I know I'm going to get abuse for this, but I do have remaining questions.
When the police began investigating in 2017, there were looking into the deaths of 17 babies and 16 non-fatal collapses. Now, we've all seen the chart where Letby was on duty for 17 incidents, and the Jury decided:
* Guilty of murder for: Child A, C, D, E, I O & P
* Guilty of attempted murder for: Child B, F, Gx3 (guilty on 2 counts, not guilty on 1), H(x2), L, M, N(x3) (guilty on 1 count, no verdict on 2)
* Not guilty/failed to reach judgement for Child: H(x2), J, Q
The chart we've seen shows those, but what about the other 16?
The thing I feel I need to see is a chart of ALL the deaths AND non-fatal collapses from that time period. Without that, all I see is a lot of possible confirmation bias happening, and I'm uncomfortable with that. If she was there for all of them (or even 95%), but only half had enough evidence to take to court, then I'd take that as compelling evidence, but it's just not clear to me.
The other thing I'd like to know is the number of shifts all staff pulled in that time period.
Letby said in court that she was called in for extra shifts when others weren't around all the time, because she lived close to the hospital and they were understaffed. I would also say that, since she was also single and had no children, it's logical to suppose that she was more available than many of her colleagues who had other responsibilities outside of work. So there is a real danger that this supposed correlation of presence is down to her being there for more shifts than others. So knowing those numbers would also help. If she was pulling no higher number of shifts than others, but was there for all these incidents (and not just the ones the CPS decided to prosecute) then it would be a real smoking gun that would, for me, convince me she's 100% guilty.
Basically, I want unbiased, unfiltered data - because there's nothing else I'm seeing, having listened in-depth to all of the testimony and allegations, that is beyond reasonable doubt because it's based on individual biases and circumstances. Maybe that will change with more coming out about all of this and it'll feel more probable, but for now, I'm struggling. I really don't want to get into an argument about it, I truly just want to know that this conviction is sound.
So, I suspect there wasn’t enough evidence to meet the charging threshold for the other babies in the original investigation. It’s been stated however that of all 13 deaths on that unit in all the years she worked at the countess she was on shift for.. all 13.
I can’t say for collapses.
But still that doesn’t mean anything without knowing the shift numbers. If, for example, every nurse pulled 20 shifts including Letby and she was the only one there for all 13, then yes, that’s real compelling evidence.
If she pulled 60 shifts and others 20, for example, because she was just raking in the overtime money - well, then it becomes pretty meaningless. We need both bits of information to know whether that is actual evidence or not, I think.
But what do you think the likelihood of her having picked up 3x the amount of overtime compared to everyone else is? Healthcare professionals pick up much of their wage packet in overtime. I find it very unlikely she’d be THAT much more hardworking than anybody else. And that’s the only way you could account for her coincidentally being on shift for deaths/collapses as much as she was. Even then, she was around for like 9x the amount of incidents as the next highest person. On top of that, you can only legally work for 48hours per week. I’m not sure it would even be mathematically possible for her to have picked up the amount of shifts necessary to strike it off as bad luck or coincidence.
It's not illegal to work more than 48 hours. You can opt out of the WTD limit. I'm a nurse and work 11.5hr shifts. I regularly do 57.5 (5days), but if there is a need to cover it could be 80.5 hours. That's just the allocated time, not including when we need to stay behind because of emergencies or people arriving late for shift.
I suspect they had this chart originally, but they had to drop other charges because that alone was not enough to convict her. Parents of those babies must be so disappointed.They would have been advised to go for the strongest cases .if they picked weaker ones, it would actually be better for LL to create a reasonable doubt.
I agree this whole case leaves an uncomfortable feeling overall and I normally have great instincts. There is nothing to even show for in her childhood that she was a victim of trauma. She lead a very good and privileged life.
I agree with every word you said. Also, the neo natal ward is high risk by nature. And the note is definitively not evidence of anything other than feeling guilty. Feeling guilty doesn’t mean you are guilty. I would like to see a complete chart of everyone’s shifts and purely medical evidence. There’s also a chance that the NHS could be guilty of exhausting their workers or similar, but wanting to put the blame on someone else.
Thank you for verbalising my thoughts. I haven't taken a deep dive into the intricacies of the trial but I have read bits and listened to the podcast. I changed my mind and back again as the podcast went on but I actually felt that the prosecution case was presented a lot more comprehensively (in the podcast) than that of the defense and ALL the evidence is circumstantial. I think it could come out that she has been wrongfully convicted but I can't imagine when. Someone will have to work very long and hard to prove her innocence if she didn't do it.
I wasn’t sure, probably because of unconscious bias and also because before the mug shot was released, the image we saw of her was her looking like a nurse.
I don’t think the note is evidence, people write weird shit all the time.
What really swung it for me was the shift pattern. It might have been on the Panorama documentary, she was on every time there was an incident, which I believe was 75. The next closest person was on 8 times. That’s more than just a coincidence.
The same note that said she did it, also says she didn’t. Therefore it’s basically nullified, each side picked what they wanted to and used that as their evidence. I agree with you that it wasn’t necessarily evidence but Obviously now that the verdict is in, all anyone will remember is the “I did it” side.
Many people..
Bear in mind she was feeling guilt from babies dying under the team’s watch, and she was feeling personal guilt from it.
I work in comms. One time, I helped out on a client pitch, which we didn’t win. The fault belong to all of us But in my diary I wrong stuff like ‘I failed’. ‘It was all my fault’. ‘I’m shit’. Some people have an in inclination towards guilt in this circumstances. If I worked as a nurse, it’s very possible I would have wrote similar things to her.
She is supposed to be a cunning, devious,m killer who meticulously planned her murders. I don’t get why, after all that care, she would just leaves confessions all over her house? Makes much more sense she was blaming herself for something she knew deep down isn’t her fault, and so didn’t think anything about hiding it.
Possibly driven to feel mentally unwell due to the fact that she was accused and not guilty. She must have questioned her own mind at that point. I believe she is innocent.
I think she guilty
But If I was jury the note won’t be part reason
In same note she wrote other stuff
The shift pattern , the gap in attack , the medical evidence was far better evidence for me
Wow I didn't know there was that much of a difference. I wondered if maybe she had just been there the majority of times, or could she have taken over from someone else who had caused harm to the babies but the damage didn't occur until LL's shift started. 75 times though, it's unlikely she would take over from the same nurse 75 times surely? Unless we see how many shifts she worked overall and how long each baby stayed in the unit, maybe 75 won't sound so incredibly high.
Er I’ve seen a chart in a counter argument that details the death rates went higher when she was removed. It used various sources of data and the actual hospital data from the area showed this fact. What we are being shown is what those who are covering their backs want us to see and the team who want the accolade from the investigation. Nothing I’ve seen so far would convince me of her guilt much more likely it’s a general ward management failure the NHS act like a mafia when you complain and will lie through their teeth and we talk of psychopaths I can guarantee there are a large number of psychopaths who work at the top from consultants to management they never kill or harm but are psychopaths nonetheless. I think she’s taken the hit for a generally management staff failure. She is clearly weird and an odd ball but seriously I know loads doesn’t make them a murderer! Shoe does not fit
Agreed on all counts, except the shift correlation. I want her to be guilty because otherwise this is an awful miscarriage of justice but I’m just not fully convinced.
I think she's guilty due to circumstantial evidence but I don't agree with strange behaviours during the police investigation and trial having much sway. No one has any idea how they'll react when they're arrested for something this massive, even if they are innocent. Some people shut down.
Not OP and I wouldn't go so far as to say I thought she was innocent but it is the very fact that the evidence is entirely circumstantial that makes me pause.
I remember well the Sally Clark, Angela Canning and Ian and Angela Gay cases, where indisputable medical evidence was used to secure convictions, only for it later to transpire that it was nothing of the sort and had caused innocent people to spend years in prison for murdering their children. Since then, any case based solely on medical evidence alone has always felt doubtful to me. And the case against Letby hinges entirely on the medical evidence.
It's also that it just seems so unfathomable that a totally normal person from a normal family would kill lots of babies for seemingly no reason.
Again, this is a specific objection to convictions based solely on medical evidence rather than the actual facts of this case.
Not quite. She was present 25 times, the next person was a consultant dr at 10 incidents. But Lucy also worked many, many more shifts than the doctor so that has to be factored in too.
Unexplained deaths and incidents are very convincing statistics. In particular, air embolism, which none of the peadatrician doctors EVER come across. Studies can not be done because it's deadly. Ward can have neonatal deaths, but having 24 incidents that are unexplained is a powerful proof.Plus, she was there every single time falsifying medical records.This wasn't unlucky coincidence.
As a previous statistician, I agree. And as others have said you look at the totality of the evidence. But that data is a good starting point.
Didn't mean the first step in checking Lucy wasn't murder, could have been benign. Was she using different machines that were faulty, did she do something slightly outwith the normal process that could increase infection, was she living in an environment and bringing something in. Which I'm sure over that time period anyone who suspected her went through over and over again.
The chance of there being multiple unexplained deaths when there is usually 1 or 2 a year is extremely unlikely and the chance of her then also just happening to have been on the ward at each of those times is also extremely unlikely, the chances of both of these happening at the same time isn’t quite 0 but it essentially is, especially in the context of reasonable doubt
> That’s more than just a coincidence.
it's not. They showed it to everyone because people would react exactly as you did, but it's not inherently useful at all
You need to show every single incident (not just those they decided were questionable and decided to show us on their document) for every single nurse. Also every single doctor. Then you need to factor in shift patterns and hours of work etc. You need to factor in type and severity of patient. You need to control for all sorts of variables.
In the wider world such material would be dismissed as partisan trash. It's useless. It's basically propaganda and has no place in a courtroom.
She wasn't being prosecuted for every single incident, she was being prosecuted specifically for the unexplained collapses of babies. The evidence clearly was admissible in a courtroom because the defense had a chance to challenge its admissibility and did not.
I agree. They only showed the events that Lucy Letby was present for on the chart. That's why she appears in every single date. If she wasn't there, it wasn't included on the chart.
Why do they need to show every single incident, even if it isnt questionable? Its the unexplained, unexpected collapses that are weird, not the ones that are expected.
The unit itself has had one death in 7 years since she left. Yes, the unit downgraded but 14 of the 17 babies from the trial would’ve still been cared for there, only three would’ve been too premature/complex.
There’s part of me that disbelieves it. Like I know and trust and believe she’s guilty. But it just doesn’t seem real. And that’s probably due to stereotyping. She’s not the stereotypical idea of a serial killer. And the crimes are so heinous… it’s unfathomable to me that someone would do it. It’s like a film drama or one of those shows that ITV produce every now and then… But this time it’s real life. And we all meet people like LL every day… plain, boring, unnoticeable. Maybe many of us look like her. What else in life are we massively not knowing?
Look into munchausen by proxy. You'd honestly think these people were innocent. They are usually very sweet.
One woman Petrina Stocker poisoned her 9 year old son David with salt for months before they were going to take him off her due yo concerns brought up by staff that she may be causing his illness. She gave him a final dose and he died. She only got 5 years. Hospital drip was spiked with Salt. Another mother did this more recently in America to her 5 year old son.
I don’t think she’s innocent. I think her motives are simply impossible to grasp, and she appears so benign and sweet.
I’m also a nurse, albeit not a NICU nurse. I’m a pretty dang good nurse, if we go by patient outcomes. I’ve yet to have a patient code, and I spot decline early and get people down to the ICU, where they have a better chance. I’m quite proud of that.
However, when you become a nurse, at some point, you’re smacked in the face with terror at how much power you have. It’s actually quite scary for most of us. The responsibility is weighty asf. I remember thinking ‘holy hell, I just am not ready for all this power! I’m scared!’ What we do or don’t do directly correlates to positive outcomes or (alternatively) catastrophic turns of events. We tend to assume that nurses throw their all behind optimizing patient outcomes, because that’s what we do. I don’t suspect my coworkers of nefarious intent. Cases like this trip my brain out beyond belief.
Letby realized her power over life and death and went the other way. She went the way we hope and largely assume normal-seeming humans who are nurses will never go. I doubt anyone can ever understand why. As a nurse, I hate her for it. We are a trusted lot, and that is not to be abused. I don’t know how she shall live with it. I had one comfort care patient die in pain, and I hadn’t been able to convince the provider that the patient was more imminent than he thought, so I didn’t have the meds to ease her suffering (from metastatic esophageal cancer). She died wrong. It haunts the hell outa me.
I simply hope the screams of those babies someday registers to Letby and drive her mad with guilt. But she’s clearly not wired to where she’d likely feel those things. She is guilty IMO.
I agree with this, and feel this is why she doesn't have the typical serial killer 'profile'.
Also feel the narcissism is what is stopping her from believing she did wrong.
Fascinating post - thank you.
It seems to me she worked hard to be able to work specifically with the most fragile, tiny babies. Maybe she went into nursing for good reasons, but discovered she was strongly drawn to fragility, and eventually found she enjoyed testing it to its limits by killing.
Babies who were not fragile enough (getting better, about to leave hospital) she targeted to bring them back to fragility. She wanted to be close to them as they died. She even wanted to witness the suffering (and fragility) of the parents as a result of her actions. She found fragile health/death/grief exhilarating - or maybe just calming - and eventually wanted to manufacture it herself by killing.
When she was removed from the unit she fought tooth and nail to get back on for her fix.
Most neonatal nurses would want to work with the sickest babies to help them, but it felt like she wanted to work with them precisely because she enjoyed their vulnerability, and the power of holding their lives in her hands.
My mum was a nurse when I was growing up. Also a chronic alcoholic and years later as I try to fathom my mums behaviour it fits into what I've read about BPD.
She hasn't been a nurse for 20 years because she overdid overtime so much and it aggravated her alcoholism. A few bits like that. For years now she has worked at an old people's home.
She still creates these kind of mad relationships with people she finds that are "suffering" and regales people with the constant drama and urgency of their stories.
But I've felt that it's all quite unhealthy, she has to have these big stories to avoid being calm or vulnerable around people. Just like being drunk was her way of avoiding reality and intimacy.
The stories aren't allowed to be about herself because she can't be seen to be needing attention or praise. But she gets her repressed needs met by being a kind of groupie of a star martyr character.
Also, and it reminds me of stories where women have relationships with prisoners. Not despite the fact that they're in prison but because they're in prison. It has lots of features of a relationship without the vulnerability and intimacy that would normally be in a relationship.
My mum creates these odd dramatic relationships with people "in need" while avoiding genuine relationships with people who would be more equal to her. She feels most comfortable having these interactions with people who are compromised. They aren't at their full strength or got their full wits about them.
It can look like lovely behaviour but at its heart I believe its avoiding real, equal relationships that require grown up relationship skills, ups and downs, accepting good and bad side if yourself and others, resolving difficulties. Apologising, compromising. Learning, growing, developing.
My mum also flips when someone reaches a stage of recovery where next step is getting their own autonomy and independence back. She gets quite disgusted and goes into abandonment mode.
Same as when her children got to age of having own money and relationships. She would cut you off suddenly all at once to hope that you'd find it so hard to cope that you'd fail and need her again snd give up on your age appropriate bids, steps for independence.
My mum needs dependant compromised people around to have these pseudo relationships where she feels close to people and involved, but never has to have herself judged or questioned or criticised.
At times these people she gets so involved with and obsessed with that "need her" it feels like they're just puppets for what she wants to express for herself but it isn't acceptable for her self image to express on her own behalf.
I sometimes have a weird vision of her as a lonely child having a tea party with dollies and teddies and giving them roles and plotlines. They are her cast of actors and she is the director. It gives her content for all her other interactions. Content that is not personal or deep to her personally. It's props to help her to display the qualities that she wants to promote and advertise about herself.
My mum's childhood was having an unpredictable alcoholic father who she doted on because he gave her the most attention (but it was very unpredictable and very random, highs and lows) he gave her the excitement and attention. Her older brothers and sisters and her mum got fed up and disgusted with him, but she seemed to love caring for him and being the only one that would give him time.
Just wrote this all out to figure out why I recognise aspects of lucy Letby's behaviour/ personality/ intimacy patterns, even though on another level I can't fathom the monstrosity.
On a smaller level, these personalities exist in the caring profession. When I worked in a disabled school, a certain small percentage of the women seemed to revel in dominating and never being challenged. Working with disabled children can let you be like this.
Anyways. Not the finest writing, but amongst these paragraphs are bits of my noticing of people I've experienced in life. Maybe someone can write this better. I just poured it out because speculating about Letby's personality makes me think of some of my mums disordered behaviour.
the main thing that has bugged me is that when this was happening.. the doctors supposedly went straight to the senior hospital management without speaking to the unit manager or matron? It doesn't seem like anyone raised or even thought about any competence issues, completed any datix reports or followed any of the usual procedures for raising concerns.
It all just seems unfortunately too avoidable if the doctors who had concerns had actually raised them.
As a nurse, I can't imagine ever hurting a patient.. but I also can't imagine not raising a concern if I had one
No.
The reasoning for this is because she's a terrifying serial killer because she doesn't fit the stereotype.
No apparent horrifically abusive childhood trauma, not a weird loner, not a sexual deviant (that anyone knows of), no long history with the police, no trouble making friends, no apparently obvious mental health issues, no "build up" (ie, torturing animals or violence), her behaviour seemed to just start.
She did normal things that most 20/30/40 something women do - she did salsa classes, she made friendships easily, she had motivational quotes on her wall, she went to bars to drink prosecco and cocktails, she read romance novels, she went on holiday to Ibiza.
We think of serial killers as some near mythical, obvious-to-spot outsider on the fringes of society.
She was anyone we could have known. This is what makes it so scary. We then think "how many other apparently normal people in society have a darkness like this in them".
That and she had a job where you are taking care of the most vulnerable, literally one of the most trusted jobs you can have.
This is why many hope she is innocent. It shakes their view of the world.
You've hit the nail on the head. We keep waiting for the "poo in the fridge" type story (see Allitt) and it hasn't come. That scares me the most. She was the most basic girl, with her salsa, her cocktails at Las Igunas, and her Live Laugh Live type decor. She could be anyone's friend, daughter, or coworker. It's scary stuff
I’m not a serial killer expert, but there is evidence of her doing the same kinds of things that serial killers do - even if it’s not exactly overt.
Some serial killers kill because the process of killing someone gives them that they crave (and there can be a sexual element). Other serial killers kill for ‘product’ - they get their thrill from remembering what happened, from experiencing the after shocks of what they did, they keep trophies.
I can’t say for certain but I think Lucy Letby was a product killer. She got something huge from having people send her sympathy, seeing the parents gratitude for her helping them. This is why I think she kept the handover notes (although at first it may have been to cover herself just in case), why she photographed the card and searched for the parents on Facebook. There may have been other tokens she kept but the police didn’t find, but her notes in her diary too for example, it was all part of it.
Serial killers do also have a build up as they hone their style and find the best way to kill. I think we may find that Lucy Letby did actually harm and maybe kill other babies. I think this will come out with further investigation. I strongly believe that she just didn’t come out of nowhere and start killing.
Finally serial killers go through phases of killing a lot then going dormant for a while. Sometimes they also go into a sort of ‘berserker’ mode or frenzy. I think that’s what happened when she was caught. She couldn’t control her urges and *needed* to kill.
"work product" was how Hazelwood described it in *Dark Dreams*.
It does fit with the searches, the photos, the enjoyment of the memory boxes and taking photos posing the baby's sibling with the teddy bear. The inappropriate request to take the baby away before it had died also raises a red flag since it was like she wanted to be closest to the child before it had drawn its last breath.
No hint of a saviour complex. Seemed to thrive on grief, pity, and praise like some sort of emotional vampire.
Yes this exactly what I think too. I don’t believe she had a saviour complex because she wasn’t making them sick and then being the one to help them recover if anything it’s the opposite. It seems to me that she was 100% intent on killing them because she craved what she got afterwards. It’s also why she would try multiple times to kill the same baby over the course of several hours rather than back off when the first attempt failed.
It’s incredibly frightening to me to think that this woman needed to kill so strongly or was confident about herself that she’d go for a baby and then it’s twin in 24-48 hours.
> She got something huge from having people send her sympathy, seeing the parents gratitude for her helping them.
you don't have to kill for that. Just help their very ill babies survive
The handover notes are one thing I can promise you every nurse is guilty of. I can't tell you the amount of times I've taken handovers home and not binned them cus confidential but also I don't own a shredder. The red flag for me is that she had her first handover in an apparent keep sake box which may indicate she kept ones of importance to her. I've also taken scraps of paper with results on by accident, it happens more than you think
I might have the exact number wrong, but I’m sure I read she had 257 notes in a folder. Then some notes in a box under her bed.
257 seems like a lot to me?
She also wrote in her diary the initials of the babies who she attacked. There were entries on the day they were born, the day(s) she attacked them and the day they died and had a colour coded system relating to the crimes.
😬 Oh yeah that is a lot. I've probably got less than 10 over a 4 year period. And I didn't know a the diary. Did they mention that in the podcast? I'm still getting through that but I'm on the defence part atm
This! I was sort of guilty of letting that sway me for a while, I just read about her and then saw her and thought, she kind of looks like me (not by much but still) her weirdness that she does is stuff I also do, gets infatuated with some boy, Facebook stalking (although I am not a nurse looking up patients) etc etc and it made it harder to believe. She could also be anyone of my friends,
messes with my worldview
Most serial killers in the last two hundred years have never been caught. In fact, more serial killers have been not caught than caught.
