Lucy Letby

Point of information: Catholic priests get called father.
CofE vicars might be called vicar, but I've only ever called them by their first name. My current one is Mike, and he's a Wet Spam fan. (I'm also pretty sure he's read several books.)

 

People who find the idea that a nurse would be a serial killer baffling, might find the following article of interest. It's from The Guardian and written by a psychology professor whose research area is female serial killers. It also addresses why senior hospital managers might have ignored the concerns of senior doctors.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...-serial-killer-forensic-psychologist-murderer

 

"In fairness, too, Letby did not check some of the boxes in our profile. Most FSKs have been married; Letby never was. Most FSKs do not keep souvenirs of their crimes; Letby kept bags of patient records and a diary with victim initials and their death dates. In our analysis we found a documented history of mental illness in about 40% of FSK cases. I have seen no reports yet that Letby has such a history. Many FSKs had parental issues. It is my understanding that Letby’s parents were supportive to the point of attending her trial every day."

But apart from all that, she perfectly fits the profile!

 

Well she fits the mental illness profile then - given that most don't have a history .

 

Dante Alighieri disagrees.

 

Well, there were plenty on this thread who were sceptical…

 

She won’t get to appeal unless a judge agrees that she can. So she’ll have to have grounds on the basis that there is at least some prospect of a successful or another compelling reason, such as a public interest in exploring a particular issue.

I’d be surprised if this was granted so soon.

 

Erm, but look a little closer Skyla and you'll see that in fact there's very little concrete evidence - only circumstantial.


If the appeal is won (and having read more and more evidence, I think there's a fair chance) then it is awful for those families who have been told their babies were murdered, only to be told later that's not the case.

Also pretty bad for anyone working in healthcare. Even me as a carer for the elderly. A little spate of 'unexpected' deaths amongst the frail elderly people who are all on my round and suddenly I'm in court accused of "unknown sabotage"

 

I've read quite a bit more of the evidence now and there are so many grounds for appeal.

The prosecution's medical expert was some retired consultant who 'volunteered himself' for the role and wasn't even a specialist in that particular area.

The amount of insulin supposedly administered to one of tbe babies according to the retired medical expert was an amount 3 times enough to kill a grown man. But the severely premature baby later recovered. They can't say how she would have got access to tbe insulin or how she would have administered it. They didn't examine the several natural ways that high insulin levels could occur - and there are several. The tests were only done by one laboratory, which specifically has 'get out' clauses about their accuracy. No follow up confirmation tests were done. There was absolutely no proof or tests or anything regarding the supposed air injections. Only a change in skin colour that according to some obscure 1980s scientific paper can be linked to air injection.

In another case she was accused of on the grounds of "being on duty at the time", a severely premature baby was in big distress and deteriorating. They called out the big boss consultant at 11pm because it was so serious. The consultant decided that the baby was "fighting the incubator" (a theory with absolutely no medical or scientific backing) and ordered tbe child removed from ventilation. He then went home. The child died around 2 in tbe morning and letby got the blame.

In several of the cases, the doctors made critical "life or death" decisions regarding medication etc in this way and when things went bad letby got the blame.

The unit was tremendously understaffed that time. It has been described as being "in chaos" and was later downgraded. Letby worked very long hours and lots of overtime. That makes it less surprising that she happened to be working when these deaths occurred.

 

I don’t care for the way that if someone decides to defend religious people from being unfairly judged they have to justify their statement but saying “ And I say that as someone who is not religious .”

And I say that as someone who is not religious.

 

So she was simply unlucky to be on shift for every death? What would the odds of that be?

 

You need more evidence than that to find someone guilty.

 

You do, and that's just my hint that she might be involved, but then no babies died when she was removed.
Odd

 

There was.

 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/23567165/killer-nurse-lucy-letby-nicknamed-duracell-colleagues/

She was nicknamed 'Duracell' by the other nurses because she was always working.

"Lucy just always seemed to be working. I remember mentioning it one day, and a couple of people joked ‘yeah Lucy's like the Duracell bunny’.

Apparently she was saving hard to buy things she wanted for her house, so was always offering to do overtime."

Not such long odds on her being on shift those times then...

 

And yet the death rate was around average for the national picture..

 

It’s so annoying when an entire jury confuse your hard work for mass murder.

