Lucy Letby thread

[Words]

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

This.

I'm in the UK, and I was only vaguely aware of Letby and the case, so I can forgive someone in Canada for not being aware. Life can be depressing enough without doom-scrolling articles on murdered babies, so I tend to avoid stories like that. I was aware a nurse had been charged with murder and assumed she'd either confessed or there was strong evidence against her.

I generally have YouTube streaming for background noise when I'm working from home. I wasn't paying any attention to what was playing until I heard the line, "In summary, ladies and gentlemen, there were no murders."

Until I heard that, I wasn't even aware of what story was streaming or what the press conference was covering. When I read the banner across the bottom of the screen and saw it was Letby, I wanted to know who this man was, why he was saying there were no murders if a nurse was in prison, and what evidence she was convicted on. As soon as I read "air down the NG tube," I knew something had gone very, very wrong. You don't need to be a neonatologist to know that it is a load of bollocks.

You can read Lee's account of how he became involved in the case in this Times article, published just before his 2025 press conference

https://archive.ph/1rgGJ

Thanks for that @Oftenaddled
I don't understand after reading that coupled with the press conference when as Frequency has posted Dr Lee said that " there were no murders" that people can still be 100% convinced that the verdict is safe.
I have a similar tale in that I remember very clearly hearing that sentence after only being moderately aware of the case and thinking " what the.....!!, they'll have to be a retrial/ pardon/ something"
And yet here we are

To be fair, I'm sure it will lead to a retrial, or simply to the conviction being overturned. Serious, qualified people take the results of Lee's work seriously. The press turned, after that conference; legal commentator also; and we recently saw confirmation that concerns about the case are shared on both sides of the House of Commons.

There are just a few journalists holding out who bolstered their reputations through the conviction, and various unqualified people arguing online. The CCRC is slow but it hasn't been unusually slow in this case, yet. I think that Lee's panel, with the reinforcement of the other reports and expert assessments submitted to the CCRC, will decide the case in the end.

He's complaining they misinterpreted his paper-I thought you'd WANT him to have been told so he could address it before they run a trial based partly on inaccurate info.

Sounds like you're agreeing him and his opinion are completely irrelevant to the case, which is odd considering the weight people have put on his opinion.

It has been explained that that's not how the system works; research papers are in the public domain.

It should surely be incumbent on lawyers / experts involved in a case to be sure the research papers they are reliant on to build a case are relevant and properly understood. Or do you think every person who writes said research papers should trawl through legal proceedings on the daily to pick up potential mistakes?

They reported only what was heard in court-so yes. The podcast isn't like regular daily mail.

I was refuting the "babies die on an NICU" by bringing up what Dr Harkness had said about baby A's death and how he reacted to it. It's obviously not as common as people are trying to make out. This is the first known death connected to LL. It's significant.

That podcast also had her texts with her saying "I know how I've dealt with it before" about why she just had to have another dying baby after baby A. Which made me 🤔what she meant by that...

In any spike one baby will be the first baby.
A poster has provided a link to show that quite a few hospitals had spikes around the same time.

Nothing about those texts is evidence of murder or anywhere even close.

Seeing as you brought Dr Harkness into it, it's interesting how this is the same doctor who was a trainee at the time, who said himself that the long line was not properly sited on baby A, but years later decided it actually had been, and this was the same doctor who was one of the 2 doctors who had not switched baby Gs monitor back on after fitting a cannula, and this was also the same doctor who failed to notice that baby E needed an urgent blood transfusion.

Clear evidence of substandard care, yet you think that text messages are the really important pieces of evidence in the case, even though the texts aren't in any way damning.

You've swerved the question. It isn't the norm for people to be told when their research is being cited in court cases, as presumably you've realised by now. So, where did you get the idea that it should have happened? This is what I'm interested in specifically.

You can just answer that one question, no need to bullshit about people agreeing with irrelevant claims you make.

Why do you think he wasn't at court?