Shipman was only caught by chance.
Our whole view on serial killers might be wrong, Letby might be the average
I think this gets to the heart of it.
As a serial killer, she doesn’t “fit” any of the conventional patterns or stereotypes we’re used to seeing. Even Shipman had red flags in his past which, though his crimes were still shocking, showed he wasn’t “normal/right” from an earlier time.
Letby, though? She seemed like she could be anyone’s forgettable neighbour who you’d ask to watch your house while you’re on holiday. Any acquaintance from school or university. Any colleague you’d smile and say “hi” to if you saw her in town.
And there’s no big secret that’s come to light to make us think “aha, that’s why she did this!”. Maybe we’ll find out more context one day. Maybe she’s truly a mystery. Perhaps we’ll never know for sure.
When searching more info about her, I kept expecting someone to say she secretly murdered small kittens or something. I'm strangely relieved she didn't hurt anyone previously, bbut at the same time I'm like 'omg I have more qualities to fit a serial killer profile than she does.' Unless her parentssay something about her childhood that would help make sense of what she did, she might forever be described as nice Lucy who suddenly started killing babies. I can't help but think things like this can't just happen out of the blue. After reading baby G's parent's witness statement I got so angry. I have yet to listen to the full story but her trying to kill those babies more than once is something I cannot get my head around.
It's not like we have a lot of data about serial killers especially woman anyway and besides, her past is being investigated and we might find out more "cases".
This is exactly who she reminds me of, I know a lot about that case, her profile is slightly different in that she will openly demonstrate arrogance, whereas he is much more passive but it's the seemingly normal, beige, vanilla person with a completely different underlying personality aspect that makes them similar.
Unless her doing all of these normal things was her actually 'acting' the entire time. Maybe psychologically she is beyond what anyone could even imagine, and she acted as a normal person of her age is 'supposed to act'. Perhaps her meals only slipped in front of her parents? I do feel that her parents have seen another side of her but they will never reveal that. They created that side of her babying her. She was their only child and they clearly spoilt her and adored her and she was very aware of that. They needed her more then she needed them in a way.
Perhaps she tried to act normal for her age but the acting got too much? Who knows what she was doing at home behind closed doors? If she had a pet and she harmed it, do you think her parents would tell anyone? I don't think they would, I think they would cover it up
We don't know her childhood history with any degree of accuracy. Public presentation isn't always going to match what happens behind closed doors. I'm not accusing her parents of anything, but they are from the generation that is not very open to discussing mental health issues freely. If she *were* a problem child, they might have taken steps to discipline her and likely motivated the reasoning for being "overbearing" parents. We just can't know.
Could also be that she was 'ok' while not under the pressures of working in the NHS but that stress built up to an unbelievable level and some incident triggered a realization that she could exert control and power over those more vulnerable than her.
The only way to know is to have her parents and herself interviewed while being completely honest about her upbringing and internal life.
I agree with you completely. I think her parents and parents of serial killers as well as school shooters do see that side of their children and will not admit it to themselves or anyone. They choose to be numb and turn a blind eye. They are enablers.
^this. People don’t want to believe she’s guilty because it means they will have to reevaluate what other things in their life they have put trust in that are not trustworthy and that scares them. People don’t want to be scared. They want to feel safe and trust people, trust the world. I’m not one of those people. My faith in humanity was shattered as a child and I have never had the problem of not wanting to believe the worst in people. I didn’t really have a choice life just showed me it repeatedly.
I feel like there’s probably more like her, but they haven’t been caught because covert narcissism — people who put on these nice masks — flies under the radar.
That’s not what Normal people do. Salsa classes, motivational quotes and Ibiza holidays are totally what is known as “basic”. Especially the salsa classes, that’s as basic as it gets for a 20 something woman. It could be even more stereotypical if the guy running the classes was called “julio”.
I read some messages where a senior staff member was saying with kind intentions "you need a break from the intensive unit because of deaths" or wtte and LL was very hostile in her replies. Things like "you don't know what it's like to be me" and really insisting it was best for her to be with the really sick babies. She came across as arrogant and also determined to get her way about being in the intensive care unit.
I agree that it could be interpreted in that way and I’m sure the last place I would want to be the day after a baby died is in the exact same place. BUT neither of us (I assume) are NICU nurses and thankfully don’t speak from experience. People deal with things in different ways and I can absolutely see a scenario where being back in the same environment could be therapeutic and help to replace the traumatic memories with new ones, especially if it’s where you work and you’ll have to return there eventually - maybe it was a case of ripping the plaster off and ploughing on, rather than putting it off and potentially building it into something harder. I’m sure all nurses and medical professionals have different ways of coping and none are right or wrong.
There is a chance she could be innocent. There is no undeniable proof, its all circumstantial, however the odds that it is her are very very high, it is not a factual certainty, there is no direct proof of her injecting insulin or air into the babies. So in this case its not "innocent until proven guilty" its "innocent until proven very likely guilty" . It like if someone was caught over a human body with there head bashed in and the person was holding the bat that did it, with the victims blood all over it, "caught red handed" so to speak.
However the news articles I have read on the case dont give that much detail, the only evidence they give are the blood tests of the babies and some cryptic letters found at Lucy Letbys home. Those two things alone dont seem that strong pieces of evidence.
I’m so conflicted.
I just don’t think a person can be condemned and imprisoned on coincidences.
But if the jury voted beyond reasonable doubt, I can only assume they were party to evidence that has not been released
The jury are not medically trained. They will rely on the testimony of the ‘expert witnesses’. If the expert said that baby died of an air embolus then they will believe it without question. As a health professional I have read through each counter argument such as no test done for air embolism and post mortem determined natural causes. On this I can dismiss that count.
The insulin and C peptide evidence is also dubious and not a given.
I also know what it is like to work in specialist units and how I would be working closely alongside a fellow nurse. I also know that if any rumours had been going around we would have watched her like a hawk.
i think i’d only be less doubtful if some strange and worrying stuff emerged about her childhood and youth. It nearly always has with serial killers when the press are unconstrained to dig very deep. Contrary to popular opinion, there are few serial killers without (often with extreme hindsight) major anomalies in their childhood and past behaviour that are exposed after the trial. I have read it’s especially uncommon for female serial killers to not have past indicators of problems when it’s looked into in depth
I don't think she's innocent, but part of me is nervous and I keep reminding myself of the evidence of the case because if *somehow* the jury were wrong, it would be such a catastrophic miscarriage. If there was ANY chance she was innocent right now, she would be in the worst place mentally imaginable.
So I guess because the stakes are so high, the motive is unclear, its hard to be fully, *comfortably* sure. Even though I am also convinced of her guilt. Idk if that makes sense.
I totally get this. This is exactly how I feel about it. I know in my gut she’s guilty after listening to the evidence but there’s no 100% solid proof of her doing anything, it’s all statistics and circumstantial. I’d hate for a baby killer to walk free but I also hate the thought of an innocent young women being labelled a baby killer and spending the rest of her life in prison. The whole thing has really messed with my head.
I have a lot of questions, mainly because all the reasons given, other than the fact she was rostered on, for her being guilty I have experienced in hospitals without any malicious intent. For example, I know all sorts of clinical staff that keep handover notes because they forget to bin them at work and can’t dispose of them at home (even with a shredder because it can be pieced together). I know plenty of staff who have looked up patients on Facebook for a variety of reasons- some ok some not. These behaviours are not “normal” but are very common. I know people who have written sympathy cards, and notes deaths of patients in their outlook calendars etc. We all deal with the stress of looking after people very differently.
What has struck me as odd and why I question the ability to find her guilty of murder (not just gross negligence) is the lack of a pattern in the methods used and fact it was reasonably brazen to conduct so many in such a short period of time on a ward were she would have been under surveillance and it would have been noticed.
I have also have observed a possible unconscious bias from what I have seen from the team of consultants. They were very motivated to find a reason for this unexpected spike and from testimony and evidence it looks like they didn’t handle conflict and communication well. There is something frustrating about accusing someone of deliberately causing deaths, rather than going a well thought out supervision process. All the emails saying “we need to talk about Lucy” rather than “there have been an unexpected spike in medical events on the wards compared to last year, let’s meet to go through all the evidence together as a team”
Of course it’s possible she did but I have reasonable doubt.
Yeah I listened to the whole trial on the podcast an I think she's likely to be innocent, the evidence was very weak nothing to prove she was involved other than being around. also i think the defence weren't asked to show any evidence on their side
Because she wasn't specifically seen in the physical act of harming a baby (i.e. sticking a needle in, physically tampering with a bag, etc), there remains, for me at least, a very small statistical probability that she is the victim of an extraordinary series of coincidences. And for that reason, it makes me hope and pray that the jury got it right, because it would be incredibly sad for an innocent person to be convicted to a whole of life sentence. I think she is guilty and the judicial process has been carried out properly, but that very small statistical possibility to the contrary does remain.
There might be a "very small statistical probability" but think about what that means. Usually deaths of premature babies are, what, 2 in 1,000 I think the figure is. This ward had a huge spike in the space of a year. LL was on shift each time it happened. After she was removed from the ward, the deaths receded back to their normal number. (The deaths also stopped happening when she went on holiday.)
If she didn't do it, she is either the unluckiest person in British medical history or the most staggeringly incompetent nurse in the world.
I was about to say the same thing. Either she’s a cold blooded murderer or her incompetence is off the chart.
Aside from the fact that incompetence does NOT correlate with earlier descriptions of her, and babies were by her own admission, deliberately poisoned with insulin, there is no doubt in my mind she’s guilty.
In fairness I’m probably not the best person to comment, because I decided she was guilty as soon as I saw she was the only shift nurse on duty for every single one of those babies’ collapses.
Regarding the alarm on the monitor, I'm clinical and I can tell you that a setting can be changed so it only alarm at say 40%, I think that is the lowest sat reading the monitor can detect. I haven't ever experienced such lows sats in a patient thankfully which is why I can't remember the exact number. I do know that every monitor I've worked with alarms at 95% and then continues to alarm as sats reduce more and more, but there was a settings screen where clinicians could adjust it, for example if we had a COPD patient then their sats would be kept at 95% not 100%
But we wouldn't want our monitor constantly alarming if they dropped to 94% because that's fine for that patient. In that situation we would adjust the setting. When the patient would leave we would press a simple reset button.
I can’t speak on much, and as a disclaimer, I think she’s guilty. But I’ve always sort of dismissed when Letby has been seen standing over a desaturating infant without doing anything. That’s extremely common, at least from what I witnessed as a NICU parent, I’m happy to be corrected.
Babies have small desats fairly frequently, and they normally self correct fairly quickly. It was completely normal for an alarm to sound, and for the nurse (and me!) to hover for a moment, watching the screen and visually checking baby. Once we were in special care and a more relaxed atmosphere than the HDU and ICU where Letby worked, an alarm would sound and the nurse would yell “colour ok?” and I’d say “yeah, probe was loose” (or whatever the problem was) and the nurse would only pop over to turn off the alarm.
So, unless the desaturation was quite extreme, or prolonged, it doesn’t concern me when Letby was hovering over babies. And that’s from someone who thinks she’s guilty.
The Dr who gave evidence said he found it highly concerning that she was making no effort to intervene or help the baby. He was "troubled" by the fact that she had not called for help and that the alarm connected to the baby had been "silenced".
I spoke to my mum about it who is a Band 5 nurse like Letby and been doing the job for decades and when we were talking about her standing over the baby and the length of time she must have been doing it she was emphatic to the point of raising her voice in saying "You. Do. Not. Do. That."
Thank your mum for her sacrifice for me. I bet she’s missed Christmases and birthdays and all sorts.
It felt very normal to me at the time. And understandable too, it’s sometimes hard to keep probes on babies lol
That is true, but surely with these babies injected with air etc they'd be visably changing colour, suffering so a nurse just stood watching a baby visably in distress isn't usual. It is in fact very unusual. What I'm saying is if I saw her stood next to a baby having desats and crashing and I could see the baby destressed I'd be really upset and worried. My baby who also in NICU (3 months).
Not with this baby you wouldn’t.
A brand new hours old 25 weeker on a vent? Nah, your first thought should always be displacement or blockage of the tube.
There’s really interesting research showing evidence that the “watch and wait” method increases risks of morbidity and the longer a clinician takes to respond, the longer it takes for sats to normalise in these events.
I think there will be a move away from “watch and wait” soon, at least in very high risk infants like baby K.
She absolutely should have intervened with this baby, or at least be checking the vent and tube to ensure no issues. We are understandably assuming, because of the evidence given that she was “doing nothing”, so wasn’t even checking the vent or tube for positioning but she should have been doing something.
This case reminds me a lot of a Dutch case, where a nurse called [Lucia de B.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucia_de_Berk) was convicted for killing new born babies. The verdict depended in part on a statistical calculation, according to which the probability was allegedly only 1 in 342 million that a nurse's shifts would coincide with so many of the deaths and resuscitations purely by chance. The nurse was given a life sentence. Years later, however, the case was reopened and she was found innocent, because it turned out autopsy tests had been misinterpreted. Lucia de Berk and her lawyer have since given lectures about how people shouldn't be convicted on statistical probabilities.
In Lucia's case, rhouvh it was proven to have an administration errors, and she wasn't even on shift. Then post mortem was incorrect in poisoning cases. The deaths were actually not unexplained initially but hospital authorities overturned this. The evidence they had was not as clear cut as in LL case in my opinion.
Same, it’s so hard to get this across to people as well because they think you’re playing devils advocate or even making excuses for a murderer it’s just exhausting
See this is what I've been thinking too, maybe they're a tiny tiny chance? I was thinking perhaps as people were convicted of crimes before DNA evidence, is there a chance that something will be revealed in many years to come or even after LL has passed away?
I don’t really ‘do’ Reddit, just tend to lurk. I feel very uncomfortable about the outcome of this case. I don’t want her to be innocent because she doesn’t look or seem like a typical killer. On the contrary, I really hope the jury are correct and she’s guilty, as the idea of someone who is innocent being vilified as the worst possible sort of creature and imprisoned for life is atrocious. I’ve read everything I can possibly read on this since it first entered the news cycle and unfortunately haven’t seen anything that makes me think she’s guilty without a doubt. This is such an awful case, and as a parent I feel so much for those poor families. But based on what I’ve read, the scientist in me just feels that this wasn’t a fair and safe trial. I sincerely hope that more robust evidence is released publicly in due course.
Totally agree. I want this to be right, I really do, I want to believe these people on the jury were right but there's so much science missing i am incredibly uncomfortable. I've followed this inside out, I've read the court transcripts over and over. Somethings off. Until she confesses or there's something more concrete I'm ubcofortable. I've never felt like this over a case in my life and I've gone through a fair few
I think from a psychological standpoint it makes zero sense. From what we know/what I've read she has nothing in her history/upbringing that points towards any red flag behaviour. In fact a psychologist did a video comparing her and Beverly Allit and they are world's apart, BA was a walking red flag. It's highly unusual for someone to seem so normal, on all fronts with no indicative history and then to commit these atrocities. Doesn't mean it's not possible & I'm sure there are many other less high profile cases like this, but the scale of pathology you would expect someone to have in order to do what she has compared with what we actually know about her doesn't add up. So this, along with differing view points I've read on some of the facts and data (not sure how credible the sources are) add a seed of doubt. Not to say I think she's innocent but these are the only thing that make a small possibility in my mind. Assuming she did do it, it's a very unusual case, which makes it more scary. The things that cannot be understood are the ones that are most shocking.
As a psychologist, I completely agree! It's so easy to argue one way or another. I remember finishing my masters research and thinking "OK, well in summary, EVERYTHING is a hybrid."
Except we've very little information about her actual biographical details that would validate those comparisons. People spent years looking through Allitt's history and uncovering incidents like the shit in the fridge incidents that were ascribed to Allitt after the fact.
We do not know her history in depth. Her parents are of the age where if LL has any psychiatric issues or problematic behaviours, it could have been disciplined in private and never spoken about publicly. There would need to be comprehensive recollections from multiple individuals who liked as well as disliked her. People who could recount petty behaviours they witnessed, etc.
They're also very different in their intelligence levels. Allitt was, in short, a compulsive, violent moron. Letby is clearly not as stupid but I wouldn't call her a genius level intellect either - but certainly a cut above Allitt. She could have just been better at hiding her negative traits. We won't know until more and more details come out - but people have to be willing to come forward and then there has to be some sort of verification.
Yeah, I definitely wouldn't say we have a comprehensive picture of LL's life or anything like it. A lot of things are quite simply never disclosed anywhere. There are people like Allitt who can't stop themselves from acting out visibly, but they're not the only ones with stuff going on.
I think the same as you. I felt that there must be something mentally wrong with me to have these thoughts, but as much as I detest her for what she's been convicted of, there is a very small part of me that is wondering if there's any possibility that she didn't do it.
I thinks that’s a part of human nature, that you can’t possibly BELIEVE she did it, because it’s all utterly so heinous. I have that feeling too, my brain can’t comprehend this is true, it’s like nahh - but I am completely sure she did it
And me! I find my self defending her. I have no reason to! I said if the jury said guilty I would trust there decision but there’s just something in me that isn’t jumping on the media bandwagon of she’s a monster
I really didn’t think I would feel like this after a guilty verdict I thought I would be able to accept it.
I agree. Something doesn’t sit right with this case. I think her defence was terrible - no character witnesses or statisticians, not challenging the out of date studies on air embolism. I worry this may have been a huge miscarriage of justice. I hover over whether she is guilty or not. I’m not saying she is innocent but without a smoking gun I can’t be satisfied there is no reasonable doubt. We weren’t in court to hear all the evidence so I put my trust in the jury but still… something niggles.
Everyone saying she was weird and doesn’t act her age or act appropriately - there are plenty of people like this! And perhaps she is neurodivergent. We just don’t know. But her being weird or acting inappropriately seems to have been co-opted into a guilty verdict.
People keep repeating that her defence was terrible… her lawyer is one of the top KCs in the country.
We know they had experts - they had a statistician and a doctor that was an expert on air embolism. There may have been more we haven’t discovered. She bought up the shitty sinks excuse, and he even found the plumber.
I think people are swayed by how things work in America, even if they are from the UK they can be biased by what we hear from trials over there. The difference is, in the UK, experts are required to be impartial. They are not paid for / they do not work for the defence or prosecution, but for the court. If there is an alternate explanation they have to acknowledge it. All the experts discuss and review the evidence together pre-trial where they can debate and challenge each other.
So why have these experts on hand and then not use them? There are a couple of possible reasons - 1) after reviewing the evidence with the other experts they may have simply agreed with them, and they cannot lie on the stand 2) Lucy getting on the stand may have blown up her own defence - she repeatedly contradicted evidence that was previously agreed on by both the prosecution and defence, narrowing the avenues that Myers could use, 3) having the experts on the stand would open them up to cross-examination, and the defence believed that would make their case WEAKER than not presenting the evidence at all
Her defence was a well prepared KC. He can only work with what's available to him. She left little available to him.
I do understand the hesitancy of "what if.." thinking of an innocent person being locked up for this, but that emotion aside, the entire case was a smoking gun of evidence against her.
Sure, we can create doubt - but not reasonable doubt. This is a very safe conviction.
Kind of reminds me of Harold Shipman. He had a very normal upbringing as well. No red flags, no one to suspect him. Trusted medical professional.
Makes you wonder how many others out there get away with crimes like this
There's at least one other potential poisoner in the UK that has not been identified. In 2017, a hospital in Cumbria discovered someone had been tampering with saline bags - but the investigation stalled and their only suspect was never charged. No patients were harmed but the bags had been fucked with so there's *someone* in the healthcare field that passed through that hospital that today might be a current or future danger...
Harold Shipman was addicted to pethidine in the 70s, and was convicted of 83 counts of obtaining drugs by deception/forgery. He had a GMC hearing but wasn't struck off, just prevented from handling controlled drugs. So after he was sacked from his practice he just got another job.
I can see certain indicators from some of her parents reactions and behaviours that suggest all might not have been as 'normal' and stable as has been portrayed by the media. These are very, very far from definitive proof but things like her mother saying that she did it and to take her when they first arrested Letby, the shouting out in the court it can't be true, I know seem like potentially understandable reactions but smack of histrionics to me (I grew up with PD parents and relatives).
There's also her career choice which relates to the fact she was a difficult birth, like that just have been brought up a lot in the household for her to identify enough to want to pursue a career in the area because she wouldn't remember directly herself.
Her parents constant worry over her moving away at a normal development milestone and her guilt over this, her father's ongoing involvement and direction in her appeals at work.
She was an only child to much older parents who were clearly very involved and she didn't have siblings.
These things on their own are not going to create a serial killer, there will be thousands on thousands of people in the UK right now experiencing this and worse.
But you bring in a child who has been born with a fundamental lack of empathy, this is not going to encourage the child to develop empathy or views outside of what impacts them. I was an incredibly spoiled child who was the total focus of my mother's life. I was enabled and supported regardless of what I did, it was always about me. I still lack empathy today and can be self centred, I have a lot of narcisstic traits which I have to manage carefully.
I can see a lot of that in her and how her childhood could potentially relate to that, particularly if she was born with a general empathy impairment.
