The investigation of Lucy Letby on Netflix

[TheRozzers]

Anyone watched it yet? It’s a really excellent documentary with loads of footage of her police interviews.

You see the police asking her questions about those ‘confession’ notes.

I won’t put spoilers in the OP but I’d love to hear what others made of her responses.

Mid way through I thought she’s 💯 guilty but by the end I’m really not sure. A lot points to her being innocent.

I feel for the parents of those babies so much, the uncertainty must be horrendous 😞

Surely that was the explanation - they marked a child being very unwell. What am I missing here?

Am I right in thinking that this expert wasn’t the only one who testified for the prosecution though? He was the only one mentioned in the documentary but I thought that there had been several experts involved in her trial?

I agree it’s weird, but not beyond refute. I’m not sure I could name every item in my household as things accumulate and aren’t used very often. Also it wouldn’t be wise to use a home shredder as clinical notes are taken away and incinerated. I thought that using the diary for self reflection was plausible as was writing down intrusive thoughts which a therapist advised her to do. I hope there is a re trial, but I can’t see how they could do it in this country without the jury being biased from what we’ve seen in the media

There were six. A couple of them just gave technical evidence neither side disputed. The others read and were guided by Dr Evans's notes - they didn't review independently.

So then how is this a case of scapegoating? If the hospital had already declared that there weren’t any concerns, why would the consultants still be trying to blow the whistle? If the deaths were down to their malpractice, they’d keep quiet wouldn’t they.

The reason they kept raising the alarm is because they were genuinely alarmed by the number of deaths and believed something was wrong and that Lucy was responsible. I honestly can’t see a team of consultants all plotting to pin the blame on someone like this unless they knew it was her!

There are other things missing from this documentary. Accounts from parents of the deceased babies that Lucy seemed to take pleasure in the after death process and made inappropriate comments. Other parents saying her behaviour was strange leading up to the deaths also. Consultants saying her behaviour was strange when trying to resuscitate. Why would everyone say these things about her if none of it was true?

I was wondering why so much was pinned on to a Dr’s interpretation of another Dr who wrote findings on air embolisms back in the 80s. Surely, medical knowledge has increased in the past 40 years and there were more medical experts who could be called upon. It seems even now that no healthcare professional can agree on the causes of death.

But what about the actual consultants who worked in the department? The ones who said they’d never known cases like these where they were unable to resuscitate? The ones who said they couldn’t understand why these babies had died. Surely they’re also medical experts?

And these documentaries are infuriating as they always seem bias in one direction. There is a mass of evidence (be it mainly circumstantial) in this case but these programmes seem to pick and choose what they show. I really do not know if LL is to blame and I don’t think anyone else can know with all certainty either, but there is a lot more all laid out than the media tells us. The lengthy trials were testimony to that.

Air embolism in infants is an interesting one, because there really hadn't been much written between 1989 when Lee published his first paper and 2024 when he published his second one. There were some brief case studies of single cases, but not many, and lots dealt with different kinds of air embolism.

It's not really something people specialise in: it's usually a tragic accident which you can treat if it's known soon enough, but the child will either die or recover very quickly. So you aren't calling in specialists, and I think you'd genuinely struggle to find someone who would describe themselves that way. Most practitioners will never see one. That's why the prosecution at Lucy Letby's trial was using irrelevant examples (adult deep sea divers). Her lawyer may well have been right when he tried to argue that there wasn't enough settled science on the matter in 2023 to debate rigorously in court.

Yes that makes a lot of sense.

No - I can see that makes sense superficially but the consultants' words and actions at the time don't bear it out. They saw no problem with the deaths worth mentioning in their postmortem reports or to the coroner until after the last two deaths, when they decided there had been a pattern linked to Lucy Letby. Their lead consultant declared in early 2016 that there was no need for further Inquiry into the first three. The consultant in charge of the fourth baby to die persuaded her parents not to have a postmortem because there was nothing to learn from one. They did not report any of the collapses as alarming through the systems designed for this purpose, even after emails reminding them to do so.

