Lucy Letby Case #18

[abelleza]

Struggling to see how I shut down the debate on the bags or if I attempted to I failed utterly miserably didn’t I as it’s continued for a couple of days. There actually were a few posters that said they would have rather parked the bag subject because it’s too tricky with the conflicting info we have as members of the public. I don’t think I said that explicitly. All my viewpoint was that I personally consider who poisoned both the first contaminated bags for baby F&L of more importance, hope I’m entitled to that opinion. Other posters have suggested discussing that too- sure it would be a healthy debate! But nobody appears to want to talk about it. I have no power on this thread to dictate the chat or stop the chat and I think that’s evident in the fact I wanted to discuss who the poisoner was and failed terribly at and the bags have continued to be discussed which I’ve got no problem with.
I hope those that have enjoyed my absence this morning have got a flavour of what it is like to have me on mute! That won’t fit the narrative either thoughI am not a wolf in sheep’s clothing I am allowed my opinions. I am not personal to anyone. Have also suggested separate threads as maybe many people will feel more like they can say what they’d like to say without constant upset and treading on eggshells.
Just watched Matilda and cried my eyes out at the miracle song with the babies at the start hadn’t expected that as never seen the stage show. I hope everyone is having a nice Sunday.

What are you talking about? Nobody’s saying you can’t have your opinion, the majority of people agree with you. What people don’t agree with was that sarcy post where you essentially mocked people with a differing view point to you. The only one I see here who can’t handle people with different view points is you.

 

[Cheddar Chalpupa]

I honestly hate her, she must have thought stuff through to be so calculated. It's so hard to try and get your head around someone looking at the poor baby's glucose reading and changing it, with the intention being that the doctors will read it, think he's improving, when he's actually slowly dying and stop/slow down treating him.

I know we'll probably never know, but why, why did she want to kill these children and how did she come to the decision to actually do it?

 

[housebythesea]

There’s someone on Insta who lost a baby to cot death at 9 months, which was obviously a huge & devastating shock for them.

Just can’t even begin to imagine the pain that these parents must feel.

This case has been going on so long as well, it must be awful to constantly have this hanging over them. I hope justice is done for them.

Can you imagine what it must have been like in Victorian times, before antibiotics and vaccines were available? Something like 50% of children never made it past 5 years old, and if you look around any old churchyard you will find headstones listing a succession of children and babies succumbing to an infectious disease. I just don't know how they coped, it doesn't bear thinking about.

 

[Lucyxxxx]

At first I was very skeptical of professionals 'thinking things in hindsight' but then I thought. When my baby was born there was a few little things I noticed but just put it down to quirks/him being born early and small. Turns out he has mild cerebal palsy and didn't show any obvious signs until he was 6/7 months old. Now when I look back the signs were there albeit subtley from birth but I wasn't thinking about or looking for CP so it never occurred to me. Am I making sense???

 

[IdeletedbutI'mbackagain]

I’ve just been thinking about this and actually it might have been quite a clever move on his part to be so harsh on the Mum.
BM is clearly a very clever man, he doesn’t get to his level otherwise. He’s read far more evidence than any of us know about yet and he’s probably sat with LL for many, many hours going over this. He can see in black and white just how bad this looks, he will know exactly any defence available and he will of course have come to his own conclusion. His role as her defence is simply to ensure a fair trial. He can’t go and say she’s innocent or lie to the court if he knows (ie she’s confessed to him) but he can believe she’s guilty himself as long as it doesn’t impact her receiving that fair trial. Things like cross examining a grieving mother on how her baby was crying is going to stick in a jurors mind, because she will obviously be distressed recalling it. It’s stuck in all of our minds because it was so horrible to read but imagine being sat in that court room and seeing it in person. From a defence POV he’s done exactly what he should and questioned her - so LL is getting her fair trial - but actually on a different level it helps the jurors see the mum is absolutely telling the truth. He was like a dog with a bone and it will be imprinted on a jurors mind now and he knows it.

It was also under his questioning that Dr Bohin apologised to the parents in court - again, very powerful and something that will stick in a jurors mind. His questioning lead to that - so LL is getting a fair trial - but again it actually helps the prosecution because it’s strengthening that picture of regret all these doctors and nurses have that they didn’t stop this sooner.

There are other times too when he’s questioned an expert only for it to fill in a couple of gaps or for the expert to be so strong in their opinion it’s strengthened the prosecution.

