Lucy Letby thread

[Words]

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

Because most of us don't know that, most of us are concerned about the things that have come out since the trial, including that many (not just Shoo Lee) experts, far more qualified than Dewi Evans, have strongly refuted his findings and cannot find any medical evidence to support a finding of murder.

A list of all the experts, both for and against Letby is published here.

https://jollycontrarian.com/index.php?title=Lucy_Letby:_those_experts_in_full

No other medical case has ever had so many experts willing to voice concern about the safety of a conviction. That alone is something everyone should find concerning.

I'm not 100% sure but I thought they were after - willing to be corrected if that's the case.

I don't think you need to determine the difference. What I'm saying is I don't think the notes point to guilt or innocence, just that the person writing them was very upset. Could have been a guilty person or an innocent one.

I think the mistake you're making is starting from the presumption that she's guilty and so everything she does is evidence of that.

Okay. The best-informed piece I've read on why her defence didn't call expert witnesses is at https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/lucy-letby-28.pdf

It boils down to the fact that they would have had to put their expert witness on the stand for all cases, and he did not have an explanation of the insulin cases. But scientists have offered explanations for the high numbers returned by in these cases since then. A similar thing happened in the case of the Birmingham Six - scientists could not find an innocent explanation for chemicals on their hands when they were convicted, but by the time they were granted an appeal, the science had moved on.

I think that they were found when her house was searched after her first arrest, but that was over a year after the police investigation was opened, and she knew that the investigation was exploring the accusations made by the consultants two years earlier. So she had been dealing with this for quite some time.

Thank you. That makes sense

Those notes have never made sense to me, from a prosecution standpoint. I don't know if Letby is guilty, but the notes make more sense to me in the context of her being innocent. They read like the distressed ramblings of a woman under intense emotional trauma who is questioning the quality of care she was able to provide and blames herself for not being a "good enough" nurse.

She was advised to write down her thoughts by her therapist to cope with her stress at being falsely accused.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/sep/03/i-am-evil-i-did-this-lucy-letbys-so-called-confessions-were-written-on-advice-of-counsellors

While it's poor quality evidence, I do see why the prosecution submitted it and made the arguments. Because people are stupid. If you take any 12 random individuals it's a reasonable bet that some of them will think they're qualified to assess what is normal and what is serial killer behaviour. In an adversarial system, the prosecution were doing their job.

I understand the reason behind her writing them, I don't understand why they were thought to be solid evidence of guilt by anyone. It makes no sense when you look at what she has written.

The note everyone points out the most starts, "There are no words. I can't breathe. Kill myself right now. Fear. Panic."

She's clearly deeply upset/traumatised. That is obvious. I don't understand how anyone could think otherwise.

The next line is "I haven't done anything wrong. Police investigation. Slander. Discrimination. Victimisation."

Followed by more, which points to her being scared and upset.

This makes no sense in the context of guilt. If she felt bad about murdering babies, why keep doing it? Either she is a psychopath, in which case she wouldn't feel scared and upset. She wouldn't think about killing herself. Or she is somehow unable to stop despite not feeling good about it, in which case, why write, "I haven't done anything wrong. Police investigation. Slander. Discrimination. Victimisation." If she killed the babies, she has done something wrong, and she clearly knows it is wrong, or she wouldn't want to kill herself. It can't be that she feels scared about being caught; that doesn't fit with "I have done nothing wrong."

In the context of her being innocent, "I killed them on purpose because I am not good enough," can make sense in a couple of ways. It could be a statement about what she feels other people are thinking i.e she is not good enough (at nursing/as a person/both?), so people think she did it on purpose, or she believes she caused the deaths because she was not good enough at her job, therefore it was her fault i.e "on purpose."

I did it on purpose taken to mean "I did it deliberately and knowingly," doesn't fit with the other 90% of what she has written. It just doesn't, and both statements cannot be true if taken at face value as written, so if we do take it at face value, why does one statement take credence over the rest of the note?

I'm probably overthinking it, but to me, it feels like those who think they are confession notes haven't thought about it at all. If any of you who believe the confession line have thought about it, can you please explain it to me, because I cannot make it make sense?

It Doesnt particularly matter if everyone else isn't convinced tbh. She was found guilty by a large margin. Why? Because she is guilty. Those babies did not die on the own accord; she killed them. I am convinced that she is guilty, but she is.

It matters greatly to whether people are discussing the convictions or not.

People are obviously free to be convinced of either her guilt or innocence. But nobody else has to take that into account, and it's particularly unlikely to happen when not backed up by anything.