They were obviously looking for cases in hindsight. They were also interested parties, since they knew they had been accused of failings in care in many cases by external reviewers. The court was not told this because the judge did not allow the relevant reports to be discussed. They shouldn't be treated as impartial judges in this case at all.

We are missing why.She knew exactly what they represented but couldn't explain why she felt she needed to mark it. There was clearly some thought process at some time as to why she felt the need to mark it but she couldn't explain her need to do it.

Having watched a bit more of it, it's also extremely suspicious that she couldn't recall a certain child but she was so affected by that death that she marked it and even searched the parents on Facebook. If she is innocent, she is very good at acting guilty.

Why would she pretend to have forgotten the child, though? If she'd murdered them, she would expect to be asked about them. If you look at trial reporting, other nurses were the same and needed to look at their notes from the time to jog their memories.

Remember that she knew consultants were accusing her of harming children by September 2016. Her union told her. She knew when the police enquiry opened in summer 2017. It was national news. So this had been hanging over her for two years. It's no surprise if she made notes to try and work out what she was being accused of, which babies might be part of the investigation. I think that most people would do that

That's exactly why it's weird. Surely she did do that and her legal team would have been made aware of the evidence and make it known to her. How could she still have not recollection of who the child was?

The Thirwall Inquiry has specific parameters which are not, as you must know, the same as a criminal trial deciding guilt or innocence. I have been giving my opinion on the safety of the conviction and how the criminal trial unfolded. *edited to fix spelling error

Did she have a legal team at this point? I suppose she wasn't in a position to look up information at the police station,even if she did.

I was referring to her denying recollection during her trial.

She knows she’s going to be away for a very long time…

At the trial she said that she could not remember much of events, not that she couldn't remember the baby at all. She acknowledged that she hadn't been able to remember her during her police interview. If you look at her cross examination I think you'll see that she is being asked for a level of detail that would be impossible so many years later. She had not been this child's one to one nurse or responsible for her care at any point

https://lucyletbyinnocence.com/transcripts/prosecution-letby-baby-d.pdf

I wonder if anyone reading the transcript thinks they could have performed better under that aggressive cross examination
.

You would be afraid of that, if you were being arrested for murder, yes - but it says nothing about guilt or innocence.

This is utterly bonkers. People love their pets. People miss their pets when they are away from them. People turn to their pets for comfort in moments of distress. Regardless of what else you might think, cuddling your cat when you’re in the middle of a pretty traumatic event is normal, not some sort of indicator of guilt.

To be honest, I think by that point she had no trust in the NHS, police, press or justice system.

Irrespective of her guilt or otherwise, I agree with her.

She recalled well 17 children she was questioned about but she specifically said no to one particular child and it drew gasps from the courtroom. That was also the child the prosecution say they had the strongest amount of evidence for. So her memory would have been jogged pretrial.

If the medical evidence is unsound, which it looks like there may be grounds to pursue, then her conviction is unsafe.

I think it’s way more bonkers to start hugging a cat when you’re being accused of murdering 17 babies,

What she did in court was to confirm that she hadn't had any memory of the child at time of police interview, but had helped her memory by looking at notes since. Other nurses said the same at various points. I don't know why people would gasp at that or why anyone should see it as sign of guilt.

You can see these comments in her defence examination here, second page on
https://lucyletbyinnocence.com/transcripts/defence-letby-baby-d.pdf

I think Netflix may have oversimplified the facts here, quite drastically

I suppose it was a strong case from the prosecution in terms of the child having an unusual rash that was noted at the time (unlike the others) but it was a weak case in terms of putting Lucy Letby on the spot and counting out pneumonia as cause of death. The international expert panel has been able to explain the rash. So yes I hope it will all be cleared up eventually, without too much exaggeration from Netflix and the like.