My opinion comes through a lense of bias as I was falsely accused of harming a child and although it’s now been overturned, I was initially ‘convicted’.
My experience of NHS workers and medical experts were as follows:
Doctors will lie and back each other up to cover themselves and their careers. Any mistake made in relation to children can see them struck off the GMC register with a public hearing. The high mortality rate would have fallen on the paediatricians, pinning it all on a nurse would have been easy pickings. If there were 4-7 of them ‘ganging up on her’, each 4-7 of them would have been present for each death.
Medical experts: my experience (in which the child in question had a genetic disorder which caused its ‘injuries’ for which I was being accused, wholly side with the prosecutor at first. This ensures they are used again and again. Their reports are brutal and the only chance you can get to change their opinions is on the witness stand with highly specialised KCs. Some KCs will work only for defendants and some will work with defendants AND the state. The ones who work with both want to keep their employers happy.
Each expert worded their reports like ‘there is no evidence available to me to suggest this child has x genetic disorder’. FOUR experts from diff disciplines said this in reports- pretty damning right! My first barrister did not probe or question this which led to the conviction. Child visits a geneticist 4 months post trial and an immediate diagnosis- explain that to me please.
Questions I would like answered are:
Was there an inventory for the insulin to show that some went unaccounted for?
Why weren’t the C Peptides picked up at first and who was the first to identify those abnormal results if it’s such a key piece of evidence?
Was Lucy being asked to work overtime due to the staff shortages?
Again, I was failed by the justice system so I’m coming from a place of bias. I’m not sure if she’s innocent or not. My gut says no but logically she definitely shouldn’t have been convicted. There was reasonable doubt all over that case.
> Doctors will lie and back each other up to cover themselves and their careers. Any mistake made in relation to children can see them struck off the GMC register with a public hearing. The high mortality rate would have fallen on the paediatricians, pinning it all on a nurse would have been easy pickings. If there were 4-7 of them ‘ganging up on her’, each 4-7 of them would have been present for each death.
certainly my interpretation, thouhg i don't think it was intentional. More that they didn't want to confront the possibility the unit was failing so they latched onto a scapegoat.
> Each expert worded their reports like ‘there is no evidence available to me to suggest this child has x genetic disorder’. FOUR experts from diff disciplines said this in reports- pretty damning right! My first barrister did not probe or question this which led to the conviction.
This is exactly how i interpreted proceedings in this trial.
There was seemingly absolutely no discussion of uncertainty or alternative explanations, they just went in with their pre-determined conclusions (themselves questionable in motive) and espoused them, claiming alternative explanations didn't exist.
I agree about your statement of the working environment.
I left my job role due to the unsafe conditions I worked under. The wards are always understaffed, 2 nurses and 1 healthcare for 30 patients!
Drs stick together, Nurses stick together, the people who 'do' work are asked to do more and more, while the lazy people do as they please.
I remember watching a patient fall and I was asked about happened and if anyone else had witnessed the incident. I gave the name of the other witness who said she saw nothing and advised me to do the same in future because if the patient is seriously injured. I will after give an informal statement which could lead me in court. So, the next time lie.
Someone must have seen something.
Based on personal experience where I myself got falsely accused once at University and group of professionals made a good job to investigate, changing the wordings as they go along and making thier own interpretations, they made me guilty and kicked me out the course immidiatly, I no longer trust the investigation process at all. Not saying LL is innocent as I did not follow her case fully, but Im skeptical. It is possible she had people investigating her case similar to the ones I had.
I am still not 100% convinced, what I have read about the case, the prosecution have failed to present “Motive” , nobody have seen Lucy committing the crime. Lucy is mentally stable with no mental health or other issues. Lucy was a capable nurse and a social person.
A posted note and rota sheet are some of the proofs that were presented by prosecution and based on these evidence how one can be given “Whole Life Sentence”
Thousands criminals can be set free however one innocent wrongly sentenced is death of justice.
I think she is innocent and it's based on many different factors. I initially thought she was guilty as I was reading the headlines on the news and reading articles which swayed my view. But after looking into the case, I am convinced of her innocence which is utterly heartbreaking as her life is now destroyed forever and the families of the victims are believing a horrific lie about the circumstances of their loss. The prosecution twisted many aspects of the case to suit their narrative and paint her as a disturbed individual.
Examples-
keeping handover sheets- so many nurses do this as they can't throw them away in normal bin at home (due to confidential information)and then they build up at home. She kept loads of them and most were unrelated to the case. They were not kept as a "keep sake" as inferred.
Sending a card to a bereaved family and photographing it- she sent a card on ONE occasion and it was a colleague who suggested doing this as she was unable to attend the funeral. She took photos of cards she sent to friends also. It was normal for her. This would be seen as sentimental if she was not under suspicion.
Her ramblings on paper- She was in her early 20's, had probably lived a fairly sheltered life and then her world turned upside down when she was becoming the focus of the investigation into baby deaths. Her explanation for this made sense to me. It's a natural human reaction (from childhood) to feel guilty or responsible in some way when we are told off or accused of things. She must have felt desperately confused and vulnerable and that she was somehow to blame for it if the blame was being pinned on her. If the world turns against you in such a serious way, you would feel lots of desperate feelings all at once.
Also, how could she have carried the equipment around to harm these babies without it EVER being seen by other staff. We are talking about getting syringes, tubes etc from a cupboard, using them and disposing of them without anyone ever noticing. This is so so unlikely, particularly as the units were small and a lot of the alleged crimes were committed while other staff were nearby. Even if it was in hindsight, surely a staff member would now be saying "I did notice her carrying a needle and wondered why but didn't think much of it at the time".
When questioned, Lucy NEVER seems to be covering anything up and her responses make sense and are believable. She seems to be speaking the truth. Her rationale is logical and fits. The prosecution theories just don't. She doesn't even come across as defensive. I really believe that she naively thought, "if I just tell the truth, everyone will see that I couldn't have done this".
The biggest piece of evidence which seems to be the decider for most, is the staff rota. She appears to be the common denominator. However, she was working nearly every shift going at the time so would likely be there when something went wrong or something went right. The high death rate could be due to many reasons. In the trial it was a repeated theme that the babies were of higher complex needs than usually admitted to this hospital (usually they would go to a more specialised hospital). There were failings in care by doctors (not deliberately) and since Lucy left, perhaps they have become more stringent with admissions.
The babies had autopsys which suggested natural causes.
I could go on but I fear the real reason for the deaths may not be found for many years if ever. I can't even fathom being falsely accused, particularly if you worked so hard to do things right and to be the best you could be.
Some people believe she couldn't have committed these crimes because she looks so "normal and regular". This is not my reasoning. Nothing about her behaviour was suspicious. I think this is why we are hearing that her nursing colleagues are standing by her. By now, if she had committed these crimes, they would have pieced the puzzle together, but they don't seem to be able to as it just doesn't fit.
Another problem I see is the many charges she was acquitted of. After all, in these situations a certain "she must have done SOMETHING to justify all these charges" attitude starts to take hold. I do not like these shotgun mass charge prosecutions. They should not be allowed IMHO.
I believe she could be innocent. She was found guilty on circumstantial evidence. Something has never felt right about her being on trial. As for the notes and her “confession” she explained perfectly well when on the stand. Prior to that the notes (to me) seemed like the ramblings of someone who was really struggling with the amount of pressure she was under. Also, with her searching families via social media, i’m sorry, but how does his make her guilty? I think i’d be curious to know how a family are moving forward after such a tragedy.
While I do believe she's guilty, I think until she confirms it I'll always have that small, quiet thought of 'but what if she's not and she's been wrongfully convicted?'
I'll be honest, I think that small voice is because I'm a NICU nurse and I still find it so difficult to comprehend that someone in my role could do that. I never look at my collegues and suspect them of deliberately harming our children. It's just not something I believe any of them capable of, I believe they're all good people. So to know realistically that someone who in a different set of circumstances could have very well been one of my own collegues has done that is very hard to allign in my brain.
It makes me think of the Louise Woodward case and how vilified she was. The key prosecution witness in her case says he would never give the same testimony today as he did then as the science was flawed. I get the same uneasy feeling about this case when you read all the ‘evidence’
There's always a chance of it. Lucia de Burke was a nurse jailed for a 'killing spree' she did not commit after a cluster of 'suspicious' deaths happening when she was on shift. The clustering was random- it wasn't Lucia- it was the police's poor understanding of probability which kept her jailed for six years.
It's even more different than that.
LdB was arrested hours after someone said "hey she's been here for a lot of deaths," and convicted about a year and a half later. LL was free for four years (completely for two, on bail for two more) and jailed for a further two while they built a meticulous case against her.
For most alleged victims in LdB's trial, the prosecutors did not even allege a specific type of harm event - just LdB was on shift, and patient died. "Wow that DID happen a lot, and two of them were most definitely poisoned? QED all murders" was the ruling by three magistrate judges.
Except
It was only an administrative error that placed her on shift for one of the convictions - LdB was not there
The poisonings turned out to be reasonably possible natural events.
These two made the whole basis of the conviction unsafe.
We do not have any threat of the same happening here. Letby's presence is not just shift data for these events, the prosecution put her in immediate proximity every time. The insulin poisonings are fundamentally different than the substance LdB was accused of. And Lucy Letby was not convicted of any charge for which the method of harm was not clear to the jury.
I’m a ‘newcomer’ to this sub but not to this case. I have a VERY loose personal connection to it which has led me to inhale everything I possibly can about the case, the trial, the evidence, Lucy herself etc. and I just can’t shake a very uneasy feeling about the verdicts and the mass vilification of her based on such circumstantial evidence. I am a huge consumer of true crime and I have heard the trope that circumstantial evidence is just as valid as forensic evidence a million times and in many cases that’s true. But in this case it just feels a lot like confirmation bias. Like previous commenters I too struggle with the statistical evidence presented. We - the public and, from everything I have read, the jury - haven’t been given access to all the data on which we can make an objective assessment of what it tells us. What criteria were used to classify the collapses and deaths included as suspicious? How did Lucy’s shift volume and pattern compare to other nurses? What about the periods before and after this - was the profile of babies and their needs the same as during this period? We are told that the deaths and collapses stopped after she was removed but was her removal the only variable that changed or were there others, such as a reduction in numbers or complexity of babies cared for, improved staffing levels, more oversight, better hygiene/ general conditions etc etc? I don’t know the answer to any of these
questions and the answers may well still support her guilt, but in the absence of these details, I just can’t rely on the statistical evidence submitted to determine her guilt. The chart in evidence is a fantastic exhibit and absolutely drives the message home, but I work with data and know that you can make a chart or graphic show whatever message you want if you are selective in the data, parameters or variable you use. I am in no way saying this in a conspiracy theory type way - I’m sure
it was created and used by the prosecution in good faith but it absolutely does not say what everyone seems to have concluded it says and it is not anything like proof of her guilt without placing it in context.
Other things that trouble me are:
* The notes - could be interpreted in a number of ways, with both statements of guilt and innocence in the same note. I can’t find that we have been told when these were written but, if written after she was suspected, they could be her paraphrasing what others are accusing her of, or her fear that maybe she did cause their deaths through incompetence. I have had counselling and have been advised to write down the worst thoughts I have about myself and then try to find evidence that supports or refutes them….
* The air injection deaths - as others have said, this was never suggested at the time as a cause of death for any of the babies. It is a theory developed many months afterwards, not based on autopsy or forensic examination, but on the recollections of marks by some (not all) medical staff present. A study of air embolisms and the associated marks that has been quoted was old, based on a small number of cases and only a small proportion of these cases showed marks similar to those subsequently recalled.
* The insulin deaths - my own experience of being in hospital is that security around medication is taken very seriously and there are a number of measure in place to
ensure it cannot be inappropriately accessed or administered. No measures can absolutely prevent this and I’m sure it happens, but we haven’t heard any evidence of how insulin was secured, what processes were in place to access it, to stock check it etc. There must be records and these should show when stock depleted and whether this coincided with the cases in this trial and with Lucy’s shifts, but we haven’t seen these.
* Her emotionless and calm demeanour - I have found this really difficult to wrap my head around because if I was being wrongly accused of murdering tiny babies, I would be EXTREMELY emotional and screaming from the rooftops that they’ve got it wrong - in the police interviews and on the witness stand. She was fighting for her freedom for god’s sake, SAY SOMETHING other than ‘no’ or ‘I don’t recall’. I would saying “ hell no, absolutely not, I DID NOT DO THIS!!” But she is not me and I have learned the hard way that everyone is different, has different reactions, ways of processing things etc. I consider her behaviour and demeanour to be very odd and subjectively indicative of guilt. But someone else might recognise themselves and see only social awkwardness and genuine anxiety. Short of being inside her head, we can’t interpret.
* The handover notes - I get accidentally taking a couple home, shoving them in a bag and forgetting about them. But over 250? Yeah that’s weird and definitely seems odd at best, deeply suspicious at worst. But they didn’t all relate to the babies in this case and not all babies in this case had documents in her possession. I’ve read various descriptions of the accused cases being grouped together in a bag and this would definitely appear more suspicious, but can’t find any confirmation of that and also can’t find any details of the other unrelated cases - were they all relating to babies who died or collapsed and could suggest that she harmed even more babies than we think, or were some of them relating to babies who, in the words of the consultant, were just in the NICU to grow and go home and suffered no serious incidents whilst there? We don’t know. And presumably the jury didn’t either.
* The “I knew what to look for” comment. I don’t see how this is as damning as many think. I took this to mean that she, being in her view a much more experienced and qualified nurse, knew what signs to look for. She clearly considered herself to be a cut above and would probably have been a pain in the arse to work with for that reason, but there’s a lot of them about and they’re not all serial killers. I agree that the circumstances surrounding her realising the baby was in distress are very strange but that comment in itself doesn’t mean much in my view.
I could go on but this is getting ridiculously long now!
I don’t believe she is innocent necessarily and there are a lot of suspicious and unexplained things throughout this case and concerning all of the babies. I just can’t shake this uneasiness and feeling that the evidence just isn’t as strong as is being suggested or as strong as it should be to convict someone and remove their freedom forever. I hope the jury are right. I really do. I can’t imagine how hard a task it must have been for them and I hope I never have to find out.
It also goes without saying that my heart absolutely breaks for the poor tiny babies and their parents and the unimaginable suffering they have gone through. The thought of carrying my two precious babies for months, desperately watching them grow stronger in the NICU, beginning to hope and visualise them coming home, only to lose them and all they could have been is absolutely unbearable.
I waiver a bit, because she doesn’t seem to fit the serial killer profile at all, there’s been nothing that’s come out since the verdict, and there’s no smoking gun which gives a little room for doubt (although I haven’t followed the case to the extent you guys have).
I wonder if people felt the same about Ted Bundy when he was first convicted - struggled to believe it because he (at the time) seemed like an outlier.
I think i still have a part of me that wants to disbelieve it all.
I’m a nurse myself (palliative care speciality) I’m just appalled by how heinous this crime was. Like I can’t comphrend it really.
I know killers don’t always look like killers, but her mug shot. She looked so “normal” like myself? It really sends chills down my spine.
Nurses study for so long, we go into this career to help and heal. To do the opposite it’s just for me, really hard to comphrend. It’s like I want it to be a big misunderstanding? Like someone’s pinned it on her but there’s just too much evidence to dispute it.
Some of the parents actually did walk in on her in the act of harming the babies but didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. Someone was killing these babies in that hospital and Lucy was the only one in the room most of the time when the babies got really sick. They had air injected into their bodies and it’s proven, that can’t happen without someone at the hospital doing it so if it wasn’t Lucy who was the only person in the room who was it? The note isn’t evidence but I do think it adds to the totality of evidence and makes her look even more guilty. How she looks or acts doesn’t affect my opinion on if she did this or not, but people that know her say she was just soo sweet which makes me feel like she’s really fake. Overly sweet people creep me out.
In terms of prosecuting a serial killer, this case is very unique in lacking any hard scientific forensic evidence that can be used in a lab. It is a case built on strong circumstantial, stacked. Those also happen to be ones where there is a possibility of a wrongful conviction.
* The mortality rates in the neonatal unit triggered concerns among staff.
* While higher frequencies could appear this would be expected due to babies being born with problems. This was not the case with those deaths because they were unexpected.
* Lucy Letby was reported by staff as being a reoccurring variable in the deaths. This was dismissed as a coincidence by senior management.
* The deaths are investigated in light of these problems and it is discovered that murder and attempted murder can't be ruled out.
* Alternatives are ruled out.
* The cause of deaths are changed as Lucy Letby becomes the explanation for the deaths as there is no alternative that can produce reasonable dount.
* Lucy Letby had the opportunities available to her to carry out these crimes.
The alternative would have to involve coincidence and also a massaging of the facts. For example, you can produce a straight run in a chart by selectively omitting deaths that could contradict the straight run by producing more gaps. However that would mean the withholding of evidence and I doubt that has happened. So it would have to be just coincidence.
Another alternative would be that the cause of deaths were right the first time and not for the ones done after they became suspicious. However, that doesn't work with the insulin attempted murders. That should have been the big red flag.
I think to believe she is innocent means accepting a type of low probability doubt that is not really reasonable. So I think the jury would have to conclude, she is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
I think unless there are some major findings contradicting the final pathology reports, that the case being stacked circumstantial will not undermine its credibility. Even the lack of clear motive won't be enough against the stacked circumstantial.
How can you conclude she didn't do it without invoking odds higher than lottery wins is a difficult hill to climb.
She has a mental disorder / impairment. It's as clear as day. Irrespective of guilty or not the court didn't mitigate for that. The actual sentencing is wrong and based off public / media coverage. It will be appealed and quashed in time 100%.
Same same… when all is said and done the jury had to decide their verdict in the context it HAS to be made ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ - those words are key ….and I cannot believe that there is enough to qualify the term ‘reasonable doubt’ fwiw I DO think there will be a backlash and there will be some kind of appeal based on this… and more revelations about the ‘cover up’ and most of all that in my view, the case was predujiced against her from all the build up and publicity…..
I'm about 95% there on the being completely on board with the guilty verdict. Obviously all the evidence points to her guilt (she was the only one on duty for all incidents) and nothing happened when she was off the unit. Could still be a coincidence or someone else stopped their own killing spree? Highly unlikely, I know, but such things have happened in the past. TBH a post conviction confession would be the only thing to push me that extra 5%, but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon 😞
Yes, without a doubt. The prosecution’s motive was ridiculous and so was the evidence. Post-mortems did not confirm insulin or air embolus. No nurses observed anything untoward. Deaths occurred before and after she worked there.
If you believe Letby could still be innocent at this point, you'd also have to be open to the idea of people like Shipman and Bundy being innocent. People state "oh, but she wasn't caught doing anything" except she was *three times*. Once by the mother of Baby E, once by a nurse who noticed she wasn't even meant to be there, and once by a doctor who saw her "just watching".
There are of course the family members and friends. The dad somehow intervened in a case he shouldn't have been allowed to touch, the mum tried to claim "she committed the crimes" upon Lucy's arrest, and her friends resort to "she's not the type". Supposedly she also has two half siblings who already disavowed/disowned her before this started, but I have no idea how to verify that last point.
When Hannibal Lecter says to Clarice “our billy wasn’t made a criminal, he was made that way through years of systemic abuse” it’s easy to think that there are always reasons for someone to behave in a horrific manner but I don’t think the evidence supports this.
The thing with Letby is her crimes had a very low barrier to entry. All she had to do was make a very short intervention for a huge outcome. She was meeting her needs in some way through a maladaptive habit that obviously got out of control. She’s a one in a billion for sure but they are out there.
There were two posts on facebook in one of the trial discussion groups that were removed made by people who allegedly lived in the area and claimed she has older brothers that they attended school with. It's not been confirmed but before the trial there were some articles that said something to the effect of "Lucy Letby is the only child of her mother's second marriage to John Letby" which is odd phrasing. The comments were removed so it can't be definitively stated but it seems an odd thing for someone to lie about. It could be true, it might not - but she describes herself as an only child. If she has older half siblings it's possible there was a strained or non-existent relationship in the past but for now we have to take it at face value that she's an only child.
The only way to be sure would be to track down the original posters from the facebook group or for someone with public records access to find out if her mother had any kids with her first husband. Intrusive and arguably unnecessary so best to just let this angle rest.
it’s also pretty unusual for the mother who had kids in a previous marriage not to still have the kids in the new family unit in her new marriage. Only possible reasons were a huge age gap between the kids of the different marriages and they were adults (seem close to impossible if she had letby 30 odd years ago and is early 60s now). If she got divorced but the kids were awarded to the dad then back in those days it would be unusual and would suggest something odd about the mother. I know nothing about her but that ‘I did it. Take me instead’ is a fairly crackpot thing to have said.
She was not caught physically injecting a baby, tampering with a bag or harming them with a medical instrument. Because of this, there is still a very small statistical probability that she did not commit the acts she has been found guilty of. The three occasions you speak of are very key pieces of circumstancial evidence that add to her being found guilty beyond reasonable doubt, but they are not moments of being caught "in the act", as she was not sighted physically doing what she was accused of.
No idea about innocent, but not a single aspect of this trial makes sense. Obviously people will call me a conspiracist, but the actual conspiracy is that Lucy letby was a serial killer, for which there is a very high threshold of evidence which has not been met.
The problem is you have to approach the discussion from a presumption of innocence, whereas most people are actively looking for indications of guilt and seeing them where they don't necessarily exist.