Because her mental state is compromised. It was compromised before she wrote the notes. How do we know that? Because she murdered multiple newborns.

When somebody has an unstable mental state, they don't have a clear conscious stream of thought.

"There are no words. Kill myself right now. Fear. Panic." This not imply innocence. This implies that she is scared, panicking and has no words and wants to kill herself because she has been caught, the walls are crashing down and she knows she is never getting out of prison. Who wouldnt want to kill themselves. She may very well be deeply upset and traumatised by her own actions, further demonstrating her unstable state of mind. She kills babies and then feels guilt and then goes and does it again. If that is not the hallmark of someone in an unstable mental state then I dont know what is.

"I haven't done anything wrong. Police investigation. Slander. Discrimination. Victimisation"

This is denial. This is her again demonstrating her unstable mental state by not being able to acknowledge that what she has done is wrong. Compromised mental state further evidenced by her contradicting line on another note: "I killed them. I did this". She cannot produce a single clear, consistent thought. This quote is purely her trying to convince herself that this is not her fault. The 15 whole life orders suggest otherwise.

"If she felt bad about murdering babies, why keep doing it?" ????? Because she is mentally unwell. It really is that simple.

"If she killed the babies, she has done something wrong, and she clearly knows it is wrong, or she wouldn't want to kill herself. It can't be that she feels scared about being caught; that doesn't fit with "I have done nothing wrong."

It cant be that she is scared about being caught? Are you being serious? Do you seriously think criminals who know they have committed a crime, are not scared of being caught? Have you ever met anybody that has been in prison or knows they are going to prosecuted? 9 times out of 10 they are terrified, even for heinous crimes that they chose to commit. She is a human being with human emotion. She got found out, she got scared. She tries to draft her innocence on a post it note by saying she hasn't done anything wrong. The poor me act. And here you are buying into it. If I knew I had murdered multiple newborns and was going to be imprisoned for life I would want to kill myself as well.

One statement takes credence over the rest of the note because she explicitly admits to killing them. I know this is not to be taken at face value given everything else she wrote; it call contradicts each other and cancels itself out. Thats when you look at the smaller picture. When you look at the bigger picture, you see a woman in a broken down mental state, writing that she killed them, she did this, also writing that she is innocent and it is just slander. It is just evidence that she was never in any mental state to ever be looking after them. The bigger picture reflects that she doesn't know what she's thinking, and ultimately makes her discredited because of it. You say why are the confessions taken at face value but her claims of innocence are not. If someone kills someone else and says "yeah I killed them, oh wait no I didn't" are you going to feel more inclined to believe that they didnt? You cant take those sorts of statements back once you have said them.

Im in no way claiming the notes specifically should be taken as a genuine confession, due to her obvious compromised mental state. It is just that they chaotic nature of them, the conflicting statements, the way they are written so fast, angrily, and emotionally should all be taken into account when looking at the bigger picture of her mental state. I understand you think she may be writing what others think, I.e. 'I killed them because im not good enough' being a reflection of what others may think of her or her own thoughts about her failings in her job, but it ultimately boils down to: she wouldnt have been arrested, charged and handed 15 whole life orders had there not been sufficient evidence against her to evidence that she killed them. Whether the notes are confessional or not is trivial to seeing that she is guilty.

You're not going to convince me that she's guilty so do you just want a back and forth where you keep saying you think she's guilty and I keep saying that many are not convinced by the evidence or.........?

I think that's pretty much the consensus on the thread. Her mental health was severely compromised when she wrote the notes; the notes themselves are contradictory and don't prove anything, guilt or innocence.

Falsely accused?

Can you explain why what has come out since the trial doesn't worry you? I'm asking genuinely because I'd like to understand.

My stance is that I don't know if she is guilty or not, but too much has come out once the reporting ban was lifted for me to feel comfortable that the conviction is safe.

In particular, I am concerned about the use of Dewi Evans as an expert witness despite his problematic involvement in other highly controversial cases, lack of exeperience with neonates, and against the warning Lord Justice Jackson gave to Judge Goss, especially in light of things he has said in the media since the trial (It was my type of case/I always win/I knew she was guilty within 10 minutes). These statements are so far outside of his role as an expert witness that they alone should be grounds for an appeal.

I am concerned about details that have come out in the Thirlwall inquiry regarding the police investigation i.e how their starting point was that Letby was guilty, and how they allowed Jayaram et al to lead the investigation (there are memos and emails published in Thirlwall if you want to look them up, I CBA to link them because Thirlwall is hard to search when you're looking for something in particular but here's a handy link that summerises my feelings https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/lucy-letby-36.pdf )

The sheer number of experts who have spoken out in support of Letby has never been seen before in a case like this, and the speed at which they started speaking out, they must have been sitting on their hands whilst listening to the evidence the prosecution presented. I don't understand a lot of what is written in all of the medical reports published to support Letby, but when I look at who is supporting her vs who believes she is guilty, my inclination is to trust Shoo Lee et al.

