Louise Woodward The Killer Nanny. did she do it?

[HeckinMiffed]

This was such a huge case when I was younger. Anyone else watching?
I always thought she didnt deliberately kill the baby.

I watched something recently on Netflix. I think they concluded that the evidence would not hold up by today's standards. It was all circumstantial. She could have killed the baby but then, so could either of his parents.

She was convicted of manslaughter and served time in prison.

Whatever happened. It's sad that it's being dragged up again. She has her own kid now.

You only have to Google to find out that Louise is now married with a young child of her own. I don't think she has name changed or anything and I think she maintains her innocence. We will never know what really happened I expect.

I think my demeanour would also be 'off' if i was the accused in a murder trial (a baby's murder) in the states aged 19

I remember at the time I really thought that the parents had injured the baby, and then Louise had a hard morning trying to console him because he had this head injury, and the shaking him part was her trying (wrongly but in a panic) to revive him. And that it had been taken out of context. But as with all of these things we will never know. But this documentary seems very one sided.

Yes, a quick Google shows it's all in the papers again because of the tv programme, presumably because it was 25 years ago.
She's married with a DD who must be 7 or 8. You can imagine the daytime TV shows trying to get hold of her for their sofas.

@Chipstick10

There was another documentary about this a couple of months back snd I was surprised to see how many Americans thought she had been framed. They thought she was innocent. There were many who demonstrated outside the court. Just on her demeanour alone I thought she was as guilty as sin

I don’t think you can go on the defendant’s demeanour. Too often, and I can only think of cases involving women, the media or general public decide a woman is guilty based on her behaviour or apparent lack of emotion. Shock, immaturity, just being a bit unusual to begin with, are all potential explanations.

Tonight's documentary appeared one-sided because it is focused on the prosecution. Tomorrow's focuses on the defence so I assume everything will seem more balanced after that.

I remember this and never felt the truth came out (and never will)

I don't remember anything about the other little boy Brendan though. So sad.

I think although 25 years have passed we know better so we do better. As pp said she wasn't a qualified nanny. She couldn't cope.

She didn't even ask if the baby was OK that's very telling. If you knew a child was injured and took to hospital you wouldn't inquire to see if the child in question was OK?

She always struck me as immature, self centred and sulky - but she was only 19 and from what seemed to be a fairly sheltered background. It is telling she did not ask about the baby. And also when she was found guilty and cried 'how could they do this to me'. But to be honest, at the age of 19 and in that situation, I don't think I would have appeared any different. I certainly don't think anything premeditated happened, and the statements made about the evidence would not hold up now. It certainly seems feasible that an immature 19 year old who want to have fun rather than look after a baby could do something like what was claimed.

I thought there was lots of ambiguity around the case. It looks like this program is trying to imply she was guilty after all? I

Hi what channel is this on?

Sorry just read tomorrow will be the defence. Hopefully we’ll get more balance then.

Channel 4

Is it 3 nights in a row? Was hoping I could watch all tonight

She was taken in as an au pair, then expected to work very long days. At the time it was pointed out that they were exploiting her as cheap childcare.

The baby had a skull fracture so someone at some point must have injured him either deliberately or accidentally? He couldn’t have done that himself, or died through an illness etc.

What sort of person employs an unqualified teenager to look after their baby for extraordinarily long hours?
Those parents were wealthy professionals and could well afford a qualified nanny. Au pairs are not supposed to work even full time hours. If those parents were not rich and upper class they would probably have been accused of neglect IMO.

I have no idea if she is innocent or not but I really can't bear it when people decide on someone's guilt or innocence just because of photographs or short TV clips. There are so many well-known cases of women who don't behave 'correctly' when accused of crimes and are consequently judged to be guilty by the court of public opinion. Unless you have sat through all the evidence in court you really can't know for sure. We have no idea how we would behave in such strange and awful situations and there are also many people who have unusual reactions because they are traumatised or autistic. This has no bearing at all on whether they have committed a crime or not.

@Bananarama21

She didn't even ask if the baby was OK that's very telling. If you knew a child was injured and took to hospital you wouldn't inquire to see if the child in question was OK?

He said ‘she didn’t ask me’ that doesn’t mean she didn’t ask someone else.

@chestnutSquash

What sort of person employs an unqualified teenager to look after their baby for extraordinarily long hours? Those parents were wealthy professionals and could well afford a qualified nanny. Au pairs are not supposed to work even full time hours. If those parents were not rich and upper class they would probably have been accused of neglect IMO.

I agree with this. A friend of my Mum's daughter went off to do this in the US at a similar age and I remember thinking they have no childcare experience and it being a strange choice.

@TheVolturi

I think the police man that's talking in the red t shirt is rather dramatic. Would the person doing the autopsy really slam the table so hard that the poor dead baby lifted up off the table a few inches? I can't imagine that.

I thought the same. He wouldn't need to explain what a 'lot of force' was.

I don’t remember what I thought about it at the time but I did take an interest as we’re around the same age.
Watching this evening’s episode and now with career experience in investigation and analysis, what struck me was a lot of confirmation bias - they decided straight away that she was guilty then set out to prove it, rather than gathering all the evidence and properly assessing it before pointing the finger. As PP have said, a lot of it wouldn’t hold up in a case these days, and maybe wouldn’t have over here back then. Suspect this documentary is just going to put both sides of the case and then leave the audience to decide for themselves what they think happened rather than drawing any actual conclusion.