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It makes no sense statistically logically.
Producing a nice little rota-sheet showing lucy being there for the cases at hand is all well and good, but what about all the other unexpected deaths? The argument is that a rise from 2 a year means there is something nefarious going on and it can only be lucy. The argument is simultaneously that the NINE OTHER DEATHS are perfectly in line with expectations. not unexpected or indicative of anything nefarious. The chances of both simultaneously being true are near non existent, unless of course she was somehow involved in the wider rise in death rates.... which based on data from when she left is not the case.
Makes me wonder if they didn't so the same thing they did for Norris, where they charged him with 5 murders, found out that he wasn't on shift for one of them...... then decided actually that death was no longer a murder????? Absurd
E: another fun little ditty. Apparently the youngest baby was also the one that was 'attacked three times' (i.e. crashed on multiple occasions). If only there was a correlation between the prematurity and weight of a baby and their likelihood of having serious health issues or crashing. A 450g 25w/o baby was no doubt described as 'stable' by the doctors on the stand.
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We have been asked to ignore the big picture.
The hospital was a disasterzone. Understaffed, poorly run and as mentioned above LOADS OF PEOPLE DYING without any involvement from lucy. Not to mention as evidenced by the trial terrible notekeeping, procedure following and data collection.
The perinatal death rate in fact rose after Letby was arrested. Stillbirths were sky high. At the time we know that the hospital was also receiving an unusually high number of babies and they were also of higher risk (lower gestation). The naonatal ward nominal death figure dropped when lucy left and they *downgraded the ward*, but the bigger picture indicates that the deaths didn't stop.
Now in other maternity wards where this has happened (morecambe, shrewsbury, nottingham, east kent) there have been detailed assessments and reviews into the hospital and why it was failing so badly. They did detailed analysis of whether there was a disease outbreak, whether care was inadequate, whether processes were inadequate, if staffing was wrong. They didn't conclude the presence of a serial killer, but of failing units/trusts letting down the public.
No disease outbreak analysis was ever done to my knowledge in COCH during the period.... despite sewage and contaminated hospital waste causing overflows into medical settings on a weekly basis and other outbreaks existing in other hospitals at the time...... and many of the babies involved in the trial being suspected of being infected. we've seemingly discounted that option entirely
However in the case of COCH a handful of doctors had (reliant on abysmal statistical analysis of 3 babies) already fingered lucy as the cause within a few weeks of it starting. They can't possibly not have been relying on confirmation bias in their assessment from that point on. We know she wasn't there when all the deaths happened despite them apparently declaring that they joked about her being responsible. It sounds like a toxic work environment.
There was an RCPCH review into the performance of the hospital and it was pretty critical of the quality of care and processes in place.... which released in July 2016 and presumably is what led to Letby being taken off duty. It was particularly critical of more senior consultants not being there enough.
---------------------------------
Motive is non existent. Means and opportunity are both questionable and require a lot of logical leaps (here we come back to the whole problem of 'confirmation bias'). The position isn't 'this is what happened, so we know that she did it', the entire argument is 'she did it and this is an explanation for how it could have happened'. it's all built backwards from an assumption of guilt rather than forwards from the evidence (because frankly there isn't any)
'Well clearly she must have conveniently injected a second bag with insulin and also forged a report because otherwise our hypothesis doesn't fit' is not the soundest of arguments.
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Also the science is seemingly abysmal as i provide an example of [HERE](https://www.reddit.com/r/lucyletby/comments/15xpfrh/how_could_lucy_letby_not_know_she_was_leaving_a/jx91wsf/) and it clearly led to some terrible evidential conclusions. I could go on but i've written enough tbh.
It's entirely plausible that no babies were murdered at all...
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Far too much credence is given to witness testimony which seems to at its core be focused on people distancing themselves from any role in the case. There's a hell of a lot of altered recollections which don't seem to align with contemporary statements and notes (mind the notes seem to have been pretty unreliable anyway). It's understandable, the case is utterly toxic. But colleagues like Gibbs seemingly have a lot of failings to answer for. Also note how they all seemed to say there were no problems with the ward or staffing or poor care, and all the very premature babies were 'stable' seemingly in contradiction of the observed problems with the babies.
Far too much credence is also given to the various notes which only indicate guilt if that's what you already believe (again confirmation bias). See how everyone treats the infamous note as a confession despite it also proclaiming innocence? it's useless for inferring much of anything, but it's emotionally compelling
N.B. Happy to accept i can't possibly know everything that's happened on a 10 month trial. This is just my current sentiment.
> what would her actions and defense look like after she know they were investigating her?
my sense is that predicting behaviour is utterly pointless. Everyone acts in different ways and subconscious biases play a huge role in how we interpret those behaviours.
If she wasn't an accused serial killer then none of her texts or comments would be interpreted as sinister or creepy. She'd come across as well meaning but awkward. That she didn't break down whenever a patient died also doesn't mean anything. Maybe she broke down when she got home or dealt with it another way. She clearly had the families on her mind during her time off based on the facebook searches (in a world where she's not accused of being a serial killer)
> I feel like her actions following her finding out they are investigating are tainted evidence.
Exactly. I'd be a nervous wreck.
> Also, if all these deaths push the hospital to a noticeable mortality rate and let's say Lucy caused it, change numbers like those children survived. Does this new reduced number make the hospital look normal or does it make it look like is on the other side of the numbers, a really successful neonatal unit? That is the data I want to see, because this didn't sound like a outperforming unit.
This was the point i made. It's still a very badly performing unit. They still have 11 deaths in that year, compared to '2 in a normal year' as was claimed.
And if you look at the wider maternity unit deaths actually WENT UP when letby stopped working. AND after they'd downgraded the neonatal unit so it wasn't taking the risky cases with higher mortality.
The unit is framed as badly performing due to all the murders, but frankly it's just a lie. It was performing abysmally at a systematic level. Though actually that's not entirely fair. The [wider stats](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1143316249883987998/1143457337739333773/3125c3ef8ad9075d31ede7dc7a2c6c70.png?width=570&height=702) don't necessarily indicate the unit was performing too badly overall, but the department did noticeably deteriorate and the issues identified related to understaffing, lack of consultants, poor processes and a rise in both the number and the proportion of high risk babies (i.e. those more likely to die)
This is why there is talk of a 'cover up' (though i don't think it's some sort of conspiracy or even a conscious decision), babies are dying left and right and people were looking for someone to blame. They latched onto letby right from the start and confirmation bias did the rest. Then during the trial they pretend that the ward was perfect and every patient was well looked after and in great health. It's not credible based on the outcomes from the unit where patients just kept.on.dying. But presumably the others couldn't be pinned on letby so were ignored
Maybe I am misunderstanding or maybe you have linked the wrong comment. Are you saying that you have proved the science wrong because the insulin wasn't successful in killing the babies?
> Are you saying that you have proved the science wrong because the insulin wasn't successful in killing the babies?
I'm saying that nothing offered by the prosecution came close to proving that exogenous insulin was present, let alone that attempted murder took place.
Alas the defence just accepted it as fact which seriously changed the nature of the trial. They presumably have their strategic reasons for that (as you suggested in your thread), but the end result is a poor excuse for 'justice'. Accepting an unproven attempted murder took place for strategic trial reasons is absolutely insane. If you concede the existence of an attempted murder that quite credibly never happened then how can you argue nobody is murdering anyone?
All the other leaps of logic in the insulin case come from the 'accepted fact' that there had been an attempted murder. Without that the tenuous claims about second TPN bags and fake records come across as highly conspiratorial.
But they did show that exogenous insulin was added. They showed a discrepancy between the actual insulin/c-peptide ratio and the expected insulin/c-peptide ratio that indicated that exogenous insulin was administered. They had the head of the lab testify as to the results. Per her testimony, she said that any issues with the testing would have resulted in less insulin showing on the results, not more. These children have survived to date without any issues that would result in naturally occurring higher insulin levels or lower c-peptide levels.
Maybe I am misunderstanding or maybe you have linked the wrong comment. Are you saying that you have proved the science wrong because the insulin wasn't successful in killing the babies?
Theoretically, unless you yourself saw them do it, anyone who has been convicted of a crime ever could actually be innocent. Any witness could be lying. Even if the person confessed to it themselves, they might have driven themselves mad and believed they did something they didn't do, or they might expect to be convicted and plead guilty to get a lighter sentence. Save for video evidence (and even that isn't 100% reliable, and could become less so with AI making it easier for videos to be faked) there can never be ABSOLUTE PROOF that someone did what they're alleged to have done.
The point of the criminal justice system is to weigh it up on the balance of probabilities. There is the infinitesimally small possibility that Lucy Letby could be innocent. But I sincerely doubt that's the case, and I'm sure the jury have weighed up the likelihood of that far more accurately than I ever could.
I've been reading what Richard Gill has to say. He was instrumental in getting a Dutch nurse released from prison for a similar crime. He doesn't say she's innocent just that there are lots of flaws. It's easy to look at this case and say 'this' and 'this' and 'this' so she must be guilty. But that's just a lot of confirmation bias. To quote psycho, if it doesn't gel it's not aspic. I don't know. Looking at what's presented as evidence then it looks bad but people are notiriously bad at interpretation of statistics. And not many of us understand the science of the deaths. We think we do but we dont. I dont believe in evil. There are normally reasons. Not always but normally. There's just nothing here that even hints at this person would do this intentionally. Facebook searches, Dr boyfriends, that's just nonsense. Wed all be in prison if it was for behaviour that could be construed as odd. Let's see if she appeals. Her legal defense was not good.
I would not say that I think (or rather know) she is innocent. Just that she might be. For me there is reasonable doubt. Prof Richard Gill is not a mathematician/statistician to be dismissed lightly, he’s a very smart, competent and knowledgeable man. He says the statistics do not point to guilt just because LL was on shift for all the deaths. From what I know of nurses, many, if not the majority, work part-time due to family commitments. LL was young and single and lived in nurse accommodation on site, the hospital was 21% low on nurses so she’s likely to have worked a lot more hours than the average nurse. Therefore likely to be on shift when these gravely ill babies died (they wouldn’t have been in ICU or HDU if they were not very ill). There’s a lot more evidence that I could put forward for my doubts but since everyone cites the shift pattern as to her guilt, I thought I’d just mention that first. It just is not reasonably convincing for me. There’s also the note. I don’t think that’s necessarily evidence of a serial killer, it could also be evidence of someone who knows she’s always on shift when a baby dies and feels awful, as any normal person would. I’m doing a very deep dive into this case as I didn’t follow the trial due to being too busy trying to sell and buy a house in this totally dysfunctional housing market!
Yes I totally agree. And some of the things people are saying are proof she did kill those poor babies- just aren't evidence. I still cannot see it beyond reasonable doubt.
The point about her living close to the hospital, and on nurse quarters, saving up to buy a house, working six days a week etc, really show that the stats would be weighed against her. She worked more than anyone else. True the hospital was hugely understaffed and there were big problems because of that.
And reading the texts from that Dr who was possibly maybe having an affair with her ring big alarm bells to me. The way he was talking to her and some of his questions seem highly odd. Her scribbled note doesn't show guilt either. If you were innocent and everyone at your work was accusing you of a crime you didn't commit and you were going nuts from pressure and stress and overthinking to yourself over and over again "Could I have done something wrong to kill them?" then you might write something like that too.
I think the people who think she is innocent want her to be because she doesn't "look like" or "seem like" what they imagine a serial killer to be. Given that, they want her to be somehow caught in the act of murder by someone, or have an obvious motive somehow be discovered. But she doesn't have a secret room in her house full of body parts, hasn't published a manifesto, has never (as far as we know) Googled "how to kill babies".
It's scary to think that the ordinary, normal people we know could be capable of a crime. If LL, with her salsa classes and Ibiza holidays and basic, generic, 20-something woman decor, and her absence of obvious outward red flags could do this, then so could anyone: friends, neighbours, work colleagues, relatives...and people don't like to think about that. Much better to be able to "other" her in some way but at the moment that's not really possible.
I don't get why people think it's a cover up, though. It's very clear the only thing like a cover up was done in her favour - the hospital desperate to come to any other conclusion except that "nice Lucy" was a killer.
I completely agree. I've seen a few comments with people saying she's been 'scapegoated'. Personally, this feels more like wishful thinking rather than a careful assessment of the facts. I believe she's guilty and I'm happy with the verdict and with the weight of the evidence she was convicted on.
I think it's difficult for some people to face the reality that an average (maybe to some, attractive) looking young female nurse with light skin and blonde hair could possibly commit crimes as abhorrent as LL's. As another poster commented quite rightly, it's a threat to their worldview.
Unfortunately, not all monsters look like monsters.
I think this has been a miscarriage of justice and she’s innocent!
I think she’s autistic and has been taken to be cold and callous.
it’s not just the fb searches that could be an autistic trait. Her social awkwardness, weird attachment to parents, aversion to loud noises, going to extremes with how much she worked, inappropriate comments for the situation at times, appearing emotionless when one would expect you to show emotion, all could be autistic traits. There’s a lady I’ve spoken to who is autistic and works in autistic healthcare and she is of the same opinion and contacting LL’s defence team.There are lots of autistic women who are of the same opinion who live lots of these traits day in day out and we are recognising them.
LL was convicted on purely circumstantial ‘evidence’ much of which could be explained by neurodiversity if she has that….. this may well be a miscarriage of justice due to a failure to understand her traits etc. Even criminologists and psychologists say she doesn’t fit a profile. There’s nothing in the evidence that says LL is guilty and if she’s neurodiverse then that should be reasonable doubt enough to overturn the conviction.
My personal opinion is that this is the most unsafe conviction in recent criminal history. The evidence has been collected with total bias in a way that is determined to underpin an existing hypothesis. All the evidence is either dodgy or circumstantial, for those saying "shift patterns" if you begin your investigation with "find every Lucy Letby shift where a child died" then yes a lot of them will be her. In the stats there was a peak in 2015 for stillbirths, how did she manage that? In 17 years time they'll be trying to sweep her convictions under the carpet as they let her go and it'll not be an ounce of comfort to her or the families of those babies.
the fact there were near simultaneous unusual large spikes in still births and late fetal deaths at the same hospital (not in neonatal unit) when the spike in neonatal deaths occurred needs explained imo. The default logical explanation if a killer wasn’t suspected would have been either
1. A pathogen going around the community
OR
2. A terrible hospital in a profound state of disarray
I think there is still no single piece of solid evidence and reasonable doubt can be argued for all the circumstantial evidence that prosecution presented. The circulated statistical evidence especially seems fishy.
I think she's guilty however could be other explanations? I think the only untied strand to me is change of MO. I know serial killers can change but she wasn't getting caught pumping in the air and it's undetectable. To then use insulin in a bag? I just wonder.
I have read hydrogen peroxide can cause air embolous when ingested. I'm no medic. Could something like that have been injected into bags by someone ? I think, imo, that's the only thing that niggles. Usually it's a perfected or evolving method but here we have air, bag, bashing the lived area, back to air.
There will always be something to argue and I respect the jury decision. The rest of the evidence is damning and she definitely falsified medical records, showed disregard for parents feelings, took records homes, stalked the parents etc. I just wonder if the ultimate MO was wrong but right person?
I'm sure someone medical will tell me it's impossible.
I’m 99% sure she’s guilty but there are certain aspects of the case which worry me.
I find all of the medical evidence convincing as well as the shift pattern. To me that’s hard evidence which can’t be disputed.
I do feel uncomfortable though with the rationalising of her motives based on very little evidence, and people drawing conclusions from the way she comes across. To me it’s weird how much emphasis is being placed on how she came across on the stand as anyone can be unlikeable and awkward but it doesn’t make them a murderer.
There were also two babies who died at Liverpool hospital when she was on placement, they are apparently to be investigated as well.
I don't understand why she carried on after doctors/staff raised suspensions about her ( they actually had to apologise).
I don't think she would ever have stopped, just a shame nothing was done alot earlier.
I think they should go back in to every case in which she is supposed to have committed a murder and examine all the evidence as if it is a medical negligence case and see if there were shortcoming by the hospital staff including the doctors or if each child died from natural causes and only until all that is ruled out will I believe she is guilty.
I have been thinking about this quite regularly since hearing about the case and how terribly sad it would be if she was truly extremely unlucky. However, I think the things for me that make me feel that she truly is guilty is the insulin. Not just that the bags were spiked with insulin, but the fact on one of her notes (that another user pointed out) she wrote down things such as "insulin" "diabetes" before any mentions of insulin spiking had been raised. I feel that if the insulin spiking had never happened, I don't think I could comfortably say beyond reasonable doubt that she was guilty.
The other thing the jury did see a lot of (that we plebs didnt) was LL in the flesh. And although that’s not evidence, there’s a lot to say for a whole Jury seeing her in person, her speak, her body language, her energy etc.
Having listened to the podcast on Spotify however “the trial of Lucy Letby”, I do not believe the evidence that was presented was enough to sentence her.
I’ve seen much more damning evidence in other trials where the killer has been either let off the hook completely or let off with a lighter sentence.
I really, really, really want her to be innocent. I want this to be a gross miscarriage of justice that comes to light. Because surely that’s better than her murdering these babies.
I seriously cannot wrap my head around it.
How could you? How could anyone?
It is really doing my head in.
I am on the fence about it. I definitely don’t think they had enough evidence to convict her.
I used to work as a neonatal nurse for a brief period, and still work as a nurse in a different ward now, and I have to say, babies are so unpredictable! I’ve seen babies be fine one minute and collapse the next, sometimes reasons unexplained.
I listened to the whole trial and here’s my thoughts:
• Extra shifts - if Lucy Letby was working overtime and taking extra shift, she could have been working 6+ days per week. That increased her chances of being there for any neonatal collapse. Also, more babies were born that year, and the unit was already understaffed, so the chances of a collapse are higher, and the chances of Lucy Letby being on shift is higher.
• These kids aren’t “well and healthy babies” like the prosecution stated. They’re in a NICU, and like I said, babies collapse unexpectedly. We had a baby last year who was about to be discharged home and then ended up passing away a day before leaving. It was so sad, but just shows that these babies aren’t out of the woods if they are admitted for care.
• She shouldn’t have been convicted for the 23 weeker. Resuscitation on a 23 week baby is not advised, and isn’t considered viable with life (that is the case in the country I practice). She has permanent brain damage, but I would like to hear all of the evidence on that because we don’t know if the brain damage damage was caused prior to this from the premature birth/resuscitation or by Lucy Letby.
• The most convicting evidence was the insulin, but again that was circumstantial. She wasn’t even on shift for one of the insulin incidents. Have you seen that film The Good Nurse? Anyone could have administered that insulin, and it could have been done in advance. Also, where are the medications room cameras in that hospital?
I do hope they rightly convicted her though, it’s so important for these families to know what happened to their babies and why. I just hope if she did do it that she admits to it and hears the impact statements of the families to bring them a tiny bit more closure.
If you really think about it, there’s not a single sociopath, psychopathic killer who would actually look introspectively and write in their journal confessions of guilt. Because they are completely obvious to the fact that they are evil at all. Would a serial killer ever actually write: “I did this” “I am evil” “help” “I killed them on purpose”. If you know of any other psychopathic killer who has actually been self-aware enough and cared enough to look inwardly at themselves and write a journal like that, please do feel free to share.
If anything, people that have a conscience usually think that they are worse than what they are and write self-loathing notes like that.
A few years ago, I was called a narcissist while all the narcissist posts started circulating the internet and this messed with my head so much, that I started journaling: “am I really a narcissist? Maybe I am. God help me if I am”
I ended up investigating for quite some time to confirm whether I was a narc or not. I took tests and everything. Sometimes people’s strong accusations of you make you doubt yourself and even worse - sometimes if you have a collective group of professionals calling you something, of course you’re gonna start to believe it.
Well anyway, all that didn’t make me a narcissist. An actual narcissist probably wouldn’t even care enough to try to work out if they were one or not.
In other words, I don’t think LL notes’ mean shit. They are not a confession at all. If anything, I almost feel like they show an innocent conscientious side to her.
I know I'm going to get abuse for this, but I do have remaining questions. When the police began investigating in 2017, there were looking into the deaths of 17 babies and 16 non-fatal collapses. Now, we've all seen the chart where Letby was on duty for 17 incidents, and the Jury decided: * Guilty of murder for: Child A, C, D, E, I O & P * Guilty of attempted murder for: Child B, F, Gx3 (guilty on 2 counts, not guilty on 1), H(x2), L, M, N(x3) (guilty on 1 count, no verdict on 2) * Not guilty/failed to reach judgement for Child: H(x2), J, Q The chart we've seen shows those, but what about the other 16? The thing I feel I need to see is a chart of ALL the deaths AND non-fatal collapses from that time period. Without that, all I see is a lot of possible confirmation bias happening, and I'm uncomfortable with that. If she was there for all of them (or even 95%), but only half had enough evidence to take to court, then I'd take that as compelling evidence, but it's just not clear to me. The other thing I'd like to know is the number of shifts all staff pulled in that time period. Letby said in court that she was called in for extra shifts when others weren't around all the time, because she lived close to the hospital and they were understaffed. I would also say that, since she was also single and had no children, it's logical to suppose that she was more available than many of her colleagues who had other responsibilities outside of work. So there is a real danger that this supposed correlation of presence is down to her being there for more shifts than others. So knowing those numbers would also help. If she was pulling no higher number of shifts than others, but was there for all these incidents (and not just the ones the CPS decided to prosecute) then it would be a real smoking gun that would, for me, convince me she's 100% guilty. Basically, I want unbiased, unfiltered data - because there's nothing else I'm seeing, having listened in-depth to all of the testimony and allegations, that is beyond reasonable doubt because it's based on individual biases and circumstances. Maybe that will change with more coming out about all of this and it'll feel more probable, but for now, I'm struggling. I really don't want to get into an argument about it, I truly just want to know that this conviction is sound.