The circumstantial evidence used is all either irrelevant (door data/handover notes) speaks more to innocence than guilt (the dairies), or has been proven to be wrong (the staff rota).

There's more, but these are the bits that stick out.

The only reason I have ever seen anyone give for not questioning the safety of the conviction is that the jury said so, but the jury didn't know all of this when they gave their verdict. They may have come to a different verdict had they had this information.

In the context they were working in, yes - Lucy Letby was removed from the ward under pressure from consultants. Royal College of Pediatric and Child Health reviewers interviewed the consultants about their concerns and found they were based on coincidence and "gut feeling". They also found that the unit was not fit to continue operating at its previous level without reforms. They recommended further review of the deaths and collapses highlighted by the consultants. This review found that most of these events were probably or possibly exacerbated by failings in care. Meanwhile, a grievance investigation found that two of the consultants had accused Lucy Letby without evidence.

So from the point of view of the team supporting Lucy Letby at that time, they were helping her deal with the pressure of being falsely accused

You think it's possible that she's guilty? So you think she was handed 15 whole life orders because there is any possibility that she is innocent?

"she could have been doing her best in a failing unit and you could have had the same outcome."

Wow. Doing her best by injecting air bubbles into newborn babies and their feeding tubes? Doing her best by poisoning them with insulin and deliberately overfeeding them? Hm.

It is of course probable some newborns will die for the reasons you said. The evidence heavily suggests that the ones in her care did not die of natural causes. The air did not just get into the feeding tubes and babies stomachs on their own accord. She did that. The insulin did not get into the feeding bags on their own accord. She did that. They didn't grossly overfeed themselves. She did that. They didnt take off their own oxygen tubes. You guessed it, she did that.

In what way does it matter how the evdience is presented really. Them presenting it to try and make her look guilty or innocent does not change the fact that she did it. There would be no evidence if she had not of done it. Claiming they presented the cases all at once to make people think "well theres so many of them, she must have done something" is almost laughable. Do you think there would have been so many cases, had she not done something? Do you think its coincidence that she was always there and they were always in her care when they died? Did any babies in any other nurses care have their oxygen tubes removed or insulin in their feeding bags?

So basically, you're saying that because she was looking after too many babies, she decided to kill them off to have less to deal with and that makes the crime lesser. It is clear that this is what you are saying as you think that this of been presented during the trial to gain understanding of why she did it. It is not the case that she could not provide adequate care due to the number of babies she had to look after, as that is inconsistent with how they died. You dont deliberately remove ventilators from a baby in NICU because youre overworked. You dont deliberately inject air into their bodies/tubes due to stress. That is murder, outright.

I'm not sure if you have any training in psychology, but I'm going to assume that you don't from your final statement there. This woman was clearly mentally unwell, that I do not dispute. It is also not exclusively psychopaths that murder other people. I think it is safe to say she was mentally unwell and that is why she did it, ultimately. It doesn't have to follow a demographic pattern based on gender, age, multiples, etc. It doesn't have to be one method of death, and why would it, as that would be highly suspicious, as would targeting only girls/boys etc. It could very well be the case that she did enjoy killing them, and sickeningly used different methods for entertainment, to see if it would work or not. Perhaps she wasn't able to kill them all because she wanted the death to be slow, or experimental as I stated. Maybe she enjoyed them dying slowly and seeing them suffer, often prolonging it so much that someone else was thankfully able to intervene. It is ultimately ludicrous to suggest that she didnt kill them intentionally because there was no pattern in victims, which by the way there was; they were all newborn babies. She didnt kill adults, small children, teenagers. The pattern is that they were all defenceless babies that she knew could not fight back.

I honestly have to wonder how anyone could actually think there is a single possibility that she is innocent. It is my genuine belief that you should seek mental help if you make claims such as "she was trying her best in a busy job". It is all just idle gossip to a lot of people. Those babies are dead and their families are devastated. Her killing their children due to a compromised mental state does nothing in the way of helping their grief. They could be reading threads such as this one, with people arguing she could by innocent because of xyz, when to anyone with common sense it is clear to see that she is guilty as sin.

Multiple consultants would not have accessed her had they not been sure that it was her. I'm damn glad they accused her based off of a gut feeling given that they were indeed correct. I have no doubt that the hospital holds blame and accountability there are a lot of complex factors to this. But she was never falsely accused. One is only falsely accused if they are found to have not committed the crime. She was accused, tried in court, and found guilty.

