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'm so sorry you went through this horrendous experience. I hope your DS made a good recovery.

It made my wonder how many kids are taken into care for a mistake that happened but in the moment the parent was too shocked or reacted in a way which made them look 'guilty'.

I don't think there was enough concrete evidence to convict LL only what seems to be circumstantial. Only she knows what actually happened though.

Uh, yeah. I wasn't having a dig at her. Just saying that her mental state at the time of the arrest probably had an effect on how she appeared outwardly.

Well you don't know how you'd react. People watch too many films and too much TV and think there's a "correct" way to behave.

She may well be guilty.

She was medicated and under instructions from her legal representative, probably being told to keep her answers brief. Interviewed for hours and hours and probably repeating the same things over and over again. We’ve only seen a fraction of this on the documentary.

Also LL had a career in a highly stressful and emotionally draining job. If she was the kind of person prone to hysterical outbursts she wouldn’t have been able to do the job. The emotional ‘fallout’ is what appears in the scribbled notes, done privately and apparently advised by her therapist.

Because them law gives you this right and most lawyers will advise you to say nothing. It is very easy for something you say to be used against you during a trial and you can’t predict the ways it can happen.

”Where were you on Monday morning three weeks ago”
”I left my house at about 10 o’clock to get to work for 10.30 like I always do on a Monday” Except on that Monday, you actually left at 9.15 because of some insignificant happening you had completely forgot about. Fast forward a year later to the trial.

”You, in your sworn statement to the police, said you left at 10, but in fact left a whole 45 minutes earlier, which means you could have been at the crime scene and committed the crime and still been in your office at 10.30, why did you lie to the police”

”I didn’t lie, I had forgotten I left early to run an errand on the way”

”How convenient. Is there anything else in your statement you “forgot” to mention?”

As the eyes of the jury look at you as if you are a liar and did it all along.

Say absolutely nothing in a police interview. It is up to them to gather the evidence.

257 of them? You think taking home that amount and keeping them is “quite common”?

• Test Reliability: Critics argue the immunoassays used were designed for clinical screening, not forensic proof. The lab's own guidance warned these tests were "not suitable" for investigating suspected poisoning and should have been verified by more precise mass spectrometry, which was never done.
• Dose Calculations: Engineers have calculated that to achieve the recorded insulin levels, significantly higher quantities of insulin would have been required than the "few drops" suggested at trial. No such large quantities were reported missing.
• Alternative Explanations: A 2025 expert panel led by Dr Shoo Lee suggested the low blood sugar could have been caused by natural conditions like sepsis, premature birth, or "perinatal stress-induced hyperinsulinism".

If you are charged with a complex crime, based on complex technical information, it may actually be easier to defend yourself if guilty, because you know what really happened, so you know how to spin your evidence.

An innocent person in this situation is fighting blindfolded. Some of their responses will look off the point.

I thought she was guilty when following the trial, but was baffled by how woeful her defence was.

@Seymorbutts I have not followed the case but do you recall the Amanda Knox case? Innocent but banged up for being a bit weird. I recently read a book called “talking to strangers” which changed my approach to making assumptions about people.

Yes, taking the handover sheet home in a uniform pocket is very common. Plenty of nurses will attest to that. Keeping them, probably less so.

If she'd behaved in the way you'd expect for an 'innocent' person no doubt people would pick up on elements of that behaviour to support why they think that makes her look guilty

@NorfolkandBadBut she didn’t answer no comment to all or even most questions, just certain ones. That’s what I found odd. It was all questions that if I were innocent, I’d have a reasonable answer for and I’d want to put that across.
Also she wrote in her diary “I killed them on purpose”. Why would an innocent person write that, even under great mental strain, if they know they definitely didn’t do it, or even if they think they may have done it through negligence etc? You wouldn’t say “on purpose” in that case.
And then keeping all the notes relating to those babies, so many of them, and lying about not having a shredder.
I don’t think her reactions mean anything as such - she actually did cry, when she was being arrested, so it’s not even true that she was unemotional. But all the other things just don’t add up.

"May well be" is a long distance from "beyond reasonable doubt" though, isn't it?

You think you'd behave in a certain way but you really don't know until you're in that situation. I didn't behave how I thought I would have when I was put in an awful position. I still can't quite believe how calm and quiet I seemed when inside I was screaming.

I think you can explain these things.

The footage in the documentary was from a mixture of different arrests, not in order. You would get legal advice in between.

"On purpose" would be either an intrusive thought or her writing down what she has worked out the consultants were saying about her

Tell me you don't know she was having therapy and was told to write down her thoughts without using those words.

Something else to add to the "makes you guilty list" - forgetting your shreddies, sorry shredder, if I was on her jury I'd have been pushing for the death sentence for anyone who forgets after being pressured for a couple of years, she should know everything about everything and recall it instantly, especially when being accused / tried for murder - otherwise it's off the the gallows.

I haven't worked on NICU for 15yrs. I still remember the babies that died on my shift.

Yeah, I know. If she was either ground down by the accusations already at that point, or in total shock. I feel I might freeze up I guess as much as I feel I'd be screaming my innocence. And having little emotion in a time of great pressure doesn't make someone either guilty or innocent.

@NorfolkandBadAre you always this dramatic?
I do know she was having therapy and was told to write down her thoughts. It’s still odd that her thoughts were “I killed them on purpose” if she actually did no such thing.

The shredder was found during a search of her house, which was around the same time as her police interview when she said she didn’t have a shredder. So there wouldn’t have been a big interval.

"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."
In a criminal case, you need to be certain 'beyond all reasonable doubt' so, on this basis, you could not convict her.

It continues to amaze me that so many people think they know what constitutes odd behaviour in situations they have neither personal nor professional experience of.

In moment of clarity (this is assuming her apparently being heavily medicated was having an adverse affect) she told police about the handwritten notes that "I just wrote it because everything had got on top of me. It was when I had not long found out I'd been removed from the unit. I felt like they were blaming my practice, that I might have hurt them without knowing, through my practice, and that made me feel guilty."

I have wondered if there is something a little unusual about her and her parents. Not in a bad way, just different. They all seem adverse to anything close to confrontation. More than quiet, more pacified. Accepting. I'm not sure they know how to assert.
It would be helpful to think they have had psychological tests.

@1975wasthebestYes but even if she felt guilty about maybe hurting them through bad practice, why write “on purpose”. You just wouldn’t say that if you’d done something by accident.