Lucy Letby Case #6

[Haveyouanywool]

What the poster means there seems to be a huge escalation. LL worked at COCH since she qualified in 2012 no incidents until she went on a mad killing spree in June 2015 until June 2016. There seems to be no issues about her conduct at uni or at work. What happened? She does not fit the profile of a serial killer there's no MO or pattern . Harold Shipman had been killing for years and years he killed older women with a massive overdose of morphine. I believe he wanted to get caught as he was caught when one of the wills were changed of his victims. He was a clever man with an established MO.

How do we know there were no incidents until
2015? Maybe she dipped her toe in the water before then.
Harold Shipman is believed to have started killing his estimated 250 victims very early in his medical career. 80% were elderly woman but 20% were not. I believe he just got careless, he’d gotten away with it for so long.
There was a 7 year gap between Jeffrey Dahmers 1st victim and his 2nd, then he spiralled out of control.
She can switch up her MO, Beverly Allitt did.
I can't see why this particular person can’t be a serial killer? Does any of us really know her?
I’m not saying she is I’m saying it’s certainly not inconceivable.
They’re not all, necessarily, pressed from the same mould.

 

[Tilly3]

I’ve asked the poster to ignore me numerous times but they refuse and just keep quoting me when I’m discussing with other people!

Maybe try not being so rude to some posters

 

[crumpets2]

I keep edging, I think she probably did do something or it was gross incompetence and she's the worst nurse ever . Why wouldn't you leave though ? The fact she stayed and let them put her admin duties At this point I could not say definitely guilty if I was on the jury. I have my doubts and she would go to prison for life. Really strange case I definitely wouldn't want to be on the jury.

I just feel if she was a terrible nurse with doubts of her practice she wouldn’t be the poster girl for the unit. Also there’s been nothing to suggest she’s ever been on performance management or referred to the NMC or anything prior to the allegations and her being put on admin duty.

 

[stardust1]

I don’t understand this whole ‘she didn’t just randomly start killing someone’ literally every killer has to start somewhere. There also doesn’t necessarily need to be a reason why either some people are simply just bad people. There is no evidence to support either way just yet. People are using the argument she is getting the blame cause her face didn’t fit but isn’t thinking she is innocent purely based on how she looks and how her personality appears to be no better than rending her guilty and to blame because ‘her face didn’t fit’ ?

 

[StatusWoe]

LL worked at COCH since she qualified in 2012 no incidents until she went on a mad killing spree in June 2015 until June 2016.

With this point though - we don't know for sure there there were no incidents. The scope of the trial currently extends from 2015 onwards, but that doesn't mean there were no incidents prior to that.

I don't buy the scapegoat theory, but that doesn't mean Lucy is guilty. I'm willing to believe she was present on the ward more often than other nurses and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. The spike in the number of deaths might have been a really tragic coincidence - a combination of natural illness and a bad standard of care, understaffing, etc.

Just some questions that have been going around in my head:
1) If the deaths were caused by negligence or substandard medical treatment, would this not have been found during the first wave of investigations?
2) If the police investigation concluded that practices on the ward were not to blame for the deaths, surely we can't still attribute the deaths to malpractice?
3) I think it was said that the cause of death was unclear or unexplained in most cases. Is that right??
4) Is there proof of deliberate harm?

 

[ProphecyGirl]

I think she’s guilty. The notes and searches are enough for me, I do think once upon a time she was kind and normal but maybe she’s had some sort of fertility issues, baby loss or something to turn her

I don’t know, let’s just see how it’s pans out

 

[jackolantern]

I do think (even subconsciously) her looks definitely can cloud judgement. If she were an ugly middle aged man people would do the whole “he has evil eyes, he looks like a killer!” but people can’t associate a pretty young girl with this kind of evil. Some of the worst serial killers are the most charming or unassuming.

 

[Milktray]

I think she’s guilty. The notes and searches are enough for me, I do think once upon a time she was kind and normal but maybe she’s had some sort of fertility issues, baby loss or something to turn her

I don’t know, let’s just see how it’s pans out

The searches are grim. That got to me. 'Heres a girl who potentially murdered your baby then watched your pain over social media'. It must have been horrific for those parents.

Saying that, we don't know who else she searched up...was it a habit to just search anyone who came into the unit? Rightly or wrongly, I'm waiting to hear the come back with that one.