Child F we know was poisoned and he can’t dispute it, but he also hasn’t actually done anything to dispute LL’s involvement in hanging the bag or anything else. Their opening statement says they may dispute her involvement for Child L (the other insulin poisoning) due to documentation. But for Child F, he’s offering nothing to say “it wasn’t her”. He’s asked a few questions but none of which actually dispute anything the prosecution are claiming. She’s still getting her fair trial because he’s questioning parts of the evidence. But it’s very clever he’s doing that without trying to claim it wasn’t LL.

Just my thoughts. But I think BM is playing a very clever game. And I think he believes she’s guilty, he’s just absolutely ensuring a fair trial as is her right.

Very interesting points, he could well be coming across as cruel and unlikeable to us purely because all he wants is for there to be no question that he 100% did his job and defended her.

I don't like putting him down, or demonising him because he is literally just doing his job and without people like him we can't have fair trials. I don't like him but I try and remember we need people like him to ensure proper justice is served.

 

[Pulltheotherone]

Yes I think the salsa texts were exactly that.

 

[wideningperspective]

Can any medical people help to clarify - the level of insulin in baby F was 4,657, and in the case of one of Beverly Allitts victims, it was recorded as 43,147 (and said to be a full adult syringe).

What volume of insulin would be needed to get a reading of the lower level? What syringe sizes/vial sizes does insulin come in?

I’m not medical, more psychological but I am type 1 diabetic. Not very much insulin would be required. For example, if I take 10 units of fast acting insulin which is 0.01ml it will drop my sugars by 2. Therefore, if I had a blood glucose level of 10 and wanted it to go to 6 I would take 20 units (0.02ml). A baby would need a lot less, and even less if not a neonate.

The symptoms baby F reportedly had are completely in sync with insulin poisoning. What bothers me is the fact the blood glucose levels went to such a critically low level and that checks appeared to be hourly. Checks should have been every 15 minutes to monitor changes/increase glucose.

 

[od12839]

I'm struggling with the fixation on the wording to be honest. It's been established the bags are prepared in advance on prescription, this baby shouldn't have had insulin, and nor should any of the others. So there's no reason for the nurse to add anything to it, and certainly not insulin.

The fact that insulin is sometimes added to a TPN bag in certain cases is a non-sequitur - this isn't one of those cases.

 

[Tofino]

ETA just saw this so adding on; Ohhhhhh I can fully appreciate WHY the judge has said this today:

View attachment 1769378

Stay off tattle fellas!

 

[candyland_]

Call me daft but I just don’t get it. Looking at pictures of LL reminds me of me in my 20s, nice outfit glass in hand, like most of us young & out socialising.
If she did do what on earth would motivate her to???! What motive could you to murder not just a baby but a baby you don’t know, it’s not like it was her ex lover’s baby with the woman he cheated on or something.

I don’t get it either.. I don’t think anyone can understand how someone could do this. I keep thinking why didn’t she quit when she got the urge to do it but her mind obviously doesn’t work how it should.

We know that she didn’t enjoy the ‘easier’ babies and complained when it was quiet so it’s possible she wanted it to be fast paced and caused problems so she could jump in and play Casualty.

 

[RinsedHoops]

I've been a fence sitter in this case but the insulin evidence has really knocked me off the fence tbh. I just don't think the defence can come back from this.
I've never thought "she's innocent" - but I did want to try to understand what evidence there was and saw a pattern of poor care and a culture at the Countess of Chester that made me think it's possible the deaths weren't deliberate - but this isn't really explainable, and if it WAS deliberate then Letby is the only explanation.
Full disclosure my daughter was a preemie and almost died and the nurses in her NICU and SCBU were wonderful so maybe this created some desire in me that it not be true.

 

[Pulltheotherone]

The jury need to find her guilty “ beyond all reasonable doubt “ not beyond all doubt.
There is a very big difference.

 

[Tofino]

I wonder what it's like for the parents of the twins/triplets where only one baby has lived on birthdays/Christmas etc? Does having the other baby make it better or harder?

I can imagine it’s hard either way. I know two people who both sadly lost children and one had no other children and the other had a younger sibling.

The one with the second child had to somewhat keep going for her and are still able to experience being a parent and the joys that come with that. but they are also challenged by the younger sibling now being older than the child they lost. And all special occasions are clouded with the eldest not being there. I imagine with multiples it would be harder because you are celebrating the birthday of one child knowing it’s also the birthday of the child you lost. I believe birthdays are the hardest day for many grieving parents.

