Lucy Letby thread

[Words]

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

Oh jesus, is that it? She's innocent cos her legal team arent getting a big payout if they win. OK.

There's no case where the staff rota says she wasn't there but witnesses say she was.

No, nobody has said that.

She was charged with a single incident of dislodging an oxygen tube. Yes, they do dislodge without interference, e.g. when they are badly fitted, when a baby wriggles or turns a head, when they vomit, or sometimes when they are handled.

One of the red flags that told watching medics there was a problem with this case came when one of Chester's consultants went on TV after the trial saying that the only way a tube could have been dislodged is by someone meaning deliberate harm. This simply isn't true.

Fyi, the think of the parents schtick has already been tried by other posters who clearly are only interested in what the families think so long as they reckon they agree with them. There was someone on a thread a couple of weeks ago purporting to know one family and saying they have doubts now. I have no idea whether that was genuine or not, but then it's not like anyone else claiming to speak for the families in these threads is actually in a position to do so either.

I am perfectly happy to engage with you in a civil way if you want to have a discussion like a grown up, but if you're throwing out absolute crap like people need mental help for suggesting she was trying to do her job the best you could then I'm not sure what you can expect.

No they haven't, people have engaged with your points, but you don't want them to engage with your points it seems.

I didn't say they soon shut up btw, some of them still go on 😂 I said they didn't shut us (the ones who are concerned the verdicts are unsafe) up.

You're the one with the bully tactic trying to make out people need 'help' because they won't bow down to your opinion. As I said, we've dealt with this all before, and it won't work.

What you and others don't grasp is that everyones heart is in the right place whether they think she is guilty or whether they think the verdicts are unsafe, many people are very concerned that justice has not been done here, there is absolutely nothing shameful about that, and manipulation will also get you nowhere in this discussion.

None of the babies had distinctive signs of air embolism noted at any point in their medical records or at post-mortem. These signs are seen in life with an x-ray or a distinctive skin discoloration, after death with froth in the heart. If any of these signs had appeared, air embolism, accidental or deliberate, would have been noted much earlier.

(One exception, technically. One of the children did suffer an accidental air embolism, but this was at another hospital before she came to Chester)

Except that none of the evidence is irrefutable. It has been refuted by people with far more experience working with neonates than those who testified at trial.

The injections of air into the NG tubes - even Dewi himself now accepts this is implausible and has changed his cause of death to intravenous air embolism, for which no evidence was presented to the jury for those babies, because that isn't what he testified to at the trial.

That's the one bit of medical evidence that I do fully understand because it's the bit that made , so I researched a lot during peak insomnia. The consensus among medical professionals who work with neonates, and the medical research papers I read, does support that it is theoretically possible to harm a baby this way, but there are no recorded cases of it ever causing death or serious harm, and the likelihood of Letby being able to manage it without being caught is implausible at best. To cause a sudden collapse, the amount of air injected would have to be massive, and a typical NG syringe for neonates only holds 60ml. It would have to be massive because most of the air pushed into the stomach via the nose or mouth escapes very quickly. Neonates routinely have upwards of 300ml of air removed from their stomachs due to CPAP belly.

Letby would have needed to use a minimum of 20 syringes of air in very quick succession, which is not only a difficult task in and of itself, but she would have do it in a busy neonatal ward with various nurses and parents wandering in and out without being caught.

The symptoms that led DE to air via NG tube are common in neonates, and they are caused by CPAP, Nasopharyngeal Airway (NPA), infection and bacteria, and resus. All of the babies had two or more of those things present when they started showing symptoms, and the medical notes don't show that the Drs noticed or treated the signs early enough, but they do show that the early warning signs were there.

When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras.

@MistressoftheDarkSide That sounds horrific. I am sorry you went through that. My view of the notes/Letby's demeanour is also coloured by my own experience, but nothing near as bad as you suffered.

When I was a carer, the first resident of mine (as in I was his main carer and on the days I was at work spent most of my time with him) who died was referred to the coroner because his death was unexpected, with no known cause, and I'd had paramedics out to him earlier that day who assessed him as not needing emergency care.

The first thing I said when I put the phone down after being told someone from the coroner's office might want to speak to me to clarify my notes for that day was, "I'm a murderer. I have accidentally murdered Bob. I must have overdosed him on morphine."

I felt ill for the two weeks it took for the coroner's findings to come back to us. My mind was constantly preoccupied with thoughts of Bob. Did I attend his calls on time? Was I busy doing something else while I was prepping his meds? Was there something I missed? Should I have fought the paramedics more when they said he didn't need to be admitted to the hospital? etc.