 

[Emmelina Ball]

The hospital brought in the police tbf. They could have brushed it under the carpet with the RCPCH report - which gave some vague recommendations but didn't suggest anything criminal was happening. They could have showed that report to the patients, public, victim's parents and everyone would have felt like they were taking action. Now, they are being investigated for 6 years and counting by the police - so much awful publicity, in the spotlight where every death and action will be scrutinised, not to mention the police too could have found any of them negligent or criminal. Once the police are involved you can't control where the investigation will lead.

Also LL didn't make any grievances or complaints before she was suspected - at least the prosecution and defence did not mention it. Her grievance happened after the police investigation was initiated, when she was already a suspect and put on admin duties.

I can't see any conceivable way the police, civilian investigators, multiple sets of medical experts from around the country, victims' families, her colleagues, the hospital, RSPCH are all conspiring against her. This investigation has cost multi million ££ - all this to protect an already failing hospital (that everyone was aware of with the RSPCH report) seems really unlikely.

I disagree I wouldn’t say the RCPCH report gave vague recommendations it was very concerning recommendations - have you read it? The review found no definitive explanation for an increase in mortality rates, but identified significant gaps in medical and nursing rotas, poor decision-making and insufficient senior cover.

For anyone who hasn’t it’s worth a read. Their 21 recommendations included conducting an external independent review of each unexpected death in that time period. Appointing 2 additional consultants before they can be considered to be a level 2 unit. See below full recommendations. There is no way these could be brushed under the carpet.

 

[MoveBtchGetOutTheWay]

The searches are grim. That got to me. 'Heres a girl who potentially murdered your baby then watched your pain over social media'. It must have been horrific for those parents.

Saying that, we don't know who else she searched up...was it a habit to just search anyone who came into the unit? Rightly or wrongly, I'm waiting to hear the come back with that one.

Would yhe defense be able to obtain other nurses records of searches? I ask because if I was a defence barrister I'd want to show that actually, other NICU nurses also looked up their patience to prove it wasn't just LL. I'm not sure if they'd have the power to do that if someone wasn't on trial? I also don't know if someone would volunteer this information across?

I definitely there was more incidents prior to 2015 if LL is found guilty, perhaps this is just when she escalated. As others have said I don't believe they'd be allowed to bring up cases they weren't allowed to obtain charges for, but can they allude to this? As fact?

Eg, LL started at the hospital in 2012, there was a growing number of unexplained crashes compared to 2011. This could be put across as facts ?

 

[noharmdone]

How is it far fetched? Beverly Allitt, Harold Shipman. I take it they’re different in some way? Why?



It’s baby killing we’re talking about.

Just to flip the other side of the coin, I've lost count of CSE cases that have been ignored or swept under the carpet by social services, councils, police etc so i get the point being made, it does happen between multi agency

 

[Daisydunn15]

I keep viewing it in the context of the facebook searches as well. Like, the way she forgot doing a search for the parents of the baby who died. If she's innocent then her responses to police are really not helping her case!

That's what gets me too, just say you were on shift when their baby died, you found it traumatic and even felt some guilt around whether you could do anything different, so occasionally have felt drawn to see how the families are doing. Most would accept that as an explanation even if it's something they wouldn't do personally

 

[Alzzah]

i don’t believe there is a big conspiracy or cover up within the hospital or a deliberate framing of LL. However, some sequence of events on how the police began their investigation is important to me.

If the hospital asked for police involvement because ‘someone’ may be killing babies I feel their approach may have differed to requesting police involvement because LL is killing babies.

in the second example there will be tunnel vision, they will be looking for evidence that LL was guilty. Where LL can’t be linked to a death (or crash) those events may have had little further investigation as they are not useful in building the case against the prime suspect (LL was on annual leave here so that death can’t have been poison or air).

When we believe a theory to be true we look for evidence that supports our theory, we will not be provided in court all the evidence that the police found that doesn’t support the theory that LL is guilty.

in addition to tunnel vision is the reliance on statistics as ‘proof’. Statistics and data are very useful tools to use but having numbers presented in isolation does not give the full picture. Statistical anomalies occur all the time, if I was gambling heads and tails and tails came up ten times in a row while I backed heads my initial reaction would be that the person flipping the coin was cheating. The odds of this happening are small (1 in 1024), but given the amount of coin tosses in the world that must happen it will have happened many times in a row. The same applies for red v black during roulette, with similar odds.