The couple I know who lost their only child is completely different though. Birthdays and Christmas they don’t really have any joy now (their words not mine). They only hope for peace on those days. I can’t help but feel their situation is sadder.

God all situations are awful and I’m sure those with other babies and children just wish they could hide for the entire day sometimes but I also think they will be incredibly grateful for having the other children. They will feel all those emotions at once.

 

[docmum]

Sorry if this has already been covered, but do hospitals have some sort of control mechanisms in place in terms of monitoring what medicines have been removed from the fridge etc? I.e at the start of a day there is X amount of X drug - this is then checked at the end of the day to see if the amounts remaining are consistent with what has been used during that day? Or is this too simplistic?

Morning team. Hope everyone had a good rest and managed to process some of yesterdays news.
There are designated ‘controlled’drugs which are kept in a locked cupboard away from all other drugs. Includes all your morphine type drugs from the IV preparations to the tablets to the oral liquid. Other meds of significant bearing in terms of harm or ‘value’ are kept there too and there is a book with a page for each drug to sign in and out what’s taken, by two nurses - as well as signing it in the notes as usual. At shift change, two nurses have to check the cupboard and that the stock item numbers correlate with each page in the book. This means counting numbers of tablets/vials and even measuring oral morphine with a syringe to the exact ml. So it’s checked twice a day at least and usually extra checks during the week by pharmacy as the legal overview. If there was a huge discrepancy of any kind here then protocol is that the police would be called.
Insulin is locked but requires a fridge. The pens of insulin are covered so you can’t see how much is in though there is a dial. To my knowledge though the dial isn’t recorded and insulin units aren’t signed out as I’ve discussed above.

Had a re read through the reporting yesterday before I went to sleep and found something I think I overlooked. I get the feeling when they’ve gone back to look at a pump history further down the line, they’re going to have found it’s had the data manually wiped and they’ll be able to calculate when it was done as there’ll be a machine at each co (ie the the number of babies x infusions for each, since baby F).

 

[Wackie Jeaver]

This Google fella - a nice fella or a not nice fella? I feel we need to know

 

[Milktray]

Absolutely damning evidence.

 

[mRsKbRoOkS]

Can any medical people help to clarify - the level of insulin in baby F was 4,657, and in the case of one of Beverly Allitts victims, it was recorded as 43,147 (and said to be a full adult syringe).

What volume of insulin would be needed to get a reading of the lower level? What syringe sizes/vial sizes does insulin come in?

im not an expert, and I struggled to wrap my head around this but I posted a possible theory on this yesterday. I’ll find it and share my thoughts with you.

found it these were my musings from yesterday.


“The part I was struggling to understand though, was the difference between one of BAs victims insulin levels and baby F’s. BA’s victims levels were in the tens of thousands but baby F’s were in the thousands (still high but comparably much much lower). So if you compare them perhaps there is some sort of doubt, BA’s victim there was no doubt. I was scratching my head about it tbh. I know Letby could have given the most tiny amount but it still didn’t make much sense to me. Why would she ? If she wanted to murder baby F. However, we know that insulin has a short detection life and is broken down by the liver quite quickly. BA’s victim was administered an adult syringe full all at once! Letbys alleged victim was drip fed the insulin over a prolonged period of time. So I am thinking because baby F wasn’t given insulin in one single shot the levels wouldn’t be comparable to BA’s victim. Very clever really if is she indeed guilty.”

 

[Blockedbyadmin]

Oh well defence was shite today Lucy wasn’t it.

 

[LittleMy]

I know it’s been said before but the reporting has been dismal. I guess as long as the jury are getting the full picture then it doesn’t really matter that we don’t, it’s just frustrating when you’re trying to follow along.

Hope everyone’s had a nice weekend and the weight of the trial hasn’t been too heavy on peoples’ minds. Praying that justice will be served for the babies and their families.

 

[OldBlondie]

This sums up today pretty much, makes it clear it couldn’t have been a mistake, had to be synthetic insulin, no one at that time on unit including F was prescribed insulin, they (medics) would never have thought someone would have deliberately poisoned a baby with insulin, but someone indeed did:

Link to full report: https://www.itv.com/news/granada/20...e-of-insulin-found-in-baby-allegedly-poisoned