Lucy Letby thread

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Starting this as don’t think we have a new one.

@Oftenaddled well they haven't found any answers in all these years...

even that new couple said alarms were going off and babies were stopping breathing and the nurses were saying they didn't know why. I wonder if Lucy knew why 🤔

How would we know whether they have found answers or not? The children's medical records aren't in the public domain. Even the parents don't seem to have them.

What the parents are saying is that nobody explained what happened to them. Not that nobody knew what happened. I think lots of us have had similar experiences on the NHS .
There are a few possibilities here:

Something reasonably predictable in light of the child's condition happened, was dealt with, no further investigations, poor communication with parents.

Something unexpected happened, was dealt with, was investigated or not, poor communication with parents.

All we know for sure is, poor communication with parents. But given that the police did not make this case part of their investigation, I'd say we are safe to assume doctors were reasonably confident this was a natural event.

a baby collapsed in that very short time frame she happened to be there

But she was not there (or alone with a baby) for "a very short time frame". She worked there, and was there (both alone and not) for extended periods of time. That some of these many periods overlapped with collapses is not surprising.

If this is the level of evidence " they were there" everyone who works with neonates/ people in ICU/the elderly in homes or in the community/! people in hospices should be extremely scared
It doesn't make sense
Some of those people are going to die
It's a sad fact but a fact nonetheless
Actual evidence of murder is necessary
And hasn't been proved in this case

The prosecution played a very dirty trick here. I've been looking back over the closing speech. What they did was to give separate lists of the times when parents had recently been in, and when designated nurses had recently gone on breaks. So you get the impression that Lucy Letby was alone and had her opportunity to strike unseen.

If they'd presented even that much information honestly, they'd have said, here's a list of the times designated nurses had left the room leaving the baby with Lucy Letby and, usually, other nurses and doctors. And here's a list of the times parents had recently visited, and then left the child with Lucy Letby and various other nurses and doctors.

There is more to it than that, too. Their cases where parents had recently visited include the incidents where the parents were summoned to the ward because the child was deteriorating, and were therefore there close to the time of a subsequent collapse. They count times when they have "put" Lucy Letby in the room on the basis that the child deteriorated, not from notes or eyewitness testimony. So if you assume she harmed this baby ... well she must have been there to do it, so she must have been there. (See Child N).

It is a tortured and dishonest narrative, when you break it down case by case. I'll try to do a post doing just that tomorrow - too hot to chase all the details now!

No need to answer that, @Firefly1987 . I've looked up the prosecution claim and will post more on it tomorrow

I'm talking about when she would cover for other nurses. A few of these babies she wasn't even designated nurse for remember. E.g she was left with baby K as another nurse left. Obviously she was alone before Dr J went in. Although posters will probably try to claim she wasn't.

People really need to be consistent, one minute they were so understaffed and the doctors were never seen, the next Lucy was never alone and there were multiple nurses and doctors in every room with her!

If they'd presented even that much information honestly, they'd have said, here's a list of the times designated nurses had left the room leaving the baby with Lucy Letby and, usually, other nurses and doctors. And here's a list of the times parents had recently visited, and then left the child with Lucy Letby and various other nurses and doctors.

Doctors that only ever did two ward rounds a week?

Mostly junior doctors, GP trainees etc, but since Johnson included times when parents and consultants were called in during an emergency in his parents' "visits", this does include two incidents where consultants were present

Looking forward to seeing that.

For most incidents, the prosecution was relying on eyewitness evidence from people who were very much in the room. So while they worked to identify moments when Lucy Letby could have been alone with babies, they wouldn't claim she was alone at many of these times. And evidence from consultants, doctors, nurses etc says she wasn't alone, in many cases.

The children were supposed to have one to one nursing in the NICU cots, so you could have four nurses in nursery 1, including a shift leader, and it would still be understaffed, on the busiest nights. Staffing on the nights we know about tended to be lower than that, but Lucy Letby wasn't working alone all night all the same.

She may have been alone with baby K. I certainly wouldn't deny that she would be alone with babies sometimes. That was an occupational hazard. But the prosecution has exaggerated the pattern here all the same.

The case for baby K is a particularly shaky one - the idea that Lucy Letby was alone in the room depended on swipe card data showing that Caroline Oakley, who was in charge of two babies there, left the unit 20 minutes before the alleged attack. But that's the swipe card data they mixed up. That's when Caroline Oakley came back in.

She says, reasonably enough, like Lucy Letby, that she remembers nothing about that night. Joanne Williams, who was the baby's designated nurse, does have memories - of Dr Jayaram asking her who was there when the child desaturated. (She wasn't, so couldn't say). So if we are relying on Dr Jayaram's memory alone now to suggest Lucy Letby was alone on that ward, it's not looking very reliable.

It was the consultant paediatricians’ ward rounds that were only twice a week, at variance with practice elsewhere. Nobody is saying there were no doctors at all.

My late MIL happened to be resident at the care home in Swanage where three elderly residents all died on the same morning. It triggered evacuation of all residents, firstly to a local church hall, then to other facilities run by the same company - MIL ended up at a prohibitive distance for visiting for me (I inherited her care and POA after my DP, her only child, died). She had been "end stage" dementia for a couple of years at this point.

The original care home was closed and investigated for months, initially the manager was arrested, but eventually cleared.

Turned out it was just a coincidence. And actually we never had any concerns about the place the whole time she was there. Funnily enough at the time, which was extremely stressful, it did cross my mind if there were concerns of an "angel of death" at work, but apparently not.