If it had gone on for much longer than 2 weeks, I could easily imagine writing things like "I did it. I'm not good enough. I killed him," because I felt like I had.

If it had gone on for two years like Letby's case, I would have been sitting outside HMP Durham with my case waiting for them to let me in.

A part of me hopes Letby is guilty because the idea of her going through that and being innocent is horrific. The same for the parents, I cannot imagine being told my baby died from natural causes, then murder, then poor care. They must be utterly broken, and they deserve a definitive answer which they don't yet have, imo.

Bob died of complications related to pneumonia, and the coroner found no fault in the care he received from myself or the paramedics.

Thank you x and I send reciprocal support for your experience, being in the cross hairs of any investigation like this is a soul destroying exercise at any level and is hard to come back from.

We grow up for the most part with faith in authority and systems such as the medical and legal, and fortunately a relatively few people get on the wrong side of it without good reason. However, when things do go wrong, it is often catastrophic and very hard to put the brakes on a juggernaut being driven by a collective.

It is very hard to navigate some of the mind bending that goes on. When you come up against outright lies, they will be painted as "clerical errors" or "misinterpretation" or minimised due to "good intentions". It is hard for those within systems who do see problems to whistleblow as they naturally have to weigh up the damage that will likely be done to their livelihood and reputation hence the principle of anonymisation. However, if one has raised concerns and then sometjing official happens, it's not hard to put two and two together in a professional environment.

When you look at the issue of expert witnesses, the cases of Waynie Squiers and Colin Paterson come to mind. They were following science and the establishment fought back. Roy Meadows and David Southall on the other hand once again were all about statistics and theories that blurred the lines between balance of probability and beyond reasonable doubt due to the leverage of naturally emotive cases.

I avoided the Lucy Letby case as I really didn't want to believe that no lessons had been learned from the carnage of previous MOJs. I only started looking into it when medical professionals rang alarm bells after the conviction. In my experience, it takes alot for that to happen. And I went back to the mechanics of the alleged "murders" and so much made no sense, and did not reach what I understood to be the threshold for prosecution.

Essentially anyone close to someone who dies from disputed cause could, by the standards of this trial, be convicted of murder based solely on circumstantial evidence "interpreted" by any self promoting expert and persuasive people with gut feelings it seems. That is not an acceptable standard for our justice system.

A part of me hopes Letby is guilty because the idea of her going through that and being innocent is horrific. The same for the parents, I cannot imagine being told my baby died from natural causes, then murder, then poor care

Same.

• Murderers generally use a single method to kill their victims. Letby allegedly used three different methods.
• The chart of who was on duty when the affected children died was not a complete record of who was on duty when all the deaths (suspected murder and/or other causes) on the ward, which should be the standard that was applied according to Chartered Statisticians.
• The air embolism in the stomach is not considered fatal and Dewi Evan’s finally agreed.
• The insulin levels in neonates are explained and it’s not murder.
• Letby wasn’t present when one of the babies died.
• The discolouration seen as evidence of murder was dismissed by the doctor who wrote the paper that was misinterpreted as evidence of murder.
• Letby did call for help as per an email from the doctor who later said she didn’t call for help.
• There was open sewage on the ward.
• There was inadequate care provided by under quality nurses.
• A large number of experts have stated in a detailed report that there were no murders. These experts said before they analysed the medical records that if they found murder or intent, they would state it.

That’s just off the top of my head.

There are numerous podcasts, reports, articles and analyses to be found that explain all of this.

So yes, she has been falsely accused.

BTW, Mark McDonald, her barrister, is not being paid to defend her.

I honestly have to wonder how anyone could actually think there is a single possibility that she is innocent.

See and I wonder how anyone who’s read anything at all of what has come out since the trial could possibly genuinely and in good faith be satisfied that there is nothing to see here. The issues potentially impact any one of us who uses the NHS or is subject to the British justice system. To still be claiming to be convinced the case was proven beyond reasonable doubt requires an agenda or you’re wilfully obtuse.

One set of parents had put in a calim against the hospital.

And just because

St Dewi or Evans. changed his mind about how (at least one of the murders) once during teh trial and afterwards in an email.
This is a man that went to the police saying that it was "his type of case" and that he had "never lost before", the same man that a judge wrote the to judge in this case and said that he fitted the evidence to the case and not the way that it should be.
One of the Drs that claimed that he was never called contradicted himself in an email.
One of the othe consultants claimed to have a drawer of evidence that he sat on for 12 months.