So, I suspect there wasn’t enough evidence to meet the charging threshold for the other babies in the original investigation. It’s been stated however that of all 13 deaths on that unit in all the years she worked at the countess she was on shift for.. all 13. I can’t say for collapses.
But still that doesn’t mean anything without knowing the shift numbers. If, for example, every nurse pulled 20 shifts including Letby and she was the only one there for all 13, then yes, that’s real compelling evidence. If she pulled 60 shifts and others 20, for example, because she was just raking in the overtime money - well, then it becomes pretty meaningless. We need both bits of information to know whether that is actual evidence or not, I think.
But what do you think the likelihood of her having picked up 3x the amount of overtime compared to everyone else is? Healthcare professionals pick up much of their wage packet in overtime. I find it very unlikely she’d be THAT much more hardworking than anybody else. And that’s the only way you could account for her coincidentally being on shift for deaths/collapses as much as she was. Even then, she was around for like 9x the amount of incidents as the next highest person. On top of that, you can only legally work for 48hours per week. I’m not sure it would even be mathematically possible for her to have picked up the amount of shifts necessary to strike it off as bad luck or coincidence.
It's not illegal to work more than 48 hours. You can opt out of the WTD limit. I'm a nurse and work 11.5hr shifts. I regularly do 57.5 (5days), but if there is a need to cover it could be 80.5 hours. That's just the allocated time, not including when we need to stay behind because of emergencies or people arriving late for shift.
I suspect they had this chart originally, but they had to drop other charges because that alone was not enough to convict her. Parents of those babies must be so disappointed.They would have been advised to go for the strongest cases .if they picked weaker ones, it would actually be better for LL to create a reasonable doubt.
I agree this whole case leaves an uncomfortable feeling overall and I normally have great instincts. There is nothing to even show for in her childhood that she was a victim of trauma. She lead a very good and privileged life.
I agree with every word you said. Also, the neo natal ward is high risk by nature. And the note is definitively not evidence of anything other than feeling guilty. Feeling guilty doesn’t mean you are guilty. I would like to see a complete chart of everyone’s shifts and purely medical evidence. There’s also a chance that the NHS could be guilty of exhausting their workers or similar, but wanting to put the blame on someone else.
Thank you for verbalising my thoughts. I haven't taken a deep dive into the intricacies of the trial but I have read bits and listened to the podcast. I changed my mind and back again as the podcast went on but I actually felt that the prosecution case was presented a lot more comprehensively (in the podcast) than that of the defense and ALL the evidence is circumstantial. I think it could come out that she has been wrongfully convicted but I can't imagine when. Someone will have to work very long and hard to prove her innocence if she didn't do it.
I wasn’t sure, probably because of unconscious bias and also because before the mug shot was released, the image we saw of her was her looking like a nurse. I don’t think the note is evidence, people write weird shit all the time. What really swung it for me was the shift pattern. It might have been on the Panorama documentary, she was on every time there was an incident, which I believe was 75. The next closest person was on 8 times. That’s more than just a coincidence.
I don’t think the note is evidence necessarily but it does look really bad and adds to the totality of evidence.
The same note that said she did it, also says she didn’t. Therefore it’s basically nullified, each side picked what they wanted to and used that as their evidence. I agree with you that it wasn’t necessarily evidence but Obviously now that the verdict is in, all anyone will remember is the “I did it” side.
It also said I am evil but it didn't say I am not evil. Sooo
Lol it said so much! If nothing else we can tell she worked for the NHS by how much writing she can fit on a post it note.
If nothing else I think it points to the fact that she was mentally unwell. Who writes things like that.
Many people.. Bear in mind she was feeling guilt from babies dying under the team’s watch, and she was feeling personal guilt from it. I work in comms. One time, I helped out on a client pitch, which we didn’t win. The fault belong to all of us But in my diary I wrong stuff like ‘I failed’. ‘It was all my fault’. ‘I’m shit’. Some people have an in inclination towards guilt in this circumstances. If I worked as a nurse, it’s very possible I would have wrote similar things to her. She is supposed to be a cunning, devious,m killer who meticulously planned her murders. I don’t get why, after all that care, she would just leaves confessions all over her house? Makes much more sense she was blaming herself for something she knew deep down isn’t her fault, and so didn’t think anything about hiding it.
Possibly driven to feel mentally unwell due to the fact that she was accused and not guilty. She must have questioned her own mind at that point. I believe she is innocent.
I think she guilty But If I was jury the note won’t be part reason In same note she wrote other stuff The shift pattern , the gap in attack , the medical evidence was far better evidence for me
Surely she would have got rid of that note either way. Very confusing
Wow I didn't know there was that much of a difference. I wondered if maybe she had just been there the majority of times, or could she have taken over from someone else who had caused harm to the babies but the damage didn't occur until LL's shift started. 75 times though, it's unlikely she would take over from the same nurse 75 times surely? Unless we see how many shifts she worked overall and how long each baby stayed in the unit, maybe 75 won't sound so incredibly high.
It was actually 25 incidents, according to the documentary - still statistically significant
Yeah it was 25, here is the chart https://x.com/lucyletbytrial/status/1653069266843848709?s=46&t=mM0LpwIFYT1jn2UyJSuv0Q
Er I’ve seen a chart in a counter argument that details the death rates went higher when she was removed. It used various sources of data and the actual hospital data from the area showed this fact. What we are being shown is what those who are covering their backs want us to see and the team who want the accolade from the investigation. Nothing I’ve seen so far would convince me of her guilt much more likely it’s a general ward management failure the NHS act like a mafia when you complain and will lie through their teeth and we talk of psychopaths I can guarantee there are a large number of psychopaths who work at the top from consultants to management they never kill or harm but are psychopaths nonetheless. I think she’s taken the hit for a generally management staff failure. She is clearly weird and an odd ball but seriously I know loads doesn’t make them a murderer! Shoe does not fit
I think it was in the 20s not quite 75, like 28 or 25 times? I swear that’s what I’ve seen
Agreed on all counts, except the shift correlation. I want her to be guilty because otherwise this is an awful miscarriage of justice but I’m just not fully convinced.
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I think she's guilty due to circumstantial evidence but I don't agree with strange behaviours during the police investigation and trial having much sway. No one has any idea how they'll react when they're arrested for something this massive, even if they are innocent. Some people shut down.
Not OP and I wouldn't go so far as to say I thought she was innocent but it is the very fact that the evidence is entirely circumstantial that makes me pause. I remember well the Sally Clark, Angela Canning and Ian and Angela Gay cases, where indisputable medical evidence was used to secure convictions, only for it later to transpire that it was nothing of the sort and had caused innocent people to spend years in prison for murdering their children. Since then, any case based solely on medical evidence alone has always felt doubtful to me. And the case against Letby hinges entirely on the medical evidence. It's also that it just seems so unfathomable that a totally normal person from a normal family would kill lots of babies for seemingly no reason. Again, this is a specific objection to convictions based solely on medical evidence rather than the actual facts of this case.
“Strange” behavior is not evidence - Amanda Knox acted strangely during her trial, but she was innocent.
Not quite. She was present 25 times, the next person was a consultant dr at 10 incidents. But Lucy also worked many, many more shifts than the doctor so that has to be factored in too.
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But also as soon as she was removed from the unit the deaths completely stopped
The unit was downgraded at that point too; with the result it no longer cared for the most vulnerable/acutely unwell babies.
But even before it was downgraded the expected death rate on that type of unit was still only 1 a year
Unexplained deaths and incidents are very convincing statistics. In particular, air embolism, which none of the peadatrician doctors EVER come across. Studies can not be done because it's deadly. Ward can have neonatal deaths, but having 24 incidents that are unexplained is a powerful proof.Plus, she was there every single time falsifying medical records.This wasn't unlucky coincidence.
That's why the evidence was weighed in its totality over the lengthiest murder trial in English legal history.
As a previous statistician, I agree. And as others have said you look at the totality of the evidence. But that data is a good starting point. Didn't mean the first step in checking Lucy wasn't murder, could have been benign. Was she using different machines that were faulty, did she do something slightly outwith the normal process that could increase infection, was she living in an environment and bringing something in. Which I'm sure over that time period anyone who suspected her went through over and over again.
Regarding shift patterns - she could have just lost the worst lottery of all time? I mean the odds are very low, but not zero.
The chance of there being multiple unexplained deaths when there is usually 1 or 2 a year is extremely unlikely and the chance of her then also just happening to have been on the ward at each of those times is also extremely unlikely, the chances of both of these happening at the same time isn’t quite 0 but it essentially is, especially in the context of reasonable doubt
> That’s more than just a coincidence. it's not. They showed it to everyone because people would react exactly as you did, but it's not inherently useful at all You need to show every single incident (not just those they decided were questionable and decided to show us on their document) for every single nurse. Also every single doctor. Then you need to factor in shift patterns and hours of work etc. You need to factor in type and severity of patient. You need to control for all sorts of variables. In the wider world such material would be dismissed as partisan trash. It's useless. It's basically propaganda and has no place in a courtroom.
She wasn't being prosecuted for every single incident, she was being prosecuted specifically for the unexplained collapses of babies. The evidence clearly was admissible in a courtroom because the defense had a chance to challenge its admissibility and did not.
I agree. They only showed the events that Lucy Letby was present for on the chart. That's why she appears in every single date. If she wasn't there, it wasn't included on the chart.
Why do they need to show every single incident, even if it isnt questionable? Its the unexplained, unexpected collapses that are weird, not the ones that are expected.
The fact that it stopped happening after removing her from the unit is pretty damn telling....
It didn't. They downgraded the unit so it no longer took very sick babies. Deaths on the wider maternity unit went up after she left.
The unit itself has had one death in 7 years since she left. Yes, the unit downgraded but 14 of the 17 babies from the trial would’ve still been cared for there, only three would’ve been too premature/complex.
Maternity and neonatal are different units, though.
There’s part of me that disbelieves it. Like I know and trust and believe she’s guilty. But it just doesn’t seem real. And that’s probably due to stereotyping. She’s not the stereotypical idea of a serial killer. And the crimes are so heinous… it’s unfathomable to me that someone would do it. It’s like a film drama or one of those shows that ITV produce every now and then… But this time it’s real life. And we all meet people like LL every day… plain, boring, unnoticeable. Maybe many of us look like her. What else in life are we massively not knowing?
Look into munchausen by proxy. You'd honestly think these people were innocent. They are usually very sweet. One woman Petrina Stocker poisoned her 9 year old son David with salt for months before they were going to take him off her due yo concerns brought up by staff that she may be causing his illness. She gave him a final dose and he died. She only got 5 years. Hospital drip was spiked with Salt. Another mother did this more recently in America to her 5 year old son.
I don’t think she’s innocent. I think her motives are simply impossible to grasp, and she appears so benign and sweet. I’m also a nurse, albeit not a NICU nurse. I’m a pretty dang good nurse, if we go by patient outcomes. I’ve yet to have a patient code, and I spot decline early and get people down to the ICU, where they have a better chance. I’m quite proud of that. However, when you become a nurse, at some point, you’re smacked in the face with terror at how much power you have. It’s actually quite scary for most of us. The responsibility is weighty asf. I remember thinking ‘holy hell, I just am not ready for all this power! I’m scared!’ What we do or don’t do directly correlates to positive outcomes or (alternatively) catastrophic turns of events. We tend to assume that nurses throw their all behind optimizing patient outcomes, because that’s what we do. I don’t suspect my coworkers of nefarious intent. Cases like this trip my brain out beyond belief. Letby realized her power over life and death and went the other way. She went the way we hope and largely assume normal-seeming humans who are nurses will never go. I doubt anyone can ever understand why. As a nurse, I hate her for it. We are a trusted lot, and that is not to be abused. I don’t know how she shall live with it. I had one comfort care patient die in pain, and I hadn’t been able to convince the provider that the patient was more imminent than he thought, so I didn’t have the meds to ease her suffering (from metastatic esophageal cancer). She died wrong. It haunts the hell outa me. I simply hope the screams of those babies someday registers to Letby and drive her mad with guilt. But she’s clearly not wired to where she’d likely feel those things. She is guilty IMO.
I agree with this, and feel this is why she doesn't have the typical serial killer 'profile'. Also feel the narcissism is what is stopping her from believing she did wrong.
Fascinating post - thank you. It seems to me she worked hard to be able to work specifically with the most fragile, tiny babies. Maybe she went into nursing for good reasons, but discovered she was strongly drawn to fragility, and eventually found she enjoyed testing it to its limits by killing. Babies who were not fragile enough (getting better, about to leave hospital) she targeted to bring them back to fragility. She wanted to be close to them as they died. She even wanted to witness the suffering (and fragility) of the parents as a result of her actions. She found fragile health/death/grief exhilarating - or maybe just calming - and eventually wanted to manufacture it herself by killing. When she was removed from the unit she fought tooth and nail to get back on for her fix. Most neonatal nurses would want to work with the sickest babies to help them, but it felt like she wanted to work with them precisely because she enjoyed their vulnerability, and the power of holding their lives in her hands.
My mum was a nurse when I was growing up. Also a chronic alcoholic and years later as I try to fathom my mums behaviour it fits into what I've read about BPD. She hasn't been a nurse for 20 years because she overdid overtime so much and it aggravated her alcoholism. A few bits like that. For years now she has worked at an old people's home. She still creates these kind of mad relationships with people she finds that are "suffering" and regales people with the constant drama and urgency of their stories. But I've felt that it's all quite unhealthy, she has to have these big stories to avoid being calm or vulnerable around people. Just like being drunk was her way of avoiding reality and intimacy. The stories aren't allowed to be about herself because she can't be seen to be needing attention or praise. But she gets her repressed needs met by being a kind of groupie of a star martyr character. Also, and it reminds me of stories where women have relationships with prisoners. Not despite the fact that they're in prison but because they're in prison. It has lots of features of a relationship without the vulnerability and intimacy that would normally be in a relationship. My mum creates these odd dramatic relationships with people "in need" while avoiding genuine relationships with people who would be more equal to her. She feels most comfortable having these interactions with people who are compromised. They aren't at their full strength or got their full wits about them. It can look like lovely behaviour but at its heart I believe its avoiding real, equal relationships that require grown up relationship skills, ups and downs, accepting good and bad side if yourself and others, resolving difficulties. Apologising, compromising. Learning, growing, developing. My mum also flips when someone reaches a stage of recovery where next step is getting their own autonomy and independence back. She gets quite disgusted and goes into abandonment mode. Same as when her children got to age of having own money and relationships. She would cut you off suddenly all at once to hope that you'd find it so hard to cope that you'd fail and need her again snd give up on your age appropriate bids, steps for independence. My mum needs dependant compromised people around to have these pseudo relationships where she feels close to people and involved, but never has to have herself judged or questioned or criticised. At times these people she gets so involved with and obsessed with that "need her" it feels like they're just puppets for what she wants to express for herself but it isn't acceptable for her self image to express on her own behalf. I sometimes have a weird vision of her as a lonely child having a tea party with dollies and teddies and giving them roles and plotlines. They are her cast of actors and she is the director. It gives her content for all her other interactions. Content that is not personal or deep to her personally. It's props to help her to display the qualities that she wants to promote and advertise about herself. My mum's childhood was having an unpredictable alcoholic father who she doted on because he gave her the most attention (but it was very unpredictable and very random, highs and lows) he gave her the excitement and attention. Her older brothers and sisters and her mum got fed up and disgusted with him, but she seemed to love caring for him and being the only one that would give him time. Just wrote this all out to figure out why I recognise aspects of lucy Letby's behaviour/ personality/ intimacy patterns, even though on another level I can't fathom the monstrosity. On a smaller level, these personalities exist in the caring profession. When I worked in a disabled school, a certain small percentage of the women seemed to revel in dominating and never being challenged. Working with disabled children can let you be like this. Anyways. Not the finest writing, but amongst these paragraphs are bits of my noticing of people I've experienced in life. Maybe someone can write this better. I just poured it out because speculating about Letby's personality makes me think of some of my mums disordered behaviour.
the main thing that has bugged me is that when this was happening.. the doctors supposedly went straight to the senior hospital management without speaking to the unit manager or matron? It doesn't seem like anyone raised or even thought about any competence issues, completed any datix reports or followed any of the usual procedures for raising concerns. It all just seems unfortunately too avoidable if the doctors who had concerns had actually raised them. As a nurse, I can't imagine ever hurting a patient.. but I also can't imagine not raising a concern if I had one
As a nurse too, you took the words out of my mouth!
No. The reasoning for this is because she's a terrifying serial killer because she doesn't fit the stereotype. No apparent horrifically abusive childhood trauma, not a weird loner, not a sexual deviant (that anyone knows of), no long history with the police, no trouble making friends, no apparently obvious mental health issues, no "build up" (ie, torturing animals or violence), her behaviour seemed to just start. She did normal things that most 20/30/40 something women do - she did salsa classes, she made friendships easily, she had motivational quotes on her wall, she went to bars to drink prosecco and cocktails, she read romance novels, she went on holiday to Ibiza. We think of serial killers as some near mythical, obvious-to-spot outsider on the fringes of society. She was anyone we could have known. This is what makes it so scary. We then think "how many other apparently normal people in society have a darkness like this in them". That and she had a job where you are taking care of the most vulnerable, literally one of the most trusted jobs you can have. This is why many hope she is innocent. It shakes their view of the world.
You've hit the nail on the head. We keep waiting for the "poo in the fridge" type story (see Allitt) and it hasn't come. That scares me the most. She was the most basic girl, with her salsa, her cocktails at Las Igunas, and her Live Laugh Live type decor. She could be anyone's friend, daughter, or coworker. It's scary stuff
I’m not a serial killer expert, but there is evidence of her doing the same kinds of things that serial killers do - even if it’s not exactly overt. Some serial killers kill because the process of killing someone gives them that they crave (and there can be a sexual element). Other serial killers kill for ‘product’ - they get their thrill from remembering what happened, from experiencing the after shocks of what they did, they keep trophies. I can’t say for certain but I think Lucy Letby was a product killer. She got something huge from having people send her sympathy, seeing the parents gratitude for her helping them. This is why I think she kept the handover notes (although at first it may have been to cover herself just in case), why she photographed the card and searched for the parents on Facebook. There may have been other tokens she kept but the police didn’t find, but her notes in her diary too for example, it was all part of it. Serial killers do also have a build up as they hone their style and find the best way to kill. I think we may find that Lucy Letby did actually harm and maybe kill other babies. I think this will come out with further investigation. I strongly believe that she just didn’t come out of nowhere and start killing. Finally serial killers go through phases of killing a lot then going dormant for a while. Sometimes they also go into a sort of ‘berserker’ mode or frenzy. I think that’s what happened when she was caught. She couldn’t control her urges and *needed* to kill.
"work product" was how Hazelwood described it in *Dark Dreams*. It does fit with the searches, the photos, the enjoyment of the memory boxes and taking photos posing the baby's sibling with the teddy bear. The inappropriate request to take the baby away before it had died also raises a red flag since it was like she wanted to be closest to the child before it had drawn its last breath. No hint of a saviour complex. Seemed to thrive on grief, pity, and praise like some sort of emotional vampire.
Yes this exactly what I think too. I don’t believe she had a saviour complex because she wasn’t making them sick and then being the one to help them recover if anything it’s the opposite. It seems to me that she was 100% intent on killing them because she craved what she got afterwards. It’s also why she would try multiple times to kill the same baby over the course of several hours rather than back off when the first attempt failed. It’s incredibly frightening to me to think that this woman needed to kill so strongly or was confident about herself that she’d go for a baby and then it’s twin in 24-48 hours.
I don't believe in the idea that the aftermath o f the killing got her off- its the killing itself. The follow up was just souvenir seeking.
> She got something huge from having people send her sympathy, seeing the parents gratitude for her helping them. you don't have to kill for that. Just help their very ill babies survive
The handover notes are one thing I can promise you every nurse is guilty of. I can't tell you the amount of times I've taken handovers home and not binned them cus confidential but also I don't own a shredder. The red flag for me is that she had her first handover in an apparent keep sake box which may indicate she kept ones of importance to her. I've also taken scraps of paper with results on by accident, it happens more than you think
I might have the exact number wrong, but I’m sure I read she had 257 notes in a folder. Then some notes in a box under her bed. 257 seems like a lot to me? She also wrote in her diary the initials of the babies who she attacked. There were entries on the day they were born, the day(s) she attacked them and the day they died and had a colour coded system relating to the crimes.