And, in the highly likely event your answer involves conspiracy theories about wanting to avoid cross-examination, you might want to look up what a peer review is. Lee's work has already been cross-examined by fellow medics. Not to mention the examination of public opinion after the press conference. Lee has fared quite well out of that. Evans not so much.

Of course I would be happier if he had been asked but
a) that’s not how research is cited
b) it would have been for the prosecution to contact him because they were using his paper

Do you think the prosecution should have contacted him? How do you think things would have gone if they had?

What makes you think Ionian thinks Shoo Lee and his papers are irrelevant?

It's also quite clear that when Firefly wrote that he should've been told, she didn't mean should in the context of this is what I would ideally like to have happened. It's an attempt to try and make it sound like Shoo Lee did know during the trial.

Firefly is the queen of attempted "gotcha" moments and "lastworditis". Thing is, at the current state of play, it's an exercise in futility. The big picture is so big we've barely got the corners on and half the pieces have been shoved down the back of the sofa having been throughly chewed by a police dog. Which is a shocking indictment of our justice system IMHO.

So you are OK with the police being able to put there version directly to the public?

Not very innocent until proven guilty.

@Firefly1987 could you tell us a bit about how you became so interested in this case?

I will tell you how I did. I didn’t particularly follow the trial. I remember messaging friends saying I was shocked by the verdict, not because I couldn’t believe she would do it, but because it seemed so unlikely anyone would. Then we saw pictures of her very bland room and her childlike diary and we joked that of course she was a serial killer. I learned about the shift chart and how she was always there and at that point I thought “Oh yes, the verdict is correct.”

I thought no more about it until the New Yorker article came out and from there I started reading the Lucy Letby Science subreddit from time to time. I would occasionally read the main Lucy Letby subreddit but I just didn’t find anything posted there particularly convincing when compared with the evidence that made the conviction look unsafe. So much of the case against her seems so founded on personal dislike of her, and I don’t have any personal feelings towards her at all.

All of this is to say that what keeps me interested in this case is my growing belief that a grave miscarriage of justice has taken place. It isn’t about her.

But for you it feels like it really is about her, and I am wondering how you got to that place? Do you have a personal connection?

Personally I think if the prosecution had contacted him then they would have just rejigged their theories and narrative and pushed forward with the case anyway.

So I would imagine they wish now they had contacted him first, because they ended up leaving their case absolutely wide open to challenge. We know they did that in lots of other ways too but wasn't air embolism allegedly a factor in 9 out of the 15 convictions?

This is so disingenuous OTs laughable. No one can be this ignorant.

You've swerved the question. It isn't the norm for people to be told when their research is being cited in court cases, as presumably you've realised by now.

Yes I realise that now. It just seems like a common courtesy that's all. You'd just think people would like to know when their work is being used in such high profile cases.

So, where did you get the idea that it should have happened? This is what I'm interested in specifically.
You can just answer that one question, no need to bullshit about people agreeing with irrelevant claims you make.

Er nowhere? Just a personal thought. I did remember something about Lee saying he got some word of it and ignored it at first-I must've assumed it was the court letting him know.

Ok, good to have clarification. Hopefully you now know it's not a reason to try and dispute Shoo Lee's account of when he learned about what had happened.

Nothing about those texts is evidence of murder or anywhere even close.

Right sure. The prime suspect in the murder of multiple babies is just desperate to get in to the room where one of her future victims is and her reason for doing that is "I know how I've dealt with it before" (in reference to baby A having died) and you think this doesn't mean anything?

Eh? I'm not sure who else is going to gather evidence other than the police. They reported both the prosecution and defence-not that she had much of a defence. It's like people think a case should've been taken to court putting only the defence side across and from a point of "lets try and prove her not guilty even though we're sure enough she killed children to even get it to trial" bizarre!

My post wasn't anything to do with gathering evidence, its was about a bought media putting forward the police case as they were paid do to.
This is wrong for journolists to do.

No, you fixate on these things as if they are strong evidence on murder when they clearly are not.

@kkloo and someone making creepy comments about children might not be a pedo but the possibility just got a lot more likely.