Not to mention the door acces issues.
That nobody eber saw her commit a crime/murder.
That the insulin theory is just that a theory with no proof.
Then there is the married Dr who was quite hapopy to throw her under the bus.
And that the investoigation ws not run properly from the get go
or that one of the people investigating the investigation had to step down due to praising one of the investigating officers.

The list goes on

And I have no idea whether LL is guilty or innocent, but there is a lot of "evidence" that just doesn't add up.

@worldshottestmom er... ok I'll try to answer.

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.

Obviously if she'd deliberately insulin poisoned or injected the babies with air etc. then she'd be guilty of murder. The question is whether we can infer that from the evidence we have, given that she was never directly witnessed harming any babies and everyone is working from notes and memories of events that happened years previously.

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.

All of the babies who died except one had a postmortem which found natural causes of death. We know that air can get into babies' stomachs when they have CPAP. Other medics have suggested that air via NG tube isn't a recognised method of murder and even Dr Dewi Evans has subsequently said it's not (despite babies C, I and P having air via NG tube as method of murder). The x-ray shown as evidence in the case of baby C was later found to have been taken before she'd met the baby so either it shows deliberate harm which must have been caused by someone else or it was natural. What it can't do is show that LL injected air into the baby the day after it was taken.

Dr Dewi Evans' evidence given was that some of the babies had air embolisms from air injected into their veins because of the rash they had (the Lee sign, taken from Dr Shoo Lee's 1989 paper). Dr Lee heard about this after the case and said it was incorrect. You get the rash in 10% of the cases where air is injected into the artery, not the vein. That's when he got involved and put together the panel which investigated all the cases. Their work now forms the bulk of the evidence put to the CCRC to have the case reexamined. Also, Dr Evans has never been to CoCH to determine whether what he's suggesting would be logistically possible and has never seen an air embolism.

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.

Insulin in the feeding bags is a theory put forward by the prosecution to explain the test results in two of the babies. It "had" to be in the feeding bags rather than directly injected because the readings continued when she wasn't on shift. The bags weren't kept (because it wasn't thought to be suspicious at the time) so there's no direct evidence there was ever any insulin in them, insulin amounts weren't really tracked so they couldn't say whether or not there was any missing and the proper forensic test to say whether this definitely was artificial insulin was never done. In one of the cases she wasn't there when the bag was changed (and it wasn't due to be changed) so, if the prosecution's theory is correct, she managed to pick a second bag that happened to be given to the same baby and only one bag because no others were affected.

What the jury didn't hear about was baby Y, who also had abnormal test results, but was later diagnosed with a condition that caused it, so it is possible that the tests didn't indicate what they were claiming.

The jury were told that the only way that these readings were possible was deliberate harm. Subsequent research has shown that that isn't the case.

Babies can absolutely dislodge their own oxygen tubes.

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.

No evidence if she had not done it? Well that's the disputed point. There's no direct evidence. The defence weren't allowed to show that other babies on the unit had collapses so they couldn't point to similarities. If you're cherry picking you can absolutely change whether someone looks guilty.

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?

You're literally saying here that she must have done something because there were so many cases. But how were those cases selected?

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?

Was she always there? Not for all the deaths or collapses on the unit. The shift chart only shows the ones she was eventually charged with. There were some other incidents identified as suspicious which were later dropped when it was found she wasn't there. They didn't go looking for another culprit for those events. The police/prosecution have not revealed what process they used in selecting some cases and ruling others out.

There are lots of reasons why she was more likely to have been there than other nurses. She had a qualification that allowed her to work with their most acute cases while still being a band 5 nurse, which made her cheaper than some of the other staff. She volunteered for extra shifts (including night shifts) because she was available and she was saving up to buy a house and she was more likely to be there when they were busy (as they were a lot during this period).

Statistically she was likely to be there because "there" was her place of work.

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.

Nope, really not the argument at all. I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. The question is whether deliberate harm was done to the babies by anyone at all. The medical experts who have come forward since the trial have said that they didn't receive the care they should have and in some cases should have been at a level 3 unit.

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 say unusual because it is possible the babies were deliberately harmed, but I think that if you came across these cases individually you wouldn't necessarily think that there was a single culprit because they are so diverse. It's atypical. I'm also disputing how they identified cases of deliberate harm vs sick babies just getting worse. The fact that there is seemingly no pattern to this makes me think that the doctors identified any incident where she could possibly be involved and they left it up to the jury to decide whether that was the case. If they'd known that there were other incidents that she wasn't charged with then the "always there" wouldn't have been nearly so impactful.

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.