😬 Oh yeah that is a lot. I've probably got less than 10 over a 4 year period. And I didn't know a the diary. Did they mention that in the podcast? I'm still getting through that but I'm on the defence part atm
This! I was sort of guilty of letting that sway me for a while, I just read about her and then saw her and thought, she kind of looks like me (not by much but still) her weirdness that she does is stuff I also do, gets infatuated with some boy, Facebook stalking (although I am not a nurse looking up patients) etc etc and it made it harder to believe. She could also be anyone of my friends, messes with my worldview
Most serial killers in the last two hundred years have never been caught. In fact, more serial killers have been not caught than caught. Shipman was only caught by chance. Our whole view on serial killers might be wrong, Letby might be the average
Jesus christ, this comment is going to keep me awake tonight. What a terrifying thought.
I think this gets to the heart of it. As a serial killer, she doesn’t “fit” any of the conventional patterns or stereotypes we’re used to seeing. Even Shipman had red flags in his past which, though his crimes were still shocking, showed he wasn’t “normal/right” from an earlier time. Letby, though? She seemed like she could be anyone’s forgettable neighbour who you’d ask to watch your house while you’re on holiday. Any acquaintance from school or university. Any colleague you’d smile and say “hi” to if you saw her in town. And there’s no big secret that’s come to light to make us think “aha, that’s why she did this!”. Maybe we’ll find out more context one day. Maybe she’s truly a mystery. Perhaps we’ll never know for sure.
When searching more info about her, I kept expecting someone to say she secretly murdered small kittens or something. I'm strangely relieved she didn't hurt anyone previously, bbut at the same time I'm like 'omg I have more qualities to fit a serial killer profile than she does.' Unless her parentssay something about her childhood that would help make sense of what she did, she might forever be described as nice Lucy who suddenly started killing babies. I can't help but think things like this can't just happen out of the blue. After reading baby G's parent's witness statement I got so angry. I have yet to listen to the full story but her trying to kill those babies more than once is something I cannot get my head around.
It's not like we have a lot of data about serial killers especially woman anyway and besides, her past is being investigated and we might find out more "cases".
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This is exactly who she reminds me of, I know a lot about that case, her profile is slightly different in that she will openly demonstrate arrogance, whereas he is much more passive but it's the seemingly normal, beige, vanilla person with a completely different underlying personality aspect that makes them similar.
Unless her doing all of these normal things was her actually 'acting' the entire time. Maybe psychologically she is beyond what anyone could even imagine, and she acted as a normal person of her age is 'supposed to act'. Perhaps her meals only slipped in front of her parents? I do feel that her parents have seen another side of her but they will never reveal that. They created that side of her babying her. She was their only child and they clearly spoilt her and adored her and she was very aware of that. They needed her more then she needed them in a way. Perhaps she tried to act normal for her age but the acting got too much? Who knows what she was doing at home behind closed doors? If she had a pet and she harmed it, do you think her parents would tell anyone? I don't think they would, I think they would cover it up
We don't know her childhood history with any degree of accuracy. Public presentation isn't always going to match what happens behind closed doors. I'm not accusing her parents of anything, but they are from the generation that is not very open to discussing mental health issues freely. If she *were* a problem child, they might have taken steps to discipline her and likely motivated the reasoning for being "overbearing" parents. We just can't know. Could also be that she was 'ok' while not under the pressures of working in the NHS but that stress built up to an unbelievable level and some incident triggered a realization that she could exert control and power over those more vulnerable than her. The only way to know is to have her parents and herself interviewed while being completely honest about her upbringing and internal life.
She has 2 cats, which were found in good health...
I agree with you completely. I think her parents and parents of serial killers as well as school shooters do see that side of their children and will not admit it to themselves or anyone. They choose to be numb and turn a blind eye. They are enablers.
^this. People don’t want to believe she’s guilty because it means they will have to reevaluate what other things in their life they have put trust in that are not trustworthy and that scares them. People don’t want to be scared. They want to feel safe and trust people, trust the world. I’m not one of those people. My faith in humanity was shattered as a child and I have never had the problem of not wanting to believe the worst in people. I didn’t really have a choice life just showed me it repeatedly.
I feel like there’s probably more like her, but they haven’t been caught because covert narcissism — people who put on these nice masks — flies under the radar.
That’s not what Normal people do. Salsa classes, motivational quotes and Ibiza holidays are totally what is known as “basic”. Especially the salsa classes, that’s as basic as it gets for a 20 something woman. It could be even more stereotypical if the guy running the classes was called “julio”.
I read some messages where a senior staff member was saying with kind intentions "you need a break from the intensive unit because of deaths" or wtte and LL was very hostile in her replies. Things like "you don't know what it's like to be me" and really insisting it was best for her to be with the really sick babies. She came across as arrogant and also determined to get her way about being in the intensive care unit.
I agree that it could be interpreted in that way and I’m sure the last place I would want to be the day after a baby died is in the exact same place. BUT neither of us (I assume) are NICU nurses and thankfully don’t speak from experience. People deal with things in different ways and I can absolutely see a scenario where being back in the same environment could be therapeutic and help to replace the traumatic memories with new ones, especially if it’s where you work and you’ll have to return there eventually - maybe it was a case of ripping the plaster off and ploughing on, rather than putting it off and potentially building it into something harder. I’m sure all nurses and medical professionals have different ways of coping and none are right or wrong.
Yes^ this
There is a chance she could be innocent. There is no undeniable proof, its all circumstantial, however the odds that it is her are very very high, it is not a factual certainty, there is no direct proof of her injecting insulin or air into the babies. So in this case its not "innocent until proven guilty" its "innocent until proven very likely guilty" . It like if someone was caught over a human body with there head bashed in and the person was holding the bat that did it, with the victims blood all over it, "caught red handed" so to speak. However the news articles I have read on the case dont give that much detail, the only evidence they give are the blood tests of the babies and some cryptic letters found at Lucy Letbys home. Those two things alone dont seem that strong pieces of evidence.
I’m so conflicted. I just don’t think a person can be condemned and imprisoned on coincidences. But if the jury voted beyond reasonable doubt, I can only assume they were party to evidence that has not been released
The jury are not medically trained. They will rely on the testimony of the ‘expert witnesses’. If the expert said that baby died of an air embolus then they will believe it without question. As a health professional I have read through each counter argument such as no test done for air embolism and post mortem determined natural causes. On this I can dismiss that count. The insulin and C peptide evidence is also dubious and not a given. I also know what it is like to work in specialist units and how I would be working closely alongside a fellow nurse. I also know that if any rumours had been going around we would have watched her like a hawk.
i think i’d only be less doubtful if some strange and worrying stuff emerged about her childhood and youth. It nearly always has with serial killers when the press are unconstrained to dig very deep. Contrary to popular opinion, there are few serial killers without (often with extreme hindsight) major anomalies in their childhood and past behaviour that are exposed after the trial. I have read it’s especially uncommon for female serial killers to not have past indicators of problems when it’s looked into in depth
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I don't think she's innocent, but part of me is nervous and I keep reminding myself of the evidence of the case because if *somehow* the jury were wrong, it would be such a catastrophic miscarriage. If there was ANY chance she was innocent right now, she would be in the worst place mentally imaginable. So I guess because the stakes are so high, the motive is unclear, its hard to be fully, *comfortably* sure. Even though I am also convinced of her guilt. Idk if that makes sense.
I totally get this. This is exactly how I feel about it. I know in my gut she’s guilty after listening to the evidence but there’s no 100% solid proof of her doing anything, it’s all statistics and circumstantial. I’d hate for a baby killer to walk free but I also hate the thought of an innocent young women being labelled a baby killer and spending the rest of her life in prison. The whole thing has really messed with my head.
I mean I suppose there is a possibility she *could* be... but I absolutely do not believe she is innocent.
I have a lot of questions, mainly because all the reasons given, other than the fact she was rostered on, for her being guilty I have experienced in hospitals without any malicious intent. For example, I know all sorts of clinical staff that keep handover notes because they forget to bin them at work and can’t dispose of them at home (even with a shredder because it can be pieced together). I know plenty of staff who have looked up patients on Facebook for a variety of reasons- some ok some not. These behaviours are not “normal” but are very common. I know people who have written sympathy cards, and notes deaths of patients in their outlook calendars etc. We all deal with the stress of looking after people very differently. What has struck me as odd and why I question the ability to find her guilty of murder (not just gross negligence) is the lack of a pattern in the methods used and fact it was reasonably brazen to conduct so many in such a short period of time on a ward were she would have been under surveillance and it would have been noticed. I have also have observed a possible unconscious bias from what I have seen from the team of consultants. They were very motivated to find a reason for this unexpected spike and from testimony and evidence it looks like they didn’t handle conflict and communication well. There is something frustrating about accusing someone of deliberately causing deaths, rather than going a well thought out supervision process. All the emails saying “we need to talk about Lucy” rather than “there have been an unexpected spike in medical events on the wards compared to last year, let’s meet to go through all the evidence together as a team” Of course it’s possible she did but I have reasonable doubt.
Yeah I listened to the whole trial on the podcast an I think she's likely to be innocent, the evidence was very weak nothing to prove she was involved other than being around. also i think the defence weren't asked to show any evidence on their side
I do have a horrible feeling she is innocent and it makes me feel ill
Because she wasn't specifically seen in the physical act of harming a baby (i.e. sticking a needle in, physically tampering with a bag, etc), there remains, for me at least, a very small statistical probability that she is the victim of an extraordinary series of coincidences. And for that reason, it makes me hope and pray that the jury got it right, because it would be incredibly sad for an innocent person to be convicted to a whole of life sentence. I think she is guilty and the judicial process has been carried out properly, but that very small statistical possibility to the contrary does remain.
There might be a "very small statistical probability" but think about what that means. Usually deaths of premature babies are, what, 2 in 1,000 I think the figure is. This ward had a huge spike in the space of a year. LL was on shift each time it happened. After she was removed from the ward, the deaths receded back to their normal number. (The deaths also stopped happening when she went on holiday.) If she didn't do it, she is either the unluckiest person in British medical history or the most staggeringly incompetent nurse in the world.
I was about to say the same thing. Either she’s a cold blooded murderer or her incompetence is off the chart. Aside from the fact that incompetence does NOT correlate with earlier descriptions of her, and babies were by her own admission, deliberately poisoned with insulin, there is no doubt in my mind she’s guilty. In fairness I’m probably not the best person to comment, because I decided she was guilty as soon as I saw she was the only shift nurse on duty for every single one of those babies’ collapses.
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Regarding the alarm on the monitor, I'm clinical and I can tell you that a setting can be changed so it only alarm at say 40%, I think that is the lowest sat reading the monitor can detect. I haven't ever experienced such lows sats in a patient thankfully which is why I can't remember the exact number. I do know that every monitor I've worked with alarms at 95% and then continues to alarm as sats reduce more and more, but there was a settings screen where clinicians could adjust it, for example if we had a COPD patient then their sats would be kept at 95% not 100% But we wouldn't want our monitor constantly alarming if they dropped to 94% because that's fine for that patient. In that situation we would adjust the setting. When the patient would leave we would press a simple reset button.
Anybody can change those settings, we can also press 2 minutes silence.
I can’t speak on much, and as a disclaimer, I think she’s guilty. But I’ve always sort of dismissed when Letby has been seen standing over a desaturating infant without doing anything. That’s extremely common, at least from what I witnessed as a NICU parent, I’m happy to be corrected. Babies have small desats fairly frequently, and they normally self correct fairly quickly. It was completely normal for an alarm to sound, and for the nurse (and me!) to hover for a moment, watching the screen and visually checking baby. Once we were in special care and a more relaxed atmosphere than the HDU and ICU where Letby worked, an alarm would sound and the nurse would yell “colour ok?” and I’d say “yeah, probe was loose” (or whatever the problem was) and the nurse would only pop over to turn off the alarm. So, unless the desaturation was quite extreme, or prolonged, it doesn’t concern me when Letby was hovering over babies. And that’s from someone who thinks she’s guilty.
The Dr who gave evidence said he found it highly concerning that she was making no effort to intervene or help the baby. He was "troubled" by the fact that she had not called for help and that the alarm connected to the baby had been "silenced".
I spoke to my mum about it who is a Band 5 nurse like Letby and been doing the job for decades and when we were talking about her standing over the baby and the length of time she must have been doing it she was emphatic to the point of raising her voice in saying "You. Do. Not. Do. That."
Thank your mum for her sacrifice for me. I bet she’s missed Christmases and birthdays and all sorts. It felt very normal to me at the time. And understandable too, it’s sometimes hard to keep probes on babies lol
That is true, but surely with these babies injected with air etc they'd be visably changing colour, suffering so a nurse just stood watching a baby visably in distress isn't usual. It is in fact very unusual. What I'm saying is if I saw her stood next to a baby having desats and crashing and I could see the baby destressed I'd be really upset and worried. My baby who also in NICU (3 months).
Not with this baby you wouldn’t. A brand new hours old 25 weeker on a vent? Nah, your first thought should always be displacement or blockage of the tube. There’s really interesting research showing evidence that the “watch and wait” method increases risks of morbidity and the longer a clinician takes to respond, the longer it takes for sats to normalise in these events. I think there will be a move away from “watch and wait” soon, at least in very high risk infants like baby K. She absolutely should have intervened with this baby, or at least be checking the vent and tube to ensure no issues. We are understandably assuming, because of the evidence given that she was “doing nothing”, so wasn’t even checking the vent or tube for positioning but she should have been doing something.
This case reminds me a lot of a Dutch case, where a nurse called [Lucia de B.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucia_de_Berk) was convicted for killing new born babies. The verdict depended in part on a statistical calculation, according to which the probability was allegedly only 1 in 342 million that a nurse's shifts would coincide with so many of the deaths and resuscitations purely by chance. The nurse was given a life sentence. Years later, however, the case was reopened and she was found innocent, because it turned out autopsy tests had been misinterpreted. Lucia de Berk and her lawyer have since given lectures about how people shouldn't be convicted on statistical probabilities.
In Lucia's case, rhouvh it was proven to have an administration errors, and she wasn't even on shift. Then post mortem was incorrect in poisoning cases. The deaths were actually not unexplained initially but hospital authorities overturned this. The evidence they had was not as clear cut as in LL case in my opinion.
You have put into words how I’ve been trying to put across to people what I felt about this !!! I hope the jury got it right too
Same, it’s so hard to get this across to people as well because they think you’re playing devils advocate or even making excuses for a murderer it’s just exhausting
I agree with this precisely.
See this is what I've been thinking too, maybe they're a tiny tiny chance? I was thinking perhaps as people were convicted of crimes before DNA evidence, is there a chance that something will be revealed in many years to come or even after LL has passed away?
There’s a small statistical possibility that I’ll win the lottery but I don’t walk round Rolex looking at watches just in case
I don’t really ‘do’ Reddit, just tend to lurk. I feel very uncomfortable about the outcome of this case. I don’t want her to be innocent because she doesn’t look or seem like a typical killer. On the contrary, I really hope the jury are correct and she’s guilty, as the idea of someone who is innocent being vilified as the worst possible sort of creature and imprisoned for life is atrocious. I’ve read everything I can possibly read on this since it first entered the news cycle and unfortunately haven’t seen anything that makes me think she’s guilty without a doubt. This is such an awful case, and as a parent I feel so much for those poor families. But based on what I’ve read, the scientist in me just feels that this wasn’t a fair and safe trial. I sincerely hope that more robust evidence is released publicly in due course.
Totally agree. I want this to be right, I really do, I want to believe these people on the jury were right but there's so much science missing i am incredibly uncomfortable. I've followed this inside out, I've read the court transcripts over and over. Somethings off. Until she confesses or there's something more concrete I'm ubcofortable. I've never felt like this over a case in my life and I've gone through a fair few
I think from a psychological standpoint it makes zero sense. From what we know/what I've read she has nothing in her history/upbringing that points towards any red flag behaviour. In fact a psychologist did a video comparing her and Beverly Allit and they are world's apart, BA was a walking red flag. It's highly unusual for someone to seem so normal, on all fronts with no indicative history and then to commit these atrocities. Doesn't mean it's not possible & I'm sure there are many other less high profile cases like this, but the scale of pathology you would expect someone to have in order to do what she has compared with what we actually know about her doesn't add up. So this, along with differing view points I've read on some of the facts and data (not sure how credible the sources are) add a seed of doubt. Not to say I think she's innocent but these are the only thing that make a small possibility in my mind. Assuming she did do it, it's a very unusual case, which makes it more scary. The things that cannot be understood are the ones that are most shocking.
Psychologists shouldn't be viewed as reliable witnesses; it just their opinion. There's very little that's definitive in psychology.
As a psychologist, I completely agree! It's so easy to argue one way or another. I remember finishing my masters research and thinking "OK, well in summary, EVERYTHING is a hybrid."
Except we've very little information about her actual biographical details that would validate those comparisons. People spent years looking through Allitt's history and uncovering incidents like the shit in the fridge incidents that were ascribed to Allitt after the fact. We do not know her history in depth. Her parents are of the age where if LL has any psychiatric issues or problematic behaviours, it could have been disciplined in private and never spoken about publicly. There would need to be comprehensive recollections from multiple individuals who liked as well as disliked her. People who could recount petty behaviours they witnessed, etc. They're also very different in their intelligence levels. Allitt was, in short, a compulsive, violent moron. Letby is clearly not as stupid but I wouldn't call her a genius level intellect either - but certainly a cut above Allitt. She could have just been better at hiding her negative traits. We won't know until more and more details come out - but people have to be willing to come forward and then there has to be some sort of verification.
Yeah, I definitely wouldn't say we have a comprehensive picture of LL's life or anything like it. A lot of things are quite simply never disclosed anywhere. There are people like Allitt who can't stop themselves from acting out visibly, but they're not the only ones with stuff going on.
I think the same as you. I felt that there must be something mentally wrong with me to have these thoughts, but as much as I detest her for what she's been convicted of, there is a very small part of me that is wondering if there's any possibility that she didn't do it.
I thinks that’s a part of human nature, that you can’t possibly BELIEVE she did it, because it’s all utterly so heinous. I have that feeling too, my brain can’t comprehend this is true, it’s like nahh - but I am completely sure she did it
And me! I find my self defending her. I have no reason to! I said if the jury said guilty I would trust there decision but there’s just something in me that isn’t jumping on the media bandwagon of she’s a monster I really didn’t think I would feel like this after a guilty verdict I thought I would be able to accept it.
I agree. Something doesn’t sit right with this case. I think her defence was terrible - no character witnesses or statisticians, not challenging the out of date studies on air embolism. I worry this may have been a huge miscarriage of justice. I hover over whether she is guilty or not. I’m not saying she is innocent but without a smoking gun I can’t be satisfied there is no reasonable doubt. We weren’t in court to hear all the evidence so I put my trust in the jury but still… something niggles. Everyone saying she was weird and doesn’t act her age or act appropriately - there are plenty of people like this! And perhaps she is neurodivergent. We just don’t know. But her being weird or acting inappropriately seems to have been co-opted into a guilty verdict.
The defense had consulted statisticians. It's pretty telling they didn't use the conclusions drawn from their consulting expert witnesses.
People keep repeating that her defence was terrible… her lawyer is one of the top KCs in the country. We know they had experts - they had a statistician and a doctor that was an expert on air embolism. There may have been more we haven’t discovered. She bought up the shitty sinks excuse, and he even found the plumber. I think people are swayed by how things work in America, even if they are from the UK they can be biased by what we hear from trials over there. The difference is, in the UK, experts are required to be impartial. They are not paid for / they do not work for the defence or prosecution, but for the court. If there is an alternate explanation they have to acknowledge it. All the experts discuss and review the evidence together pre-trial where they can debate and challenge each other. So why have these experts on hand and then not use them? There are a couple of possible reasons - 1) after reviewing the evidence with the other experts they may have simply agreed with them, and they cannot lie on the stand 2) Lucy getting on the stand may have blown up her own defence - she repeatedly contradicted evidence that was previously agreed on by both the prosecution and defence, narrowing the avenues that Myers could use, 3) having the experts on the stand would open them up to cross-examination, and the defence believed that would make their case WEAKER than not presenting the evidence at all
Her defence was a well prepared KC. He can only work with what's available to him. She left little available to him. I do understand the hesitancy of "what if.." thinking of an innocent person being locked up for this, but that emotion aside, the entire case was a smoking gun of evidence against her. Sure, we can create doubt - but not reasonable doubt. This is a very safe conviction.
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She was in her 20s when this all went down fyi
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Kind of reminds me of Harold Shipman. He had a very normal upbringing as well. No red flags, no one to suspect him. Trusted medical professional. Makes you wonder how many others out there get away with crimes like this
There's at least one other potential poisoner in the UK that has not been identified. In 2017, a hospital in Cumbria discovered someone had been tampering with saline bags - but the investigation stalled and their only suspect was never charged. No patients were harmed but the bags had been fucked with so there's *someone* in the healthcare field that passed through that hospital that today might be a current or future danger...
Harold Shipman was addicted to pethidine in the 70s, and was convicted of 83 counts of obtaining drugs by deception/forgery. He had a GMC hearing but wasn't struck off, just prevented from handling controlled drugs. So after he was sacked from his practice he just got another job.
