agrees with you.

The problem with the argument that it is distressing and upsetting for the families of the children to see Letby’s conviction questioned is that on that logic she should never have been arrested in the first place.

They lost their baby, or babies in the case of the triplets, and my heart really does go out to them. I have had children, I know how you bond with your child in pregnancy and how keenly you wait for them to appear and you want it to be the best day of your life, not the worst: I honestly can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t have enormous levels of compassion and sympathy with them.

So - if we don’t want to intrude upon their pain and allow them space and time to heal from their grief then the best move would have been not to arrest Letby. And clearly if she had committed these crimes that wouldn’t have been right. The truth is always important and it deserves to come out.

@1975wasthebest I’ve made my point, clearly. Perhaps copy and paste my post in Chat GPT

I agree your point was clear; you think the parents deserve to be believed and that continuing to question LLs guilt is causing them further pain and grief. No one wants that but their pain is not a reason to allow a miscarriage of justice.

If someone killed one of my children, I’m sure I’d want them locked up for life, but the law isn’t (or shouldn’t be) emotional. It can’t be, because conflicting emotions often clash and defy one another.

Sometimes it does seem cold, I don’t know if you’ve lost anyone to violent crime; I have, as it happens, and it can feel somewhat peculiar to say the least because of course for a life, a mum or sister or daughter or son - nothing even comes close to what they’re worth. So having it ‘reduced’ in a sense to X number of years in prison seems cold and seems to devalue that life. But it has to be that way because once emotion comes in justice goes out. And we need justice - actual, real justice, not vigilante action or mob rule or people demanding retribution because of their pain, no matter how real or how palpable that pain is. It has to be detached, emotionless, cold even. The alternative is far worse.

@coffeeandteav good point! All will be revealed on what could've been done to stop her sooner when the Thirlwall inquiry publishes it's findings. Not long to wait now.

Like the mystery of Dr Jayaram and Baby K

2016: attends cotside when child is desaturating

2017: nine months after consultants have raised concerns about Lucy Letby, tells HR he saw her standing by the cotside doing nothing

2023: tells Lucy Letby's first trial he can remember the event to the minute, since he looked at his watch

2024: tells the retrial, after door swipe errors are revealed, that he can't remember what time it happened

2025: 2017 email to fellow consultants emerges saying that Lucy Letby had called him for help. This part of the email had been redacted by the Thirlwall Inquiry.

Odd behaviour indeed.

@plantseeds Thank you for that most recent post. I’m now thinking how hard it will be - maybe impossible - to not let emotion become part of the judicial process should Letby get a retrial. Maybe the jury system should be reassessed, I don’t know.

I'm looking forward to seeing the Thirlwall report too, and hopefully more supporting evidence. Lots of very revealing material has come out of the Inquiry already. And while she won't be relitigating Lucy Letby's case, a more robust reporting culture at Chester would obviously have been good for everyone concerned. So as long as her recommendations are sensible, they should make hospitals safer.

@Oftenaddled safer from serial killers, yes.

From any risks. If consultants couldn't explain deaths and were concerned about them, they shouldn't have waited to report that to the coroner until they thought they had identified a serial killer. If they received odd test results, they should have done the follow up tests recommended by the lab. If they saw nurses apparently failing in their duties, they should have involved their line managers in good time. If deaths on the ward were unexpected, they should have reported them to the hospital's own Child Death Observation Panel (with police representative). If children experienced life-threatening incidents, they should have informed their parents. That kind of thing - whatever you think of Lucy Letby's guilt or innocence.

I've given you a specific example of evidence that would make me doubt my position.

(Evidence from the death rates in comparable hospitals in comparable circumstances that indicates this was a genuine unexplained cluster. There would need to be more than that to convince me, but that would make me doubt)

Can you give any examples of evidence that would make you doubt your position? (Equally, not convince you)

The problem with the findings of the thirwell enquiry is that they may be based on a false premise,

But it will be interesting to see if there are any comments about the consultants invludng the limited number of rounds that they preformed.

There were over 20 charges and you think they can all be explained away

There were 18 charges against Lucia de Berk. It's the nature of this type of case. The threshold for filing a charge seems very low, e.g. Baby K or Baby N.

Yes, hence the Birmingham Six were convicted of over 20 murders. Three times as many as Letby.

Well, with bombings that happens for a different reason. A better comparison, besides de Berk, is Daniela Poggiali. Suspected of 38 murders. 38 of 86 of her patients died within a three-month period. There were six unexpected deaths on her shifts within a week. An autopsy of her patient revealed dangerous levels of potassium in the body. Two phials of potassium chloride were unaccounted for. She was photographed giving a thumbs up next to an elderly patient who had just died! Case closed, right? Plus, she reportedly found patients "annoying". She was also suspected in 27 instances of petty theft in the hospital; she was convicted for the attempted theft of the wallet of a man visiting his sick wife, and of theft of pharmaceuticals and food. Yet her conviction for killing patients was overturned, with help from Richard Gill.

Yes, there are sadly a number of examples of people who've been convicted of more offences than Letby whose convictions were overturned. I stress 'convicted' because the poster's use of 'charges' to try and bolster the argument was so disingenuous.

Just reading the article about Daniela Poggiali and good grief that's what you call an uphill battle against circumstantial evidence!

Nine years of trials!

People say "there's no smoke without fire", and it's a reasonable rule of thumb. But cases like de Berk and Poggiali highlight how that rule is less reliable in suspected-killer-nurse cases. So many things can potentially count as "smoke", when you dig through someone's life and work. E.g. the exact horrid photo in Poggiali's case is rare, but doctors/nurses using some kind of gallows humor to cope with stressful work is probably less so. Even things like theft (in Poggiali's case) or sex work (in de Berk's) prove little when you consider that the vast majority of thieves or sex workers are not serial murderers. The question to ask is not "would a serial killer do this" but "how many non-serial-killers would".

So exactly HOW many potential nurse serial killers do we now have walking around free thanks to Richard Gill? Interesting how so many posters hark on about MOJ as if when someone is let out it means they're suddenly 100% innocent rather than let out on a technicality/lack of evidence and very possibly still guilty. Apparently Gill doesn't believe serial killers exist in hospitals it would seem. Maybe it's all just a way for him to prove he's smart enough to argue anything with stats.

It makes little difference. The baby had their tube dislodged. Another staff member had left Lucy "babysitting" so that's when RJ went in as he knew what happened before to babies she was left alone with. There is still no accounting for a tube suddenly coming out in the short time Lucy was in there. Never mind the rest of it with her standing there doing nothing and no alarms sounding-which I absolutely believe. Seriously, why would he lie about it? Strange how this is supposed to be such a massive "gotcha" but there's just a shrug of the shoulders on Lucy claiming not to even remember baby Zoe!

I believe what RJ said the first time in the email, that Lucy Letby called him for help. I also believe what he initially told the police, that he wasn't sure if there was alarms going off or not.

If you don't believe professional statisticians can debunk the use of statistics in a case, you really can't endorse the use of statistics to make a case. You can't have it both ways. Either they are a science - capable of proving something - or they are a game or a vanity project or whatever you are trying to suggest there.

There is no question of these women having been released on a technicality, that I know of. Lack of evidence, yes. When you don't have evidence somebody is a killer, of course you can't keep them locked up as killers