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 😞

Or perhaps they were right the first time and the deaths were natural? Common cause things are common. Hooves are usually horses not zebras

The trouble with people thinking they spot clusters is that it’s very often not true. Remember all those people who thought power lines caused clusters of leukaemia in the 80s/90s. Well they don’t but lots of people thought they had statistical evidence that they did. Lucia de Berk in the Netherlands is the case that makes me worry that LL is innocent.

If the cluster isn’t real or is due to bad care then what really have you got? Just a load of theorising and assumptions.

Insulin- might be due to incorrect tests.
Air injected- at best a theory with very little evidence that this ever happened
Falsified notes- evidence of being a bad nurse but not of murder
Collapses- in tiny premmie babies sick enough to be in NICU. Happens all the time.

Did Harold Shipman have any of those factors though? I know he was deeply affected by the death of his mother?There are cases of the perpetrator being the perfect family person, or somebody you would never expect. LL mentioned somewhere that her parents were suffocating. She was their only child who they doted on; perhaps expectations of the "perfect daughter", was an image she struggled to withhold, an image on the surface that didn't match what was going on beneath. That alone obviously would not turn the majority of people into a serial killer, but the combination of certain personality defects/disorders/genetic predispositions, nature, and nurture might just do that.

Nobody knows but LL, who I hope confesses if she did do what she has been found guilty of for those poor families.

Or is LL so far removed from her true self that it all become a dream like state where she doesn't know, doesn't recall, or convinced she couldn't have done this because she is a "perfect daughter/friend" on the surface? She was accused of murder, yet sat there at the parts of the interview that would involke the most emotion robotically saying "I couldn't have", "must have done", "if they say I did", "I don't recall", and "no comment." Was LL masking not only to the outside world, but also to herself? The interviews showed to me somebody that wasn't in touch with reality

As said the deaths didn’t go to coroners and natural causes accepted at the time - no one disputes insulin present from exogenous source in two babies - who put it there if she didn’t?

Bad care or not she was there - then the cluster pattern stopped when she was removed

I agree. Christopher Jefferies was the first person who came to my mind when I read your post and there are many more 'oddballs' who've been unfairly accused or / and convicted.

It is ridiculous that people still believe that LL being 'odd' is one factor why she could have killed those children. A contrasting argument could be that because Letby ticked a lot of boxes (she had some friends, she had a social life, some of her colleagues liked her, her parents are still together, went to university, was a mortgage payer by the time she was 25). As one of the DCI described her, she was "beige'. But none of this is part of the picture why she's possibly innocent of those murders.

Yet at the time when the results came back no one appeared to assume they meant anything and just ignored them.

They didn’t do insulin tests originally

That’s precisely what’s disputed. There were high insulin levels found on a test in 2 babies but that test is not accurate enough for a forensic setting as it can cross react and show false positives. Another baby (Y) with the exact same results on the unit was later diagnosed with a condition that causes high insulin naturally so their case was quietly dropped.

There is no evidence that anyone administered any insulin to these babies. It may just be an incorrect test result. There is no forensic evidence eg of contaminated bags and no evidence of insulin going missing. If this is the best evidence they have it’s not great.

In other ‘medical serial killer’ cases where insulin was used like Beverly Allit they actually found the syringes at her house. Plus the levels were a lot higher (remember both the ‘insulin’ babies survived her alleged attack so she was pretty shit at killing them by what would usually be a very reliable method).

They did, and the lab phoned the hospital and suggested the sample get checked for exogenous insulin, but as the baby had recovered no one bothered or seemed to be concerned that the lab were suggesting that.

Sorry details are a little hazy but I'll try to find the full details of it.

There’s a few interesting podcasts out there, primarily by a gentleman whose name I’ve forgotten (!) who attended every court hearing of the entire trial. Some of the lesser known facts about LL’s behaviour and way she reacted in court were even more dubious to be honest. When you hear of all the evidence pieced together, it does appear she is more guilty than not.

I’ve read they didn’t test at post mortem and that it’s unlikely that the two babies tests two months apart are very unlikely to both be wrong

"unlikely" is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

What is factual, is that the tests do not meet forensic standards.