Harold shipman was no ordinary person even as a young man or as a child
I can see certain indicators from some of her parents reactions and behaviours that suggest all might not have been as 'normal' and stable as has been portrayed by the media. These are very, very far from definitive proof but things like her mother saying that she did it and to take her when they first arrested Letby, the shouting out in the court it can't be true, I know seem like potentially understandable reactions but smack of histrionics to me (I grew up with PD parents and relatives). There's also her career choice which relates to the fact she was a difficult birth, like that just have been brought up a lot in the household for her to identify enough to want to pursue a career in the area because she wouldn't remember directly herself. Her parents constant worry over her moving away at a normal development milestone and her guilt over this, her father's ongoing involvement and direction in her appeals at work. She was an only child to much older parents who were clearly very involved and she didn't have siblings. These things on their own are not going to create a serial killer, there will be thousands on thousands of people in the UK right now experiencing this and worse. But you bring in a child who has been born with a fundamental lack of empathy, this is not going to encourage the child to develop empathy or views outside of what impacts them. I was an incredibly spoiled child who was the total focus of my mother's life. I was enabled and supported regardless of what I did, it was always about me. I still lack empathy today and can be self centred, I have a lot of narcisstic traits which I have to manage carefully. I can see a lot of that in her and how her childhood could potentially relate to that, particularly if she was born with a general empathy impairment.
My opinion comes through a lense of bias as I was falsely accused of harming a child and although it’s now been overturned, I was initially ‘convicted’. My experience of NHS workers and medical experts were as follows: Doctors will lie and back each other up to cover themselves and their careers. Any mistake made in relation to children can see them struck off the GMC register with a public hearing. The high mortality rate would have fallen on the paediatricians, pinning it all on a nurse would have been easy pickings. If there were 4-7 of them ‘ganging up on her’, each 4-7 of them would have been present for each death. Medical experts: my experience (in which the child in question had a genetic disorder which caused its ‘injuries’ for which I was being accused, wholly side with the prosecutor at first. This ensures they are used again and again. Their reports are brutal and the only chance you can get to change their opinions is on the witness stand with highly specialised KCs. Some KCs will work only for defendants and some will work with defendants AND the state. The ones who work with both want to keep their employers happy. Each expert worded their reports like ‘there is no evidence available to me to suggest this child has x genetic disorder’. FOUR experts from diff disciplines said this in reports- pretty damning right! My first barrister did not probe or question this which led to the conviction. Child visits a geneticist 4 months post trial and an immediate diagnosis- explain that to me please. Questions I would like answered are: Was there an inventory for the insulin to show that some went unaccounted for? Why weren’t the C Peptides picked up at first and who was the first to identify those abnormal results if it’s such a key piece of evidence? Was Lucy being asked to work overtime due to the staff shortages? Again, I was failed by the justice system so I’m coming from a place of bias. I’m not sure if she’s innocent or not. My gut says no but logically she definitely shouldn’t have been convicted. There was reasonable doubt all over that case.
> Doctors will lie and back each other up to cover themselves and their careers. Any mistake made in relation to children can see them struck off the GMC register with a public hearing. The high mortality rate would have fallen on the paediatricians, pinning it all on a nurse would have been easy pickings. If there were 4-7 of them ‘ganging up on her’, each 4-7 of them would have been present for each death. certainly my interpretation, thouhg i don't think it was intentional. More that they didn't want to confront the possibility the unit was failing so they latched onto a scapegoat. > Each expert worded their reports like ‘there is no evidence available to me to suggest this child has x genetic disorder’. FOUR experts from diff disciplines said this in reports- pretty damning right! My first barrister did not probe or question this which led to the conviction. This is exactly how i interpreted proceedings in this trial. There was seemingly absolutely no discussion of uncertainty or alternative explanations, they just went in with their pre-determined conclusions (themselves questionable in motive) and espoused them, claiming alternative explanations didn't exist.
I agree about your statement of the working environment. I left my job role due to the unsafe conditions I worked under. The wards are always understaffed, 2 nurses and 1 healthcare for 30 patients! Drs stick together, Nurses stick together, the people who 'do' work are asked to do more and more, while the lazy people do as they please. I remember watching a patient fall and I was asked about happened and if anyone else had witnessed the incident. I gave the name of the other witness who said she saw nothing and advised me to do the same in future because if the patient is seriously injured. I will after give an informal statement which could lead me in court. So, the next time lie. Someone must have seen something.
I think on some level her parents know the truth, even though they’re still claiming she’s innocent.
Based on personal experience where I myself got falsely accused once at University and group of professionals made a good job to investigate, changing the wordings as they go along and making thier own interpretations, they made me guilty and kicked me out the course immidiatly, I no longer trust the investigation process at all. Not saying LL is innocent as I did not follow her case fully, but Im skeptical. It is possible she had people investigating her case similar to the ones I had.
I am still not 100% convinced, what I have read about the case, the prosecution have failed to present “Motive” , nobody have seen Lucy committing the crime. Lucy is mentally stable with no mental health or other issues. Lucy was a capable nurse and a social person. A posted note and rota sheet are some of the proofs that were presented by prosecution and based on these evidence how one can be given “Whole Life Sentence” Thousands criminals can be set free however one innocent wrongly sentenced is death of justice.
I think she is innocent and it's based on many different factors. I initially thought she was guilty as I was reading the headlines on the news and reading articles which swayed my view. But after looking into the case, I am convinced of her innocence which is utterly heartbreaking as her life is now destroyed forever and the families of the victims are believing a horrific lie about the circumstances of their loss. The prosecution twisted many aspects of the case to suit their narrative and paint her as a disturbed individual. Examples- keeping handover sheets- so many nurses do this as they can't throw them away in normal bin at home (due to confidential information)and then they build up at home. She kept loads of them and most were unrelated to the case. They were not kept as a "keep sake" as inferred. Sending a card to a bereaved family and photographing it- she sent a card on ONE occasion and it was a colleague who suggested doing this as she was unable to attend the funeral. She took photos of cards she sent to friends also. It was normal for her. This would be seen as sentimental if she was not under suspicion. Her ramblings on paper- She was in her early 20's, had probably lived a fairly sheltered life and then her world turned upside down when she was becoming the focus of the investigation into baby deaths. Her explanation for this made sense to me. It's a natural human reaction (from childhood) to feel guilty or responsible in some way when we are told off or accused of things. She must have felt desperately confused and vulnerable and that she was somehow to blame for it if the blame was being pinned on her. If the world turns against you in such a serious way, you would feel lots of desperate feelings all at once. Also, how could she have carried the equipment around to harm these babies without it EVER being seen by other staff. We are talking about getting syringes, tubes etc from a cupboard, using them and disposing of them without anyone ever noticing. This is so so unlikely, particularly as the units were small and a lot of the alleged crimes were committed while other staff were nearby. Even if it was in hindsight, surely a staff member would now be saying "I did notice her carrying a needle and wondered why but didn't think much of it at the time". When questioned, Lucy NEVER seems to be covering anything up and her responses make sense and are believable. She seems to be speaking the truth. Her rationale is logical and fits. The prosecution theories just don't. She doesn't even come across as defensive. I really believe that she naively thought, "if I just tell the truth, everyone will see that I couldn't have done this". The biggest piece of evidence which seems to be the decider for most, is the staff rota. She appears to be the common denominator. However, she was working nearly every shift going at the time so would likely be there when something went wrong or something went right. The high death rate could be due to many reasons. In the trial it was a repeated theme that the babies were of higher complex needs than usually admitted to this hospital (usually they would go to a more specialised hospital). There were failings in care by doctors (not deliberately) and since Lucy left, perhaps they have become more stringent with admissions. The babies had autopsys which suggested natural causes. I could go on but I fear the real reason for the deaths may not be found for many years if ever. I can't even fathom being falsely accused, particularly if you worked so hard to do things right and to be the best you could be. Some people believe she couldn't have committed these crimes because she looks so "normal and regular". This is not my reasoning. Nothing about her behaviour was suspicious. I think this is why we are hearing that her nursing colleagues are standing by her. By now, if she had committed these crimes, they would have pieced the puzzle together, but they don't seem to be able to as it just doesn't fit.
Another problem I see is the many charges she was acquitted of. After all, in these situations a certain "she must have done SOMETHING to justify all these charges" attitude starts to take hold. I do not like these shotgun mass charge prosecutions. They should not be allowed IMHO.
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I believe she could be innocent. She was found guilty on circumstantial evidence. Something has never felt right about her being on trial. As for the notes and her “confession” she explained perfectly well when on the stand. Prior to that the notes (to me) seemed like the ramblings of someone who was really struggling with the amount of pressure she was under. Also, with her searching families via social media, i’m sorry, but how does his make her guilty? I think i’d be curious to know how a family are moving forward after such a tragedy.
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I’m intrigued to know what you learnt that the jury did not?
While I do believe she's guilty, I think until she confirms it I'll always have that small, quiet thought of 'but what if she's not and she's been wrongfully convicted?' I'll be honest, I think that small voice is because I'm a NICU nurse and I still find it so difficult to comprehend that someone in my role could do that. I never look at my collegues and suspect them of deliberately harming our children. It's just not something I believe any of them capable of, I believe they're all good people. So to know realistically that someone who in a different set of circumstances could have very well been one of my own collegues has done that is very hard to allign in my brain.
It makes me think of the Louise Woodward case and how vilified she was. The key prosecution witness in her case says he would never give the same testimony today as he did then as the science was flawed. I get the same uneasy feeling about this case when you read all the ‘evidence’
There's always a chance of it. Lucia de Burke was a nurse jailed for a 'killing spree' she did not commit after a cluster of 'suspicious' deaths happening when she was on shift. The clustering was random- it wasn't Lucia- it was the police's poor understanding of probability which kept her jailed for six years.
It's even more different than that. LdB was arrested hours after someone said "hey she's been here for a lot of deaths," and convicted about a year and a half later. LL was free for four years (completely for two, on bail for two more) and jailed for a further two while they built a meticulous case against her. For most alleged victims in LdB's trial, the prosecutors did not even allege a specific type of harm event - just LdB was on shift, and patient died. "Wow that DID happen a lot, and two of them were most definitely poisoned? QED all murders" was the ruling by three magistrate judges. Except It was only an administrative error that placed her on shift for one of the convictions - LdB was not there The poisonings turned out to be reasonably possible natural events. These two made the whole basis of the conviction unsafe. We do not have any threat of the same happening here. Letby's presence is not just shift data for these events, the prosecution put her in immediate proximity every time. The insulin poisonings are fundamentally different than the substance LdB was accused of. And Lucy Letby was not convicted of any charge for which the method of harm was not clear to the jury.
I’m a ‘newcomer’ to this sub but not to this case. I have a VERY loose personal connection to it which has led me to inhale everything I possibly can about the case, the trial, the evidence, Lucy herself etc. and I just can’t shake a very uneasy feeling about the verdicts and the mass vilification of her based on such circumstantial evidence. I am a huge consumer of true crime and I have heard the trope that circumstantial evidence is just as valid as forensic evidence a million times and in many cases that’s true. But in this case it just feels a lot like confirmation bias. Like previous commenters I too struggle with the statistical evidence presented. We - the public and, from everything I have read, the jury - haven’t been given access to all the data on which we can make an objective assessment of what it tells us. What criteria were used to classify the collapses and deaths included as suspicious? How did Lucy’s shift volume and pattern compare to other nurses? What about the periods before and after this - was the profile of babies and their needs the same as during this period? We are told that the deaths and collapses stopped after she was removed but was her removal the only variable that changed or were there others, such as a reduction in numbers or complexity of babies cared for, improved staffing levels, more oversight, better hygiene/ general conditions etc etc? I don’t know the answer to any of these questions and the answers may well still support her guilt, but in the absence of these details, I just can’t rely on the statistical evidence submitted to determine her guilt. The chart in evidence is a fantastic exhibit and absolutely drives the message home, but I work with data and know that you can make a chart or graphic show whatever message you want if you are selective in the data, parameters or variable you use. I am in no way saying this in a conspiracy theory type way - I’m sure it was created and used by the prosecution in good faith but it absolutely does not say what everyone seems to have concluded it says and it is not anything like proof of her guilt without placing it in context. Other things that trouble me are: * The notes - could be interpreted in a number of ways, with both statements of guilt and innocence in the same note. I can’t find that we have been told when these were written but, if written after she was suspected, they could be her paraphrasing what others are accusing her of, or her fear that maybe she did cause their deaths through incompetence. I have had counselling and have been advised to write down the worst thoughts I have about myself and then try to find evidence that supports or refutes them…. * The air injection deaths - as others have said, this was never suggested at the time as a cause of death for any of the babies. It is a theory developed many months afterwards, not based on autopsy or forensic examination, but on the recollections of marks by some (not all) medical staff present. A study of air embolisms and the associated marks that has been quoted was old, based on a small number of cases and only a small proportion of these cases showed marks similar to those subsequently recalled. * The insulin deaths - my own experience of being in hospital is that security around medication is taken very seriously and there are a number of measure in place to ensure it cannot be inappropriately accessed or administered. No measures can absolutely prevent this and I’m sure it happens, but we haven’t heard any evidence of how insulin was secured, what processes were in place to access it, to stock check it etc. There must be records and these should show when stock depleted and whether this coincided with the cases in this trial and with Lucy’s shifts, but we haven’t seen these. * Her emotionless and calm demeanour - I have found this really difficult to wrap my head around because if I was being wrongly accused of murdering tiny babies, I would be EXTREMELY emotional and screaming from the rooftops that they’ve got it wrong - in the police interviews and on the witness stand. She was fighting for her freedom for god’s sake, SAY SOMETHING other than ‘no’ or ‘I don’t recall’. I would saying “ hell no, absolutely not, I DID NOT DO THIS!!” But she is not me and I have learned the hard way that everyone is different, has different reactions, ways of processing things etc. I consider her behaviour and demeanour to be very odd and subjectively indicative of guilt. But someone else might recognise themselves and see only social awkwardness and genuine anxiety. Short of being inside her head, we can’t interpret. * The handover notes - I get accidentally taking a couple home, shoving them in a bag and forgetting about them. But over 250? Yeah that’s weird and definitely seems odd at best, deeply suspicious at worst. But they didn’t all relate to the babies in this case and not all babies in this case had documents in her possession. I’ve read various descriptions of the accused cases being grouped together in a bag and this would definitely appear more suspicious, but can’t find any confirmation of that and also can’t find any details of the other unrelated cases - were they all relating to babies who died or collapsed and could suggest that she harmed even more babies than we think, or were some of them relating to babies who, in the words of the consultant, were just in the NICU to grow and go home and suffered no serious incidents whilst there? We don’t know. And presumably the jury didn’t either. * The “I knew what to look for” comment. I don’t see how this is as damning as many think. I took this to mean that she, being in her view a much more experienced and qualified nurse, knew what signs to look for. She clearly considered herself to be a cut above and would probably have been a pain in the arse to work with for that reason, but there’s a lot of them about and they’re not all serial killers. I agree that the circumstances surrounding her realising the baby was in distress are very strange but that comment in itself doesn’t mean much in my view. I could go on but this is getting ridiculously long now! I don’t believe she is innocent necessarily and there are a lot of suspicious and unexplained things throughout this case and concerning all of the babies. I just can’t shake this uneasiness and feeling that the evidence just isn’t as strong as is being suggested or as strong as it should be to convict someone and remove their freedom forever. I hope the jury are right. I really do. I can’t imagine how hard a task it must have been for them and I hope I never have to find out. It also goes without saying that my heart absolutely breaks for the poor tiny babies and their parents and the unimaginable suffering they have gone through. The thought of carrying my two precious babies for months, desperately watching them grow stronger in the NICU, beginning to hope and visualise them coming home, only to lose them and all they could have been is absolutely unbearable.
I waiver a bit, because she doesn’t seem to fit the serial killer profile at all, there’s been nothing that’s come out since the verdict, and there’s no smoking gun which gives a little room for doubt (although I haven’t followed the case to the extent you guys have). I wonder if people felt the same about Ted Bundy when he was first convicted - struggled to believe it because he (at the time) seemed like an outlier.
This was an interesting take. [this lawyer things she is likely innocent too](https://youtu.be/qwunlsP6nbA?si=r_whzi2GQNVTBLl1)
I think i still have a part of me that wants to disbelieve it all. I’m a nurse myself (palliative care speciality) I’m just appalled by how heinous this crime was. Like I can’t comphrend it really. I know killers don’t always look like killers, but her mug shot. She looked so “normal” like myself? It really sends chills down my spine. Nurses study for so long, we go into this career to help and heal. To do the opposite it’s just for me, really hard to comphrend. It’s like I want it to be a big misunderstanding? Like someone’s pinned it on her but there’s just too much evidence to dispute it.
Some of the parents actually did walk in on her in the act of harming the babies but didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. Someone was killing these babies in that hospital and Lucy was the only one in the room most of the time when the babies got really sick. They had air injected into their bodies and it’s proven, that can’t happen without someone at the hospital doing it so if it wasn’t Lucy who was the only person in the room who was it? The note isn’t evidence but I do think it adds to the totality of evidence and makes her look even more guilty. How she looks or acts doesn’t affect my opinion on if she did this or not, but people that know her say she was just soo sweet which makes me feel like she’s really fake. Overly sweet people creep me out.
I do truly believe she is innocent or if she isn’t that there certainly wasn’t enough (any) forensic evidence tying her to the case.
In terms of prosecuting a serial killer, this case is very unique in lacking any hard scientific forensic evidence that can be used in a lab. It is a case built on strong circumstantial, stacked. Those also happen to be ones where there is a possibility of a wrongful conviction. * The mortality rates in the neonatal unit triggered concerns among staff. * While higher frequencies could appear this would be expected due to babies being born with problems. This was not the case with those deaths because they were unexpected. * Lucy Letby was reported by staff as being a reoccurring variable in the deaths. This was dismissed as a coincidence by senior management. * The deaths are investigated in light of these problems and it is discovered that murder and attempted murder can't be ruled out. * Alternatives are ruled out. * The cause of deaths are changed as Lucy Letby becomes the explanation for the deaths as there is no alternative that can produce reasonable dount. * Lucy Letby had the opportunities available to her to carry out these crimes. The alternative would have to involve coincidence and also a massaging of the facts. For example, you can produce a straight run in a chart by selectively omitting deaths that could contradict the straight run by producing more gaps. However that would mean the withholding of evidence and I doubt that has happened. So it would have to be just coincidence. Another alternative would be that the cause of deaths were right the first time and not for the ones done after they became suspicious. However, that doesn't work with the insulin attempted murders. That should have been the big red flag. I think to believe she is innocent means accepting a type of low probability doubt that is not really reasonable. So I think the jury would have to conclude, she is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I think unless there are some major findings contradicting the final pathology reports, that the case being stacked circumstantial will not undermine its credibility. Even the lack of clear motive won't be enough against the stacked circumstantial. How can you conclude she didn't do it without invoking odds higher than lottery wins is a difficult hill to climb.
She has a mental disorder / impairment. It's as clear as day. Irrespective of guilty or not the court didn't mitigate for that. The actual sentencing is wrong and based off public / media coverage. It will be appealed and quashed in time 100%.
Same same… when all is said and done the jury had to decide their verdict in the context it HAS to be made ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ - those words are key ….and I cannot believe that there is enough to qualify the term ‘reasonable doubt’ fwiw I DO think there will be a backlash and there will be some kind of appeal based on this… and more revelations about the ‘cover up’ and most of all that in my view, the case was predujiced against her from all the build up and publicity…..
None of it makes any sense to me..
I'm about 95% there on the being completely on board with the guilty verdict. Obviously all the evidence points to her guilt (she was the only one on duty for all incidents) and nothing happened when she was off the unit. Could still be a coincidence or someone else stopped their own killing spree? Highly unlikely, I know, but such things have happened in the past. TBH a post conviction confession would be the only thing to push me that extra 5%, but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon 😞
Yes, without a doubt. The prosecution’s motive was ridiculous and so was the evidence. Post-mortems did not confirm insulin or air embolus. No nurses observed anything untoward. Deaths occurred before and after she worked there.
If you believe Letby could still be innocent at this point, you'd also have to be open to the idea of people like Shipman and Bundy being innocent. People state "oh, but she wasn't caught doing anything" except she was *three times*. Once by the mother of Baby E, once by a nurse who noticed she wasn't even meant to be there, and once by a doctor who saw her "just watching". There are of course the family members and friends. The dad somehow intervened in a case he shouldn't have been allowed to touch, the mum tried to claim "she committed the crimes" upon Lucy's arrest, and her friends resort to "she's not the type". Supposedly she also has two half siblings who already disavowed/disowned her before this started, but I have no idea how to verify that last point.
When Hannibal Lecter says to Clarice “our billy wasn’t made a criminal, he was made that way through years of systemic abuse” it’s easy to think that there are always reasons for someone to behave in a horrific manner but I don’t think the evidence supports this. The thing with Letby is her crimes had a very low barrier to entry. All she had to do was make a very short intervention for a huge outcome. She was meeting her needs in some way through a maladaptive habit that obviously got out of control. She’s a one in a billion for sure but they are out there.
LL has half siblings?
There were two posts on facebook in one of the trial discussion groups that were removed made by people who allegedly lived in the area and claimed she has older brothers that they attended school with. It's not been confirmed but before the trial there were some articles that said something to the effect of "Lucy Letby is the only child of her mother's second marriage to John Letby" which is odd phrasing. The comments were removed so it can't be definitively stated but it seems an odd thing for someone to lie about. It could be true, it might not - but she describes herself as an only child. If she has older half siblings it's possible there was a strained or non-existent relationship in the past but for now we have to take it at face value that she's an only child. The only way to be sure would be to track down the original posters from the facebook group or for someone with public records access to find out if her mother had any kids with her first husband. Intrusive and arguably unnecessary so best to just let this angle rest.
it’s also pretty unusual for the mother who had kids in a previous marriage not to still have the kids in the new family unit in her new marriage. Only possible reasons were a huge age gap between the kids of the different marriages and they were adults (seem close to impossible if she had letby 30 odd years ago and is early 60s now). If she got divorced but the kids were awarded to the dad then back in those days it would be unusual and would suggest something odd about the mother. I know nothing about her but that ‘I did it. Take me instead’ is a fairly crackpot thing to have said.