Those are games of chance with two possible outcomes. The number of deaths that occur within a hospital ward during different time periods has so many external factors that can influence the result that conclusions are impossible with additional, unbiased information. The information presented to us, by both the prosecution and the defence is biased. Each want the opposite outcome.

In my previous job I looked at incident data at a mental health hospital. Sometimes there were patterns where certain staff members had significantly higher incident involvement than others. In isolation it was easy to infer that these staff had training needs, were winding the patients up or other factors where the fault lay with the individual.

Through unbiased investigation there was often a rationale explanation. Those people picked up the most overtime, those people worked with the most challenging patients or those people were the best at record keeping and actually recorded all of the incidents they witnessed or were involved in.

My natural thought process is to question information. Currently there is a lot of information that the prosecution is presenting that I can see holes in, it’s more than possible that the same will be true when it’s the defences turn.

The police do get it wrong, having enough evidence to bring a case to court isn’t enough for me to automatically assign guilt.

 

[TheotherMaryBerry]

It's far more likely that one person is a murderer than 100s of people across the country over a period of 6 years are all immoral and unethical, and would not expose a conspiracy.

Not at all. The news around the appalling level of care in almost all maternity trusts show that it's perfectly possible that this could be down to a poor working environment. It wouldn't need all staff to be immoral and unethical, just for records to be fudged and people to feel unsupported and unconfident in reporting concerns. Murderers are not at all common, serial baby murderers even less. Poor working practices are frighteningly common.

Don't forget, it's entirely possible for more than one thing to be true. LL could be innocent and her colleagues could still believe she's guilty because that's what they've been told. It doesn't have to be a conspiracy, it could just be that the evidence has started pointing one way and confirmation bias has caused people to look for more to prove that theory.

Of course, she still may well be guilty...but the evidence so far is far from conclusive. As many posters have said, there's a reason this is going to be a long trial, lots to be worked about and it has to be done right.

 

[Windowtothewall]

I'm definitely seeking explanations. I find it incredibly difficult to accept the possibility anyone's THAT evil. I don't know why. It's definitely easier to believe when they look like Levi Bellfield. That's just my bias.

I guess looking at it straight down the barrel isn't my style. There's far too much nuance going on here.

I'm not really a scapegoater either, I just think it's interesting and wanted raise that scapegoating doesn't equal active conspiracy

I can understand this tbf and also wonder whether someone who looks so 'normal' could really be this evil. The only reason I can see the possibility is because I went to uni with someone who committed murder. And she was also young, pretty, very very career minded, had a husband, loving family - just a regular girl. Quite nice too as we'd hung out sometimes. When I saw it in the papers I was shocked - but they'd found the body so there was no denying it. I assumed there'd be a reason but there wasn't. And at her sentencing, her lack of remorse was noted by the judge. Since then I've realised you really can't tell what goes on behind closed door and who people are. Of course, LL could be innocent anyway!

I disagree I wouldn’t say the RCPCH report gave vague recommendations it was very concerning recommendations - have you read it? The review found no definitive explanation for an increase in mortality rates, but identified significant gaps in medical and nursing rotas, poor decision-making and insufficient senior cover.

For anyone who hasn’t it’s worth a read. Their 21 recommendations included conducting an external independent review of each unexpected death in that time period. Appointing 2 additional consultants before they can be considered to be a level 2 unit. See below full recommendations. There is no way these could be brushed under the carpet.
View attachment 1658706View attachment 1658705

I didn’t make my point well. The report was damning for negligence. And as serious as it was, it’s not in any way comparable to a police investigation. Only one of those investigations leads to criminal charges and potential prison. The trust published the report, the recommendations were being implemented.

By brush under the carpet I meant, they could have brushed criminal activity under the carpet and avoided a police investigation. They could have wrapped it into the RSPCH review as mismanagement and show they had taken it on board. Transferred LL out under the guise of poor performance or offer her an opportunity in the tier 3 hospital and be done with it.

Why would they add a police investigation to the mix and risk potential criminal charges that could have hit any of the staff and management and also opened up even more findings of negligence. You can’t control what a police investigation will dig up or how long it will go.

Even if LL is found not guilty the hospital can still be taken to court for negligence. They’ve opened themselves up to even more scrutiny. So initiating a police investigation served no advantage to anyone other than if they genuinely believed LL was a threat.