I've explained a bit on other threads about what being falsely accused of harming my own child was like 30 years ago. It has absolutely influenced and coloured every aspect of my life and still does and I "got away with it" in terms of what the experts involved in my case "believed". And that is influenced by many other things including my upbringing and possibly even a bit of ND which I haven't the confidence to explore because asking for help has been painted as attention seeking by professionals.

Honestly if you haven't been through it, you can't possibly begin to imagine what it's like to have "the authorities" telling you over and over again that you are guilty, even when you know you are not, and the mere act of trying to assert / prove your innocence being used to pathologise you to the point where you doubt your own sanity.

And I was "lucky". The police backed out of my case early on, but I was then at the mercy of the family courts. What I experienced pales in comparison with Lucy Letbys experience, and by extension the parents experience.

The bottom line though, is that if no psychologist or psychiatrist was called to assess or diagnose her, which did not appear to happen, speculation on her mental state is moot and formed no part of the trial. This I find intriguing as I underwent three psychological evaluations for the family court, which all basically said quite awkwardly "she's a bit upset about being accused of something she says she didn't do and the prospect of permanently losing her child to adoption because of shonky medical evidence".

And that's the crux of the whole case for Lucy Letby. The medical evidence was all theory, and some didn't even have precedence in either medical or legal research such as over feeding and splinting of the diaphragm. And don't get me started on the "liver injury".

You're not quite getting your facts right

The consultants weren't sure it was her. And to the extent that they thought it was her, that was not based on their area of expertise, paediatric medicine. It was based on poor application in statistics, a field in which they had no particular training. That's why they had been happy not to report or flag collapses and deaths for review, why they had accepted the results of postmortems, and why at the point of accusing her all they could refer to was coincidence and gut feeling.

We will be hearing the results of the inquiry into the maternity unit at Nottingham this week. Hundreds of cases of avoidable harm. I doubt any doctors and nurses were going into to work wanting this to happen or planning to let it happen, or planning to cover it up. Unfortunately, people in medical professions aren't infallible.

@worldshottestmom

I honestly have to wonder how anyone could actually think there is a single possibility that she is innocent. It is my genuine belief that you should seek mental help if you make claims such as "she was trying her best in a busy job".

You clearly just don't have very good critical thinking skills then if you can't see how anyone could think there is a single possibility that she is innocent.

And suggesting people should seek mental help for making a comment you don't like is really pathetic 😂

BTW I don't recognise your username from previous threads, but if you're new to discussing this case on MN we've all been discussing this for about 2 years now, and people have said all the things you've said and more and they've managed to change no ones minds or managed to shut people up by repeatedly stating 'she's guilty', 'she did it', or by insulting people, so you're not going to be any different.

It doesn't worry me because all of the evidence together, in spite of the new evidence that has emerged, clearly demonstrates her involvement in these deaths. A court room is a court room, it is lawyers arguing with each other to try and get a payout.

My only concern is what happened in the hospital, what happened to those babies that were murdered. She deliberately contaminated intravenous feeds with insulin. Those babies were in her care and she did that. The babies that she injected air into the tubes and bloodstreams of, had distinctive signs of air embolism. They were in her care, she did that. It was always her there. The staff rotas being wrong does little in the way of convincing me that she was not there at the time, given that others witnessed her being there.

There is such strong, undeniable evidence against her that I dont know how anybody could doubt her guilt and seriously suggest that she could be innocent. Did their oxygen tubes just fall off? Of only the babies she was supposed to be caring for? She just happened to always be there for this? I highly, highly doubt it.

That argument doesn't work in this situation. Letby's legal team won't be getting a payout if they win the case. They and everyone working with them on the new evidence and arguments are working pro bono.

You're criticising me for insulting others while insulting me. Not the best way to prove your intelligence. All anybody has done is insult me for not agreeing, hypocritical much?

And your bully tactic, "other people have tried to convince us, but soon shut up blah blah blah" does not interest me. Youre all debating whether an obvious murderer is innocent because to you it is idle gossip. This thread is disgusting to be honest. Imagine one of the parents reading it, and seeing people write "she was trying her best on a busy ward" when she literally killed their newborn baby. I do wonder how you would feel if it was your newborn that she deliberately murdered. Is it normal for someone to walk in the room of grieving parents bathing their dead baby, with a huge smile plastered across her face saying "she loved bath time!" ? No.

But go off about how shes innocent because the rota was wrong. How shameful and embarrassing.