Lucy Letby

[kkloo]

New thread as the last one has filled up.

If you’re talking about the handover notes in her possession that didn’t relate to babies on the indictment - honestly, I can’t bear to think about it.

She could certainly have mentioned this. But she was clearly operating under strain and I'm sure there were plenty of things she could have said and didn't. I think we all experience this after interviews etc.

I suspect her barrister had to allow for information overload and make his choices. There seems to be no doubt, in any case, that she held on to paper.

We do know where the bank statements were - in her shredder.

And as for the 237 handover notes, as per my response to another poster - I really don’t want to think about why she had them.

But that suggests a sort of conspiratorial situation with them almost kind of huddled in a corner deciding which nurse to pin it on. How else could it have played out ? Each realises that it's looking bad for them, so they develop a narrative between them involving Letby ? While not actually openly acknowledging to each other that that is what they are in fact doing ? How? How did it come about.

We have evidence that all of her bank statements were shredded?

Do you have a source for this?

Not really, it just suggests wishful thinking and confirmation bias plus a really poor grasp of statistics.

It's worth bearing in mind that the notes she did have with indictment children's names weren't necessarily for the days these children deteriorated or died. And each page had several names. So over the years she worked - they start back in 2012 - she probably had the names of many, if not most, children admitted to the unit.

If she enacted some diabolical plot on what - close to 1,000 children - you'd really think someone might have noticed

I used to think Letby was guilty. It was odd but the evidence (particularly the insulin) was overwhelming, I thought.

Even when I believed this, I was surprised at how many purportedly intelligent people thought it was as simple as ‘she said she did it, so she did.’

I do think the notes are peculiar. I don’t think they are indicative of murder but it’s odd nonetheless and is the only question mark over this case for me. Everything else easily explained.

There are lots of comments about the handover sheets - I feel it’s less ‘why did she have them’ (because she worked in a hospital and you get one or more per shift) and more ‘why didn’t she get rid of them’ (disorganisation, didn’t get around to it, has a paperwork blind spot etc). I had loads. I read them and used them at work (four in a single day on one occasion), they go in your pocket, you start a shopping list on the back on your break, you write your next weeks shifts on the back, you write a work colleagues phone number on the back, you write the date of the Christmas meal on the back etc. When you get home you empty your pockets, put some things out for your next shift (pen etc) and everything else goes in the ‘didn’t get around to it’ pile. There it stays. And gets added to.

https://free-lucy.com/2023/10/07/handover-notes/

This is one explanation for the handover notes.

Another is what I've mentioned: Letby simply forgot they were in her pocket and filed them into carrier bags to deal with later (which is what she testified to and what hundreds of carers and nurses have also done)

Ask any carer or nurse if they've ever accidentally taken home a handover sheet or scribbled note in their pocket. If they say no, they're lying.

No - she was in more shifts when children died, so it seems that made them suspicious. There are good explanations for this. This was one of only two band 5 (cheap) nurses with the qualification for looking after ICU babies. She was willing to swap her shifts, work nights and work extra shifts. So she was often there when babies died.

When the lead consultant noticed this, he started to look back over deaths he had apparently accepted as natural and to get suspicious. Her manager explained it was about the shift allocation, but he insisted and spoke to the other consultants. Eventually they were all convinced. Two said they reached this suspicion independently but again, it was about the numbers.

Then they had their unit reviewed and were told their care standards were unsafe. They refused to accept that this was the problem, and, still based on the statistics, insisted Lucy Letby should be investigated by the police.

I think there are too many layers of coincidence in this case for it not to be suspicious....consultants just happen to single out a particular nurse...who just happens to be on duty during the deaths...and juat happens to have stacks of notes at home....and just happens to have written weird things in a diary...and just happens to be a bit of a loner and reportedly a bit arrogant at times...and just happens to be selective in her testimony ....and just happens to not seem to be overly vocal in protesting her innocence......hmmmm

Then then 'mementos' hypothesis is unfalsifiable, so it can't be tested against evidence. If a hypothesis can be fitted to any state of evidence (either absence or presence of correlation between allegations and her set of handover notes), then the fact that it could be fitted to what was found is uninformative.

How is there no doubt she held onto paper, other than the handover notes, post-its and diaries?

And your ‘suspicion’ about her barrister making choices is completely nonsensical. It’s not like Letby had to go round to the house in her distressed state to find all her paper collections, or in fact do anything other than say what she said in court anyway. The question about why she had the notes, and her answer to it, will have been very well rehearsed by her defence team and her barrister could have just submitted the evidence at the relevant time to support her testimony.

Let’s face it, it’s not like they were able to produce a whole lot else which supported her case - they would have jumped on an easy win like ‘well actually she had loads and loads of other meaningless collections of paper in her house too, total hoarder, see exhibit X’

Thanks, I don’t work in medicine so superficially it looks odd, I don’t think it’s indicative of murder but if many do it then it’s different I guess.

This isn’t quite accurate from what I understand but even if it was, weird coincidences have occurred in other cases where the defendant was innocent.

But they must have noticed a pattern to the deaths where there had not been a pattern before. If deaths were random and then suddenly ' clustering', isnt that a bit odd ?

I don’t think they are indicative of murder but it’s odd nonetheless

If you do an exhaustive search of any person's life, you're likely to find something which can be described that way. An interest in serial murder allegations certainly qualifies, so God help any of us on this thread if we are ever accused of a crime.

There's no doubt she held on to paper because the police removed thousands of (paper) documents from her home at her first arrest, and more (though they don't specify a number) at her second

Well, in such cases it must be absolutely horrible for the innocent accused person.

Not exactly - the consultants singled her out after noticing she was on duty for the deaths, because she was on duty for the deaths. That part actually isn't controversial. They said so themselves at the time and later

Vocally protesting one's innocence in the face of prosecutorial certainty doesn' get one very far, and can even work against you. A defence team's job is as much to manage their client in order to provide the best defence possible. Advice is often to put up and shut up because the legal experts have a better understanding of the court process than a lay person.

I've said many times on these threads - due to the adversarial nature of court proceedings, the truth is often a casualty to who has the better resources and the better performance. Too much was left unchallenged on this case on the defence side. I can imagine Lucy Letby wanting to vocally protest her innocence and having been told "good luck with that" because the defence could see how unfairly weighted the case was before it got anywhere near a court room. A strategy of mitigation might have been their favoured option.

One very odd ommission from the whole proceedings is any sort of psychological reporting, either pre-trial or post conviction. It's pretty standard practise in this kind of case. The silence on that front has been most peculiar.

Will any carer or nurse have accidentally taken home over 250, failed to dispose of them, and then made sure to take them with them when they moved house?

I don’t disagree. I do think those convinced of her innocence (including me) can be dismissive of the fact it was odd. That’s not me saying it’s murder but it is a bit weird.