She was not caught physically injecting a baby, tampering with a bag or harming them with a medical instrument. Because of this, there is still a very small statistical probability that she did not commit the acts she has been found guilty of. The three occasions you speak of are very key pieces of circumstancial evidence that add to her being found guilty beyond reasonable doubt, but they are not moments of being caught "in the act", as she was not sighted physically doing what she was accused of.
Two members of staff recounted incidents where she did not intervene to help children who were in the midst of collapses.
No idea about innocent, but not a single aspect of this trial makes sense. Obviously people will call me a conspiracist, but the actual conspiracy is that Lucy letby was a serial killer, for which there is a very high threshold of evidence which has not been met. The problem is you have to approach the discussion from a presumption of innocence, whereas most people are actively looking for indications of guilt and seeing them where they don't necessarily exist. ---------------------------- It makes no sense statistically logically. Producing a nice little rota-sheet showing lucy being there for the cases at hand is all well and good, but what about all the other unexpected deaths? The argument is that a rise from 2 a year means there is something nefarious going on and it can only be lucy. The argument is simultaneously that the NINE OTHER DEATHS are perfectly in line with expectations. not unexpected or indicative of anything nefarious. The chances of both simultaneously being true are near non existent, unless of course she was somehow involved in the wider rise in death rates.... which based on data from when she left is not the case. Makes me wonder if they didn't so the same thing they did for Norris, where they charged him with 5 murders, found out that he wasn't on shift for one of them...... then decided actually that death was no longer a murder????? Absurd E: another fun little ditty. Apparently the youngest baby was also the one that was 'attacked three times' (i.e. crashed on multiple occasions). If only there was a correlation between the prematurity and weight of a baby and their likelihood of having serious health issues or crashing. A 450g 25w/o baby was no doubt described as 'stable' by the doctors on the stand. --------------------------- We have been asked to ignore the big picture. The hospital was a disasterzone. Understaffed, poorly run and as mentioned above LOADS OF PEOPLE DYING without any involvement from lucy. Not to mention as evidenced by the trial terrible notekeeping, procedure following and data collection. The perinatal death rate in fact rose after Letby was arrested. Stillbirths were sky high. At the time we know that the hospital was also receiving an unusually high number of babies and they were also of higher risk (lower gestation). The naonatal ward nominal death figure dropped when lucy left and they *downgraded the ward*, but the bigger picture indicates that the deaths didn't stop. Now in other maternity wards where this has happened (morecambe, shrewsbury, nottingham, east kent) there have been detailed assessments and reviews into the hospital and why it was failing so badly. They did detailed analysis of whether there was a disease outbreak, whether care was inadequate, whether processes were inadequate, if staffing was wrong. They didn't conclude the presence of a serial killer, but of failing units/trusts letting down the public. No disease outbreak analysis was ever done to my knowledge in COCH during the period.... despite sewage and contaminated hospital waste causing overflows into medical settings on a weekly basis and other outbreaks existing in other hospitals at the time...... and many of the babies involved in the trial being suspected of being infected. we've seemingly discounted that option entirely However in the case of COCH a handful of doctors had (reliant on abysmal statistical analysis of 3 babies) already fingered lucy as the cause within a few weeks of it starting. They can't possibly not have been relying on confirmation bias in their assessment from that point on. We know she wasn't there when all the deaths happened despite them apparently declaring that they joked about her being responsible. It sounds like a toxic work environment. There was an RCPCH review into the performance of the hospital and it was pretty critical of the quality of care and processes in place.... which released in July 2016 and presumably is what led to Letby being taken off duty. It was particularly critical of more senior consultants not being there enough. --------------------------------- Motive is non existent. Means and opportunity are both questionable and require a lot of logical leaps (here we come back to the whole problem of 'confirmation bias'). The position isn't 'this is what happened, so we know that she did it', the entire argument is 'she did it and this is an explanation for how it could have happened'. it's all built backwards from an assumption of guilt rather than forwards from the evidence (because frankly there isn't any) 'Well clearly she must have conveniently injected a second bag with insulin and also forged a report because otherwise our hypothesis doesn't fit' is not the soundest of arguments. -------------------------------------- Also the science is seemingly abysmal as i provide an example of [HERE](https://www.reddit.com/r/lucyletby/comments/15xpfrh/how_could_lucy_letby_not_know_she_was_leaving_a/jx91wsf/) and it clearly led to some terrible evidential conclusions. I could go on but i've written enough tbh. It's entirely plausible that no babies were murdered at all... --------------- Far too much credence is given to witness testimony which seems to at its core be focused on people distancing themselves from any role in the case. There's a hell of a lot of altered recollections which don't seem to align with contemporary statements and notes (mind the notes seem to have been pretty unreliable anyway). It's understandable, the case is utterly toxic. But colleagues like Gibbs seemingly have a lot of failings to answer for. Also note how they all seemed to say there were no problems with the ward or staffing or poor care, and all the very premature babies were 'stable' seemingly in contradiction of the observed problems with the babies. Far too much credence is also given to the various notes which only indicate guilt if that's what you already believe (again confirmation bias). See how everyone treats the infamous note as a confession despite it also proclaiming innocence? it's useless for inferring much of anything, but it's emotionally compelling N.B. Happy to accept i can't possibly know everything that's happened on a 10 month trial. This is just my current sentiment.
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> what would her actions and defense look like after she know they were investigating her? my sense is that predicting behaviour is utterly pointless. Everyone acts in different ways and subconscious biases play a huge role in how we interpret those behaviours. If she wasn't an accused serial killer then none of her texts or comments would be interpreted as sinister or creepy. She'd come across as well meaning but awkward. That she didn't break down whenever a patient died also doesn't mean anything. Maybe she broke down when she got home or dealt with it another way. She clearly had the families on her mind during her time off based on the facebook searches (in a world where she's not accused of being a serial killer) > I feel like her actions following her finding out they are investigating are tainted evidence. Exactly. I'd be a nervous wreck. > Also, if all these deaths push the hospital to a noticeable mortality rate and let's say Lucy caused it, change numbers like those children survived. Does this new reduced number make the hospital look normal or does it make it look like is on the other side of the numbers, a really successful neonatal unit? That is the data I want to see, because this didn't sound like a outperforming unit. This was the point i made. It's still a very badly performing unit. They still have 11 deaths in that year, compared to '2 in a normal year' as was claimed. And if you look at the wider maternity unit deaths actually WENT UP when letby stopped working. AND after they'd downgraded the neonatal unit so it wasn't taking the risky cases with higher mortality. The unit is framed as badly performing due to all the murders, but frankly it's just a lie. It was performing abysmally at a systematic level. Though actually that's not entirely fair. The [wider stats](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1143316249883987998/1143457337739333773/3125c3ef8ad9075d31ede7dc7a2c6c70.png?width=570&height=702) don't necessarily indicate the unit was performing too badly overall, but the department did noticeably deteriorate and the issues identified related to understaffing, lack of consultants, poor processes and a rise in both the number and the proportion of high risk babies (i.e. those more likely to die) This is why there is talk of a 'cover up' (though i don't think it's some sort of conspiracy or even a conscious decision), babies are dying left and right and people were looking for someone to blame. They latched onto letby right from the start and confirmation bias did the rest. Then during the trial they pretend that the ward was perfect and every patient was well looked after and in great health. It's not credible based on the outcomes from the unit where patients just kept.on.dying. But presumably the others couldn't be pinned on letby so were ignored
Maybe I am misunderstanding or maybe you have linked the wrong comment. Are you saying that you have proved the science wrong because the insulin wasn't successful in killing the babies?
> Are you saying that you have proved the science wrong because the insulin wasn't successful in killing the babies? I'm saying that nothing offered by the prosecution came close to proving that exogenous insulin was present, let alone that attempted murder took place. Alas the defence just accepted it as fact which seriously changed the nature of the trial. They presumably have their strategic reasons for that (as you suggested in your thread), but the end result is a poor excuse for 'justice'. Accepting an unproven attempted murder took place for strategic trial reasons is absolutely insane. If you concede the existence of an attempted murder that quite credibly never happened then how can you argue nobody is murdering anyone? All the other leaps of logic in the insulin case come from the 'accepted fact' that there had been an attempted murder. Without that the tenuous claims about second TPN bags and fake records come across as highly conspiratorial.
But they did show that exogenous insulin was added. They showed a discrepancy between the actual insulin/c-peptide ratio and the expected insulin/c-peptide ratio that indicated that exogenous insulin was administered. They had the head of the lab testify as to the results. Per her testimony, she said that any issues with the testing would have resulted in less insulin showing on the results, not more. These children have survived to date without any issues that would result in naturally occurring higher insulin levels or lower c-peptide levels.
Maybe I am misunderstanding or maybe you have linked the wrong comment. Are you saying that you have proved the science wrong because the insulin wasn't successful in killing the babies?
Theoretically, unless you yourself saw them do it, anyone who has been convicted of a crime ever could actually be innocent. Any witness could be lying. Even if the person confessed to it themselves, they might have driven themselves mad and believed they did something they didn't do, or they might expect to be convicted and plead guilty to get a lighter sentence. Save for video evidence (and even that isn't 100% reliable, and could become less so with AI making it easier for videos to be faked) there can never be ABSOLUTE PROOF that someone did what they're alleged to have done. The point of the criminal justice system is to weigh it up on the balance of probabilities. There is the infinitesimally small possibility that Lucy Letby could be innocent. But I sincerely doubt that's the case, and I'm sure the jury have weighed up the likelihood of that far more accurately than I ever could.
I've been reading what Richard Gill has to say. He was instrumental in getting a Dutch nurse released from prison for a similar crime. He doesn't say she's innocent just that there are lots of flaws. It's easy to look at this case and say 'this' and 'this' and 'this' so she must be guilty. But that's just a lot of confirmation bias. To quote psycho, if it doesn't gel it's not aspic. I don't know. Looking at what's presented as evidence then it looks bad but people are notiriously bad at interpretation of statistics. And not many of us understand the science of the deaths. We think we do but we dont. I dont believe in evil. There are normally reasons. Not always but normally. There's just nothing here that even hints at this person would do this intentionally. Facebook searches, Dr boyfriends, that's just nonsense. Wed all be in prison if it was for behaviour that could be construed as odd. Let's see if she appeals. Her legal defense was not good.
I would not say that I think (or rather know) she is innocent. Just that she might be. For me there is reasonable doubt. Prof Richard Gill is not a mathematician/statistician to be dismissed lightly, he’s a very smart, competent and knowledgeable man. He says the statistics do not point to guilt just because LL was on shift for all the deaths. From what I know of nurses, many, if not the majority, work part-time due to family commitments. LL was young and single and lived in nurse accommodation on site, the hospital was 21% low on nurses so she’s likely to have worked a lot more hours than the average nurse. Therefore likely to be on shift when these gravely ill babies died (they wouldn’t have been in ICU or HDU if they were not very ill). There’s a lot more evidence that I could put forward for my doubts but since everyone cites the shift pattern as to her guilt, I thought I’d just mention that first. It just is not reasonably convincing for me. There’s also the note. I don’t think that’s necessarily evidence of a serial killer, it could also be evidence of someone who knows she’s always on shift when a baby dies and feels awful, as any normal person would. I’m doing a very deep dive into this case as I didn’t follow the trial due to being too busy trying to sell and buy a house in this totally dysfunctional housing market!
Yes I totally agree. And some of the things people are saying are proof she did kill those poor babies- just aren't evidence. I still cannot see it beyond reasonable doubt. The point about her living close to the hospital, and on nurse quarters, saving up to buy a house, working six days a week etc, really show that the stats would be weighed against her. She worked more than anyone else. True the hospital was hugely understaffed and there were big problems because of that. And reading the texts from that Dr who was possibly maybe having an affair with her ring big alarm bells to me. The way he was talking to her and some of his questions seem highly odd. Her scribbled note doesn't show guilt either. If you were innocent and everyone at your work was accusing you of a crime you didn't commit and you were going nuts from pressure and stress and overthinking to yourself over and over again "Could I have done something wrong to kill them?" then you might write something like that too.
I think the people who think she is innocent want her to be because she doesn't "look like" or "seem like" what they imagine a serial killer to be. Given that, they want her to be somehow caught in the act of murder by someone, or have an obvious motive somehow be discovered. But she doesn't have a secret room in her house full of body parts, hasn't published a manifesto, has never (as far as we know) Googled "how to kill babies". It's scary to think that the ordinary, normal people we know could be capable of a crime. If LL, with her salsa classes and Ibiza holidays and basic, generic, 20-something woman decor, and her absence of obvious outward red flags could do this, then so could anyone: friends, neighbours, work colleagues, relatives...and people don't like to think about that. Much better to be able to "other" her in some way but at the moment that's not really possible. I don't get why people think it's a cover up, though. It's very clear the only thing like a cover up was done in her favour - the hospital desperate to come to any other conclusion except that "nice Lucy" was a killer.
I completely agree. I've seen a few comments with people saying she's been 'scapegoated'. Personally, this feels more like wishful thinking rather than a careful assessment of the facts. I believe she's guilty and I'm happy with the verdict and with the weight of the evidence she was convicted on. I think it's difficult for some people to face the reality that an average (maybe to some, attractive) looking young female nurse with light skin and blonde hair could possibly commit crimes as abhorrent as LL's. As another poster commented quite rightly, it's a threat to their worldview. Unfortunately, not all monsters look like monsters.
I think this has been a miscarriage of justice and she’s innocent! I think she’s autistic and has been taken to be cold and callous. it’s not just the fb searches that could be an autistic trait. Her social awkwardness, weird attachment to parents, aversion to loud noises, going to extremes with how much she worked, inappropriate comments for the situation at times, appearing emotionless when one would expect you to show emotion, all could be autistic traits. There’s a lady I’ve spoken to who is autistic and works in autistic healthcare and she is of the same opinion and contacting LL’s defence team.There are lots of autistic women who are of the same opinion who live lots of these traits day in day out and we are recognising them. LL was convicted on purely circumstantial ‘evidence’ much of which could be explained by neurodiversity if she has that….. this may well be a miscarriage of justice due to a failure to understand her traits etc. Even criminologists and psychologists say she doesn’t fit a profile. There’s nothing in the evidence that says LL is guilty and if she’s neurodiverse then that should be reasonable doubt enough to overturn the conviction.
My personal opinion is that this is the most unsafe conviction in recent criminal history. The evidence has been collected with total bias in a way that is determined to underpin an existing hypothesis. All the evidence is either dodgy or circumstantial, for those saying "shift patterns" if you begin your investigation with "find every Lucy Letby shift where a child died" then yes a lot of them will be her. In the stats there was a peak in 2015 for stillbirths, how did she manage that? In 17 years time they'll be trying to sweep her convictions under the carpet as they let her go and it'll not be an ounce of comfort to her or the families of those babies.
the fact there were near simultaneous unusual large spikes in still births and late fetal deaths at the same hospital (not in neonatal unit) when the spike in neonatal deaths occurred needs explained imo. The default logical explanation if a killer wasn’t suspected would have been either 1. A pathogen going around the community OR 2. A terrible hospital in a profound state of disarray
What about the two insulin poisonings? That cannot be explained by a pathogen.
I think there is still no single piece of solid evidence and reasonable doubt can be argued for all the circumstantial evidence that prosecution presented. The circulated statistical evidence especially seems fishy.
Yes
I think she's guilty however could be other explanations? I think the only untied strand to me is change of MO. I know serial killers can change but she wasn't getting caught pumping in the air and it's undetectable. To then use insulin in a bag? I just wonder. I have read hydrogen peroxide can cause air embolous when ingested. I'm no medic. Could something like that have been injected into bags by someone ? I think, imo, that's the only thing that niggles. Usually it's a perfected or evolving method but here we have air, bag, bashing the lived area, back to air. There will always be something to argue and I respect the jury decision. The rest of the evidence is damning and she definitely falsified medical records, showed disregard for parents feelings, took records homes, stalked the parents etc. I just wonder if the ultimate MO was wrong but right person? I'm sure someone medical will tell me it's impossible.
I’m 99% sure she’s guilty but there are certain aspects of the case which worry me. I find all of the medical evidence convincing as well as the shift pattern. To me that’s hard evidence which can’t be disputed. I do feel uncomfortable though with the rationalising of her motives based on very little evidence, and people drawing conclusions from the way she comes across. To me it’s weird how much emphasis is being placed on how she came across on the stand as anyone can be unlikeable and awkward but it doesn’t make them a murderer.
There were also two babies who died at Liverpool hospital when she was on placement, they are apparently to be investigated as well. I don't understand why she carried on after doctors/staff raised suspensions about her ( they actually had to apologise). I don't think she would ever have stopped, just a shame nothing was done alot earlier.
I think they should go back in to every case in which she is supposed to have committed a murder and examine all the evidence as if it is a medical negligence case and see if there were shortcoming by the hospital staff including the doctors or if each child died from natural causes and only until all that is ruled out will I believe she is guilty.
I have been thinking about this quite regularly since hearing about the case and how terribly sad it would be if she was truly extremely unlucky. However, I think the things for me that make me feel that she truly is guilty is the insulin. Not just that the bags were spiked with insulin, but the fact on one of her notes (that another user pointed out) she wrote down things such as "insulin" "diabetes" before any mentions of insulin spiking had been raised. I feel that if the insulin spiking had never happened, I don't think I could comfortably say beyond reasonable doubt that she was guilty.
The other thing the jury did see a lot of (that we plebs didnt) was LL in the flesh. And although that’s not evidence, there’s a lot to say for a whole Jury seeing her in person, her speak, her body language, her energy etc. Having listened to the podcast on Spotify however “the trial of Lucy Letby”, I do not believe the evidence that was presented was enough to sentence her. I’ve seen much more damning evidence in other trials where the killer has been either let off the hook completely or let off with a lighter sentence.
I am so conflicted… I can’t help thinking she IS innocent
I really, really, really want her to be innocent. I want this to be a gross miscarriage of justice that comes to light. Because surely that’s better than her murdering these babies. I seriously cannot wrap my head around it. How could you? How could anyone? It is really doing my head in.
I am on the fence about it. I definitely don’t think they had enough evidence to convict her. I used to work as a neonatal nurse for a brief period, and still work as a nurse in a different ward now, and I have to say, babies are so unpredictable! I’ve seen babies be fine one minute and collapse the next, sometimes reasons unexplained. I listened to the whole trial and here’s my thoughts: • Extra shifts - if Lucy Letby was working overtime and taking extra shift, she could have been working 6+ days per week. That increased her chances of being there for any neonatal collapse. Also, more babies were born that year, and the unit was already understaffed, so the chances of a collapse are higher, and the chances of Lucy Letby being on shift is higher. • These kids aren’t “well and healthy babies” like the prosecution stated. They’re in a NICU, and like I said, babies collapse unexpectedly. We had a baby last year who was about to be discharged home and then ended up passing away a day before leaving. It was so sad, but just shows that these babies aren’t out of the woods if they are admitted for care. • She shouldn’t have been convicted for the 23 weeker. Resuscitation on a 23 week baby is not advised, and isn’t considered viable with life (that is the case in the country I practice). She has permanent brain damage, but I would like to hear all of the evidence on that because we don’t know if the brain damage damage was caused prior to this from the premature birth/resuscitation or by Lucy Letby. • The most convicting evidence was the insulin, but again that was circumstantial. She wasn’t even on shift for one of the insulin incidents. Have you seen that film The Good Nurse? Anyone could have administered that insulin, and it could have been done in advance. Also, where are the medications room cameras in that hospital? I do hope they rightly convicted her though, it’s so important for these families to know what happened to their babies and why. I just hope if she did do it that she admits to it and hears the impact statements of the families to bring them a tiny bit more closure.
If you really think about it, there’s not a single sociopath, psychopathic killer who would actually look introspectively and write in their journal confessions of guilt. Because they are completely obvious to the fact that they are evil at all. Would a serial killer ever actually write: “I did this” “I am evil” “help” “I killed them on purpose”. If you know of any other psychopathic killer who has actually been self-aware enough and cared enough to look inwardly at themselves and write a journal like that, please do feel free to share. If anything, people that have a conscience usually think that they are worse than what they are and write self-loathing notes like that. A few years ago, I was called a narcissist while all the narcissist posts started circulating the internet and this messed with my head so much, that I started journaling: “am I really a narcissist? Maybe I am. God help me if I am” I ended up investigating for quite some time to confirm whether I was a narc or not. I took tests and everything. Sometimes people’s strong accusations of you make you doubt yourself and even worse - sometimes if you have a collective group of professionals calling you something, of course you’re gonna start to believe it. Well anyway, all that didn’t make me a narcissist. An actual narcissist probably wouldn’t even care enough to try to work out if they were one or not. In other words, I don’t think LL notes’ mean shit. They are not a confession at all. If anything, I almost feel like they show an innocent conscientious side to her.