I'm really not claiming she's innocent and definitely not saying that her mental state excuses any actions she took, only that the evidence presented does not convince a lot of statisticians and doctors that deliberate harm was done and therefore the convictions are not safe.

Also, I think you've misquoted me there. I didn't claim that "she was trying her best in a busy job". I said "she could have been doing her best in a failing unit and you could have had the same outcome." Meaning that if the deaths/collapses were caused by poor care, the babies would still have died even if she was not deliberately harming them.

Tbf you're here commenting in quite an emotional way too. What I'd like most for the families at this point is for them to have the truth of what happened to their children. Maybe this means there should be lessons learned as to why a serial killer was allowed to operate on a neonatal ward and there should be closer supervision or maybe it means that their care was inadequate.

I am also going to add in here that the consultants that should have been doing at least two rounds per day, were doing two rounds per week.

I'd like to add that there were deaths due to medical mismanagement and poor hygiene at COCH prior to Letby starting.

https://12kbw.co.uk/inquest-jury-finds-baby-olly-stopforth-died-after-inadequate-care-at-countess-of-chester-hospital/

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-4518212/Baby-deaths-Countess-Chester-Hospital-probed.html

Babies died while Lucy worked there, but when she was off shift

https://theconversation.com/experts-have-challenged-the-medical-case-against-lucy-letby-what-about-the-statistical-evidence-249221

Parents have reported similar incidents to Cheshire Police, but they refused to investigate because they were "outside of the scope of the investigation," i.e Letby no longer worked there, so it couldn't have been her.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/07/letby-police-ignored-other-baby-deaths-on-unit/

They'll never change their minds now they're too far gone into believing she's innocent that nothing will change that. She could confess on camera and they'd claim someone forced her into it! Some of them have basically admitted even if the CCRC upheld her convictions they still wouldn't believe she was guilty. It's more about them wanting to be right and prove to themselves they've got the right "instincts" at this point I think. Sadly they couldn't be more wrong.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Strange. Because most of us have stated the we don't know if she is guilty or innocent.
What m ost of us have said is that the evidence, system and experts are flawed and that the system should be robust enough to withstand scrutiny.

@FrippEnos yes but your mistrust of the system is based on your mistaken belief she's innocent. If you thought she was guilty would you be so worried about the system?

I don't know if she is innocent. As I posted. I believe that what the procecution provided was unsound.

If you thought she was guilty would you be so worried about the system?

Yes I would, the system is full of people that have been proved to be innocent that many thought were guilty at the time.

Also don't try and push your opinion as what I believe. .

Everyone living in the UK should be concerned about the way the investigation was mismanaged, the problematic expert witnesses, and the information that was withheld from the jury.

Our system does not work on the basis that the accused has to prove their innocence. The prosecution has to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. That has not happened in this case.

Beverley Allitt used more than one method to harm her patients. Letby needed babies to crash when she was off duty so she used insulin those times. She overfed baby G because she was in an outside nursery and LL wouldn't have been able to do much else to her as she was thriving and about to celebrate 100 days of life.

• The chart of who was on duty when the affected children died was not a complete record of who was on duty when all the deaths (suspected murder and/or other causes) on the ward, which should be the standard that was applied according to Chartered Statisticians.

We know Letby was on for the most collapses, this isn't in dispute. Even her manager who stood by her wanted her to undergo extra training due to being the person at the most incidents.

• Letby wasn’t present when one of the babies died.

One baby out of 13, is that it? One of the babies never even made it onto her unit so she didn't have a chance to attack that child. All the rest well she was on for 10 and had shortly finished her shift for the other two. Those are damning statistics for anyone.

• The discolouration seen as evidence of murder was dismissed by the doctor who wrote the paper that was misinterpreted as evidence of murder.

Discolouration Letby claims not to have seen despite other doctors and the parents testifying to seeing it. Shoo Lee's claims have also been debunked here-https://www.reddit.com/r/LucyLetbyTrials/comments/1raf7m8/full_transcript_of_profclarke_interviewrebuttal/

Open sewage doesn't poison, overfeed and cause air embolisms in babies, all around the same nurse.

• There was inadequate care provided by under quality nurses.

Yes Lucy Letby.

• A large number of experts have stated in a detailed report that there were no murders. These experts said before they analysed the medical records that if they found murder or intent, they would state it.

If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.

So yes, she has been falsely accused.

You can't possibly know that. Trying to summarise her guilt would be far more than a few bullet points and vague stuff like "inadequate care" which probably goes for half the units in the country.

BTW, Mark McDonald, her barrister, is not being paid to defend her.

It's the attention he gets off on. Probably why he identifies so strongly with the narcissist he's defending.