Lucy Letby

[kkloo]

New thread as the last one has filled up.

It would be interesting to know what was starred.

What would that tell us? There are many reasons to mark a day besides "I killed a baby that day".

Just so we’re clear: all the asterisks and the initials and the texts and the xxx and the handover sheets etc are all completely by the by in the context of zero medical evidence of intentional harm to any of the babies.

It seems not much was starred - most of the babies' names weren't in the diaries at all. From the defence closing speech:

• The diary. I know this is a bit of a gallop through these items, ladies and gentlemen, but they are there for you to look at. The diary. We saw some entries where some of the children's - by no means of all of them - some of the children's names featured in 2016. Ms Letby had two diaries: one in 2015 one in 2016, so covering both years on this indictment. If the diary entries are relevant, let's test the theory, purpose of a trial. If they're relevant, if the prosecution are right, why are there no entries in the 2015 diary for anything related to this? Nothing. You could miss that but that's the fact. The absence of -- the evidence or the lack of it.

• Why not? Why is there not an entry every time things happen if that is what the entries are meant to link to? And there's nothing like it. In fact, when we come to diaries, there's no reference in them to [Baby A], no reference to [Baby B], no reference to [Baby C] or [Baby D], to [Babies E & F], [Baby G], [Baby I], [Baby H], [Baby J] or [Baby K]. So as far as theories go, that one doesn't really stand up to scrutiny, we suggest. Whatever her reasons for what she records, the point is it doesn't stand up to a scrutiny through the lens of what should be there if the prosecution are correct. Most of them aren't there.

Looks as if she may have started marking notable incidents for reflection after she was moved to day shifts, since presumably she would need to discuss her well-being with her supervisors before moving back to night shifts. Or she was just noting for broader reflection as stated.

https://lucyletbyinnocence.com/defence-closing-full.html

Reflection is a massive thing in nursing. You are constantly having to write reflections for courses or for revalidation. My work notebook is full of asterisks or boxes to remember things good to write reflections on. If Lucy was being retested on her skills that would have most likely included many reflections on particular things.

Just things like was it starred retrospectively, was it starred in real time, was it starred with different pens. There's maybe no way of knowing, but things like that could possibly give some indication of whether she was marking things for reflection or for some other reason.

Looking up families that she became close to which often happens in ICU could be interpreted as her caring about how they were getting on. It could be interpreted as intrusive by the families and not something I've ever done but I can understand it.

That's the problem with the legal system: it allows for reasoning like, "rash + unexpected collapse + failure to resuscitate is not enough to infer air embolism, but that plus Letby's presence plus facebook searches is", and that's then presented as a medical diagnosis, and given the presumption of credibility we give everyday medical diagnoses.

What could it have meant? Many of the indictment babies weren’t listed so it can’t have indicated murders.

Maybe it meant “days I had to hide in the loo for a quick cry”. Who can possibly say?

Well, at the end of the trial that police still somehow believed that LO in her diary meant something sinister, apparently. Nurses all over the country then pointed out LD means "long day", that is 12 hour shift instead of eight hour.

Only two pages of her diary were shown at the trial. You can see them in this article, which is from the time when police were still talking about the secret code.

You'll notice:

She seems to have written down the names of every child she was assigned to (three shifts a week).

These are weeks when she was caring for indictment babies so their names were written down.

She is meant to have tried to murder babies L and M - the twins - on 9th April, but the little asterisk is on the 8th. She is meant to have murdered babies O and P but only one has an asterisk. It looks as if the police showed the court a grand total of one "suspicious asterisk"

This is much weaker stuff than I had realized . I don't think it is relevant at all.

https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/lucy-letby-secret-code-diary-baby-murders-DWzf6j_2/

She used them to look up the babies families. They have the names on. She couldn't facebook stalk them easily without that. There was one mum with a particularly unusual hard to spell name and apparently Letby couldn't spell it from memory. It was thought she used the handover sheets to facebook that mum. They were probably trophies too.

It shows how much actual investigating Cheshire Police actually did, doesn't it? The secret code, universally known by healthcare workers across the country. Literally all they had to do was ask any nurse or HCA within the NHS what it meant.

It's probably one of the reasons most nurses and HCAs think she is innocent; they must have all been screaming at their TVs every time it was mentioned on the news.

I haven't used FB in years, but is predictive text not a thing on there? Usually, when searching a database like FB, as you type, it starts suggesting the rest of the word based on values in the DB.

That argument has never made sense to me because surely, all she would have needed to know is an approximation of the spelling, and FB would have done the rest via predictive text and/or suggesting similar values.

There's maybe no way of knowing, but things like that could possibly give some indication

Is that the stuff of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, on which we should stake multiple life sentences?

Maybe but she was so prolific it was probably easier. And remember she would facebook them like a year later sometimes. How would she remember all the parents of dozens of children she'd harmed?

Why do you think the handover sheets were trophies? Most of them had nothing to do with the babies who died and collapsed, and only some of the babies featured in the handover sheets.

Using them to check the spelling of a baby’s surname doesn’t indicate malfeasance, does it? (Yes, we’ve established that she shouldn’t have had the handover sheets, but we’ve also established that having them isn’t a smoking gun.)

Can you explain how someone bright enough to create a murder method that has never been seen before anywhere in the world, is not documented anywhere, and is known not to cause harm when it occurs naturally, whilst simultaneously being dim enough to leave "trophies" stashed around her house for years after the police started investigating her?

Also, smart enough to commit 230 trophy-worthy crimes without leaving any trace.

The trouble is that the impression has been cemented in some people's minds that Lucy Letby was operating undetected from the moment she hit the wards at Shipman scale, and that the indictment babies were just the tip of the iceberg such was her cunning until the brave COCH doctors uncovered her dastardly plot. Even if the majority of the babies on the handover sheets or in the diaries survived, and without incident, some people will insist that something probably happened. Guilt by association. Everything about her is painted as sinister, she was "hiding in plain sight" as it were.

I'm surprised her cats weren't referred to as familiars by the press.

None of the babies had hard to spell names. You might take a couple of guesses, like is that Kirran or Kirren (made up examples). But the surnames were all printed when she was first arrested and they are not complicated at all.

(Just to note, there's a court injunction against naming them)

Well, it's part of a build up of information, like any case. And yes it has to be beyond reasonable doubt. What would happen anyway, if rhe courts were to look at it again. Anorher trial or just release ? I dont kbow how it worka

The police did think her cats' names on her post it notes were suspicious at one stage, I believe, but they sorted that one out!

She searched for family members of 9 babies 31 times, so 3-4 searches per baby. Not quite the obsessive stalking of all the parents that you’d imagine from the headlines…

Oh my. Many a true word and all that lol.....

It's quite simple-they meant too much to her to get rid of.

So much that they were stuffed in bin bags in the garage? Please never apply for any kind of job involving law enforcement or psychological evaluation.