I'm sure a certain poster might doubt my credibility, as I've had alot of bad luck what with SS involvement, and multiple back to back bereavements. But I rather think this is another example of sometimes, shit just happens. And thank God the manager, nor any other staff member were convicted because "they were there".

https://www.swanage.news/no-third-party-involvement-in-death-of-three-swanage-care-home-residents/

It's much more than that I'm obviously simplifying it because it's such a huge case with many many victims.

You could wave any serial killer away with the above. If one staff member kept going into these rooms and then the alarms were sounding time and time again it would indeed raise suspicions. If one staff member came back from holiday and suddenly there is chaos and babies dying when they were all fine when she was away it would raise suspicions. If it's just random times not connected to any one staff member it wouldn't. Hopefully only people who can make the distinction work in these type of places with vulnerable people (but we know in this case they don't hence the managers being up on potential charges)

The nearest level NICU's had a max of 2 deaths, Lucy's had 13 in the same time period. But nothing to see here.

That doesn't seem that strange to me. It's an odd coincidence for sure and I'm glad they investigated it, but it's still within the realm of possibility for it to happen. With Lucy, not so much.

If the care home I worked in had ever been investigated, it would have taken them years to get through all the suspicious group chats and handover sheets. We worked with end-stage dementia and end-of-life care and used dark humour to cope with some of the worse shifts.

I once walked into a handover sheet that said something along the lines of "The ambulance out back is for room 8, the two out front are for rooms 12 and 15. Room 19 is waiting for a district nurse. We solemnly swear we did not give any of them ketamine, but there is some in the cupboard in the staff room. We will leave it up to night shift if they take it themselves or give it to the residents. FYI, the bloke in room 2 is naked again."

Previous posters have posted before about the league tables that show where the COCH fell in terms of "unexplained spikes" in deaths. How come none of those hospitals encouraged murder investigations, because you can bet your sweet bippy there were probably other potential Lucy Letbys in the mix by dint of shifts worked, overtime etc. The more that comes out, the more I lean towards the idea that Lucy Letby was considered problematic by the consultants, what with all her Datix filing and concerns and grievance raising. While they may not have deliberately set out to scapegoat her, you can't blame people for considering the possibility. Male egos, especially in the medical field can be somewhat fragile, based on my own experience in now multiple scenarios. Maybe, just maybe, those handover sheets were kept for a solid reason. And maybe the defence absolutely advised her not to go down that route, as it might be very easy for the prosecution to capitalise on the "attention seeking" and "arrogant" aspersions cast her way.

I've said before, on more than one occasion, that until you have a taste of the sharp end of adversarial court process, you have vety little idea of how it works, and how little agency most defendants feel they have because that's what lawyers are for.

The stakes in this case were monumentally high, and it would be extremely naive to believe it was all about truth and justice by the time it came to court.

Do you think that's the same thing as what Letby was doing?

Using dark humour or using ketamine? Not really, it was more an observation on how suspicious perfectly innocent things can appear without context.

Three deaths in one day looks bad, but it turned out to be a fluke/bad luck.

3 residents needing an ambulance, one needing a nurse more qualified than the one we had on staff, and a man deciding to become a nudist all within a few hours, while the staff joke about getting high on ketamine, looks horrendous on paper, but in an end-of-life/dementia unit, it's a relatively normal shift. And making inappropriate jokes is how we got through the many shifts like that without actually drugging ourselves or the residents.

I've seen it but haven't bought it yet, please let me know what you think of it!

Yes they seemed to dramatically overstate the wellness of these babies and miss obvious issues.

First of all we don't know whether they were all fine when she was away, and secondly there was plenty of weeks she was there where she hasn't been accused of doing anything, there was months in between some of the collapses and deaths she was charged for.

How are you determining that? By “common-sense” cod statistics again?

OK that's different to the Letby case for a few reasons-

You worked in end of life care so deaths were expected very frequently. I'm sure the police are familiar with dark humour as a coping mechanism (and do the same themselves) this is completely different to an NICU unit that was supposed to see 2-3 deaths a year max.

You were all involved in it, it wasn't just one staff member shocking her workmates with comments about how she can't wait to experience her first death on her very first day of work.

Presumably you remained respectful around patients and families, which can't really be said for Lucy when she made parents uncomfortable.

They found evidence of murder in the Letby case

She didn't say she couldn't wait to experience her first death.
She apparently said that can't wait to get it out of the way.

Can't wait to experience something makes it sound like it's something exciting that you really want to experience.
Can't wait to get it out of the way tends to be said when you know something is going to be horrible or stressful and you're dreading it.

“They found evidence of murder in the Letby case”

They really didn’t.

The key card data was selectively used and was flawed in any case (one of the doors wasn’t recording entries and exits). The statistician that the police initially hired told them that they were approaching their statistical analysis incorrectly… so they dropped her.

The idea that she could have spiked bags of insulin (in packaging designed to show evidence of tampering if interfered with) ahead of time, (and know which baby would get what bag), is just preposterous. As is the idea she could have added insulin via the feed lines, (particularly unobserved), by injecting it into the tiny diameter tubes.

And then there’s the refuting of insulin poisoning as cause of death. Nobody, even Evans, is still sticking by that theory.

The fact that multiple experienced coroners somehow didn’t spot the foul play but a long retired non-specialist (who was considered to be a poor expert witness by another judge, who took the time to flag that up) was able to, merely from reading paperwork and not ever having looked at one of the babies, should stretch anyone’s credulity.

And just to make sure her goose was thoroughly cooked, the judge gave direction to the jury that if just one case looked like murder, then they could (implying should) infer murder in all of them.