 

They didn't.

One case was dropped before the trial even started and the jury failed to teach a verdict on several others, despite the judge accepting a 'majority verdict' after the deliberations went on for a long time.

A long way from "an entire jury".

 

So how many counts was she found guilty of again?

 

No they weren't unanimous. They found ger not guilty on several counts, were unable to reach a verdict on several more and only reached 'majority' 10-1 verdicts on others (one juror was discharged).

They must have reached their verdicts on circumstantial evidence because that is all there was. The fact she was on duty on the occasions the incidents occurred and the supposed 'confession' scribblings headlined 'not good enough' underlined and blaming herself for incompetence.

And of course juries also reached gulty verdicts on the Birmingham 6, Guildford 4, Barry George, Winston Silcott and a whole load of others.

 

Most evidence is circumstantial, and direct evidence is often far less compelling.

I have no idea why people try to frame circumstantial evidence as somehow being unsuitable for convicting someone. It's the bedrock of most criminal investigations.

 

This graphic is so profoundly misleading and a prime example of statistics being abused.

Folding stats into entire counties and then including infant mortality rates from completely different wards is simply whitewashing the data and concealing patterns by deliberately folding in unrelated information.

The numbers that matter are for that single hospital, NOT the county, and specifically neonatal department deaths. Batching numbers together is fundamentally dishonest and an example of using large numbers to hide smaller ones, especially when you're talking about a very small number of deaths compared to overall numbers of infants.

 

‘I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough …
I am a horrible evil person.
I AM EVIL. I DID THIS.’ (Letby’s capitals).

Fantasy words or the words of a killer?

Surely someone who is profoundly upset because they could t ‘save’ their lives wouldn’t write this? What is evil about caring for premature infants? Why did she use these specific words?

 

1. For me, and indeed for the dictionary, unanimous means EVERYONE is in agreement.

A 10-1 verdict is surely by definition a majority verdict - not a unanimous one! It's even in the words used by the judge. He would accept a "majority" verdict rather than a 'unanimous" one. That would mean that despite what you say, every juror physically present would NOT have to vote guilty. One of those present could well differ.

2. I've said before and I'll say it again, I do NOT believe Letby is innocent. I don't know whether she did it or not. However the case against her was full of holes and I believe the case is far from proven "beyond reasonable doubt" as required by law.

3. The deaths did not stop. That would be a miracle. Very premature and sick babies pass away all the time unfortunately, as shown in tbe graph I posted above. What did stop was the 'spike' in deaths and collapses in 2015/16 for which letby was blamed.

Other factors which may have come into play in that were the subsequent 'downgrading' of the unit so that it didn't look after such premature and low birth weight babies - obviously at far more risk of death and/or catastrophe. That may have been one of the pieces of 'magic' you refer to.

You mention incompetent doctors and another factor may have been the moving on of the 'fighting the incubator' consultant I mentioned earlier, who took several such life or death decisions which turned out badly. We saw a chart shown to the jurors and the public on several occasions showing that Letby was on duty during the cases, but one of the many faults with it is that the doctors and consultants on duty were NOT included. There were 31 neonatal deaths at the unit during 2015/16 and letby was only charged with 7 (after 1 was dropped pre-trial). Obviously a fuller chart showing all the deaths would not have had her on duty every time. I suspect the chart has been 'boiled down' to make letby's presence fit.

 

Haha..
An interestingly bigoted, narrow minded viewpoint of someone who appears to claim those who are religious are bigoted and narrow minded.

 

Point three just isn’t true is it. In that particular neonatal unit “Very premature and sick babies did not pass away all the time” they had 1-3 pass away per year, until all of a sudden they had that happen weekly at times, and then they didn’t again.

 

Unanimous 11-0 for murdering Baby O though, as well as a couple of attempted murder charges. The rest were majority verdicts by 10-1. The lone dissenter (assuming it was the same person in every vote) was clearly on board with the conviction for Baby O.

 

On the very same post-it note she also wrote "I haven't done anything wrong".

There is a clear and obvious possibility that the note is the ramblings of an innocent woman tormented by guilt at not being able to save them, compounded by the accusations that she murdered them, leading to get questioning her own sanity.

Have you seen the note, or just the tabloid headlines?

 

She wrote these BEFORE she was accused of murder.