But they started up again when she was on the other shift.

Those babies didn't die so there was no post mortems.

I thought those two babies survived when they changed the care - removed the IV and both had tested for insulin from outside source - I know everyone says shoo Lee is saying it’s not right but in actual fact what he is saying is you can’t extrapolate that result to other babies who died from other things - rather than disputing the insulin tests reliability in those cases and that it was definitely LL - he is not saying what he’s is saying who

I agree I was thinking of Chris Jeffries too and also Kate McCann who was treated abysmally by the press for not appearing the right kind of devastated about her daughters disappearance

Yes I know - they recovered when treatment changed and they both tested positive for the exogenous insulin

Right but you said they didn't do insulin tests originally?
They did do them, the lab advised that they get the samples tested because it was possible exogenous insulin.

So to your point that no one disputes the insulin presence in 2 babies, my point is at the time then no one at the hospital seemed to think it proved that, or else they would have got the samples checked further.

The interviews shown on the Netflix documentary were shuffled around. In early interviews, she tended to answer questions readily. By the later ones, she had obviously had the standard legal advice to offer no comment

I think your theory could be interesting in other circumstances, but in a police interview, saying "no comment" is just normal behaviour.

I was responding to a poster who read like there were saying they did do them and no one thought anything of it

Yes that was me?
That's true, they did do them and no one at the hospital thought anything of it. If they did then they would have got them re-tested.

That’s true that they changed the care but if she really wanted to kill them why not just use a bit more like Beverly Allit did?

The test was an immunoassay for insulin and C peptide. The test lab itself states that their test IS NOT reliable for determining if the insulin is exogenous. You need a different kind of test to properly determine that. It could easily be a false +ve and they must know that because they ignored the result at the time clearly deeming it not significant. Even if the test is reliable the C peptide reference range is not agreed upon in neonates. There is no definitive proof that any babies were injected with insulin. It could easily all be false positive test results and theorising. I have carried out ELISA antibody tests myself and cross reactivity is a common and well known cause of false results

’ Dr Ismail states that immunoassay tests can produce "rogue" or misleading results due to antibody interference, which he found to occur in roughly 1 in 200 cases—and possibly as frequently as 1 in 100. He describes relying on a single immunoassay for a criminal prosecution as "reckless". He argues that a second, confirmatory test (typically mass spectrometry) is "absolutely vital" to distinguish between accidental interference and actual poisoning, but this was never done for Child F or Child L. Dr Ismail noted that the insulin reading for Child F was so high it should have "set alarm bells ringing" and led to immediate retesting. He pointed out that the lab's own test slips even advised sending samples to a specialist lab in Guildford for follow-up if poisoning was suspected, a step that was ignored.’

It points to how utterly shit the care must have been that they did not investigate that result despite being prompted to do so. If a patient of mine (I’m not a paediatrician obviously) had that result I obviously would not jump to thinking someone poisoned them deliberately but I would worry if there had been a cock up with mislabelled syringes or something which is quite entirely possible. It would be a significant clinical incident that needed reporting and investigation. Unbelievable that this was just ignored. What’s their explanation of that??

I read he was talking about adults though and that weakens it - and adults with relevant conditions

plus it’s AFTER the trial

Inference being much more rare in neonates and not likely to concur in both these cases 2 months apart

On the contrary to reckless courts often accept the one test and that the mass thingy is gold standard but the tests that they did were reliable care - they were treating clinically in the moment not forensically at the time

alarm bells did ring - just not in the way of murder at the time and they focused on changing treatment

it’s not just about the test though it’s the test PLUS
when Care was adjusted it ceased - IV stopped situation resolved - baby recovered
No Repeated hypos
no disease then present to explain the raised rates
So it’s also what happened around those tests

and apparently labs often make recommendations for further tests - they weren’t suspicious at the time and the situation resolved itself

See with everything it can be represented in diffeeent light - that’s why it needs to come out at the trial not after

I've never seen the argument that interference is rarer among children. But premature babies have their own patterns anyway because their systems aren't adjusted to life outside the womb yet. Data on their reactions is part of what the international expert witnesses are presenting. This presumably will be new scientific evidence.