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.

Of course she is she guilty!

Can the people who think she is innocent explained what they think happened? Do you seriously believe the parents who have 3 other healthy children and are doctors themselves somehow hated this one baby of theirs to the pound that they fractured his skull (yet no one noticed) and then the symptoms only showed several days/weeks later when Louise had him in her care? That makes no sense and is completely implausible.

She is guilty as sin and nothing in that documentary convinced me otherwise. She was an immature party girl who got annoyed at the parents and the crying baby and slammed his head against something hard and then shook him (maybe - giving her the benefit of the doubt- to revive him?). There is absolutely no doubt that she killed the baby.

And I don't agree that everyone in the documentary comes across weird. The only weird people are Louise herself who was giggling on the stand and throughout the trial (wtf was that about?!) and her mother who looked young enough to be her sister.

Apologies for all the typos

And the only time she showed any emotion was when she was found guilty. She couldn't bring herself to even pretend that she cared about that little boy

@XelaM I’d put the giggling/lack of emotion during the trial down to extreme stress/hysteria honestly, and trying hard to hold it together in the stand then breaking down after the verdict. I’m not sure any of us would “act natural” under those circumstances.

@XelaM 'there is no doubt' rubbish, you know nothing. Obviously lawyers and an experienced judge had enough doubts to send her home. But you think you know better 🙄

The giggling was nerves imo ,I recently rewatched this and all four I'm.not convinced she did it ,I used to be friends with someone who was Au pairing in Boston whilst Louise was on trial ,her theory was that the toddler brother hurt Matthew by accident ,she watched the whole trial tbh I don't think we will ever know what really happened.

Lawyers as in her defence lawyers? That's their job. Everyone is entitled to a defence. Although even one of her defence lawyers changed her mind about her it appears.

The jury found her guilty of murder and the judge did not acquit her but changed the verdict to involuntary manslaughter - something that the rule were not asked to rule on (due to the defence's odd strategy). This still means she killed the baby, just that it wasn't premeditated or intentional. I think that's right, as she probably didn't intend to kill the baby. She still banged his head against a surface hard enough to cause a skull fracture that killed him (in addition to the shaking). To suggest that he already had a skull fracture for weeks/days before but no one noticed and suddenly in her care that day he showed all the symptoms - is completely implausible and was rightly rejected by the jury.

the jury was not asked to rule on*

I was surprised to see this thread back again, but I am still of the same opinion that I was back in January when the thread started. We'll never know what happened.

That’s pretty tendentious as an account of the verdict and appeal verdict, especially given the later statement of the Stanford paediatric radiologist who was the prosecution’s key expert witness that he would not give the same testimony today, given huge impact of advances in MRI technology on suggesting other causes for what used to be seen as ‘shaken baby syndrome’. Other experts have also cast doubt on the safety of many successful prosecutions on the grounds of shaken baby syndrome.

@XelaM how do you explain the old injuries the child had which pre-dated the time Louise was there?

I understand why you are emotional but emotions are not facts.

her theory was that the toddler brother hurt Matthew by accident

That's interesting. Similar theory to the JonBenet case (with an alleged subsequent cover up by the parents so they didn't lose both their children)

Who can say what parents might do if they know one child died accidentally but they are at risk of losing their others? Which obviously some people speculate about that other famous case too which we're not allowed to talk about.

I think I read that a previous au pair had complained about the toddler, s behaviour and was one if the reasons for leaving
Obviously we will never know and its just a theory but toddlers by their nature are hard work and need lots of supervision, Louise clearly wasn't the best au pair in the world and she was very young and immature if she left both children alone unsupervised ,well anything could have happened.

Yes exactly @x2boys. I remember when I was young seeing a toddler swing from a pram handle and tip the pram up and the baby nearly fell out. Toddlers having tantrums can be pretty strong too. Throw jealousy in there and it's a recipe for disaster. We won't ever know what happened but if some believe Louise dropped the child then it could just as plausibly be the older child that dropped him.

We'll never know what happened. But it's never quite made sense either that the judge reduced the sentence so much. There are young mothers serving long sentences for murder in US prisons because they confessed to shaking their babies. Might actually deserve our sympathy more?

I can remember the details but Louise herself chose to discount the involuntary manslaughter so went for the higher charge of second degree murder where they either had to find her guilty or aquit her I think a lot of the jury felt that although they believed something had happened they were not comfortable with second degree murder and would have Been happier with involuntary manslaughter, but felt they had no choice to find her guilty
I imagine the judge must have felt compassion for Louise she was 19 in a strange country with a murder charge ,and he wantrd to send her home ,honestly who knows what really happened?

True. The fact she was British massively changed the game it was her saving grace.

The facts are unclear even till this day. In fact I would hard call them "facts". There was even a theory suggesting it was the parents themselves!

We just don't know. But Louise has something about her I don't trust and the parents should not of left their kids with a young girl with lack of experience.

I agree the parents shouldn't have left their very young children with an inexperienced immature au pair whom they had concerns anyway ,wether Louise was culpable in anyway though i don't know ,negligent maybe .

Exactly. What facts?! The shaking of the baby is completely secondary to the fact the he had a major skull fracture that eventually killed him. The defence's theory was that the skull fracture happened long before he was in Louise's care, but he only collapsed from it in her care. That is completely implausible. Even one of the doctors at the end of the documentary said that symptoms appear almost imminently after the event. He couldn't have functioned as notmal for weeks with such a deathly skull fracture and no one noticed until that day. That's a totally implausible theory and the jury rightly didn't buy it. The old injury to his wrist (that wasn't even mentioned during the C4 documentary) is nothing like a massive skull fracture! Kids can easily get injured in many ways, but that's not the same as having a huge skull fracture that os incompatible with life! Just beca He had an old minor wrist injury doesn't mean he was crawling around with a skull fracture for weeks unnoticed. The parents have 3 other kids who are all healthy and there doesn't seem to be any plausible reason to suspect they abused their baby but blamed Louise.

I also agree with PP that she comes across very cold and strange (even in the Panorama interview after she returned to the UK).

And the whole incident with her female lawyer is bizarre! I don't believe there is smoke without fire there. Both the police officer and the journalist said she told them Louise was a lying piece of work (when under the influence). People often say what they think when drunk. Of course she had to deny it later to save her career.

Yes that was really weird. I wish they had looked into that more.

But none of these things are 'facts' either. You think she is 'guilty as sin'. Yet people who gave evidence at the time have since changed their mind. I don't know how you can be so sure. Yes it's emotional but there's a lot of innocent people in prison due to emotions rather than evidence.

I watched a documentary once where a woman died and a male friend of hers wrote down in a spreadsheet every time he had spoken to her. His behaviour during the police interview was extremely bizarre. But it turned out he wasn't involved. Just because people act in a strange way (especially nervous, giggling, self-centred young girls) does not necessarily mean guilt.

I see what you're saying, but the expert who said he would now not give such categoric evidence during her trial says he can't be sure about the shaken baby syndrome. I understand that the shaken baby syndrome something experts disagree on. What still hasn't been explained though is the massive skull fracture that was the actual cause of the baby's death. She may not have shaken him as hard as the experts thought (and she admitted to shaking him from the beginning - just not as hard and for as long as the prosecution said) but what about the massive head injury?!? How did the baby sustain that?

They don't have to have "hated" the baby. We all know there are countless instances of loving parents suddenly losing it, whether out of extreme tiredness, due to external stresses, or whatever. There is also the possibility of accident.

I don't think LW's behaviour in court was due to anything other than nervousness and stress.