 

[MmmB777]

Just to flip the other side of the coin, I've lost count of CSE cases that have been ignored or swept under the carpet by social services, councils, police etc so i get the point being made, it does happen between multi agency

But sweeping under the carpet would have looked like them seeing allll this negligence and hiding it? They had in the normal way “got away” with this negligence.

I’m so confused when people still think there’s only the statistical chance that she’s the one on shift and that is why lots of people are leaning towards guilty. Do we need to go through everything that’s been presented so far when it’s all on the wiki? That not only is she the only one there but the way the babies died, the unexpected nature, the suspicious comments and behaviour, the note, the searches, the fact two babies HAVE to have been poisoned (even Letby concluded this!), the fact that multiple medical experts are detecting air embolism.. there is more!
So instead, we’re going to look at each and every incident and say how other murderous nurses there could have been (at least two), how many are simply natural, how many are negligence, how many people must have conspired to have put this very strong case together - I’m still seeing people saying “it happens” and giving totally different scenarios on totally different scales and no evidence at all that this is what happened HERE in this case (except going as far as saying poor individual docs were ‘reaching’ and covering their own backs) .. that’s fine but I see a very different picture.

 

[Daisydunn15]

In my previous job I looked at incident data at a mental health hospital. Sometimes there were patterns where certain staff members had significantly higher incident involvement than others. In isolation it was easy to infer that these staff had training needs, were winding the patients up or other factors where the fault lay with the individual.

Through unbiased investigation there was often a rationale explanation. Those people picked up the most overtime, those people worked with the most challenging patients or those people were the best at record keeping and actually recorded all of the incidents they witnessed or were involved in.

I'm a MH nurse and when I worked on the wards would often have more incidents attached to me for those reasons. I was one of the few nurses who were more senior yet had no children or commitments, and I loved my job and wanted more money so I would pick up lots of overtime, there were plenty of weeks I worked every single day. If LL was in a similar position, of course she'd be around for more incidents.

I don't think the scapegoat theory is that far fetched. I've known examples to be made of nurses before when a ward is failing, it doesn't take hundreds of people covering things up, just a small handful of upper management and others will follow. If she's been around for most deaths/collapses then they've gone looking for any excuse to pin it on her they'll find something - none of us are perfect and with a poorly run unit they're even more likely to find 'proof'.
Not saying that's the theory I personally believe, I just think it could be believable.

 

[Nelly's mum]

It would be really interesting to know (although I'm not sure if it's allowed ethically/legally?) the circumstances around the other babies collapses (if they happened when she wasn't on shift?)

Why? My post is too short, just why

 

[Windowtothewall]

Not at all. The news around the appalling level of care in almost all maternity trusts show that it's perfectly possible that this could be down to a poor working environment. It wouldn't need all staff to be immoral and unethical, just for records to be fudged and people to feel unsupported and unconfident in reporting concerns. Murderers are not at all common, serial baby murderers even less. Poor working practices are frighteningly common.

Don't forget, it's entirely possible for more than one thing to be true. LL could be innocent and her colleagues could still believe she's guilty because that's what they've been told. It doesn't have to be a conspiracy, it could just be that the evidence has started pointing one way and confirmation bias has caused people to look for more to prove that theory.

Of course, she still may well be guilty...but the evidence so far is far from conclusive. As many posters have said, there's a reason this is going to be a long trial, lots to be worked about and it has to be done right.

But this isn’t just the NHS involved. You’re talking police, the civilian investigators and intelligence analysts, the medical experts (more than 2, there’s a long list) who are all from different trusts around the country, professors, the RCPCH - they all can’t be conspiring against her.

It’s a multi million pound investigation that’s spanned 7 years. It’s tax payer money and highly scrutinised. Why would anyone in the police or the experts and civilians risk their jobs and reputations to scape goat someone for this long…? The police officers could lose their pensions by getting sacked over it if even one person whistleblew over the years . Just not worth it.

Also - they are already facing negligence claims from the parents, based on the RCPCH report. Irrespective of LL that would have been the case. It’s not like they were getting away with it until the police showed up.

 

[noharmdone]

But sweeping under the carpet would have looked like them seeing allll this negligence and hiding it? They had in the normal way “got away” with this negligence.

I’m so confused when people still think there’s only the statistical chance that she’s the one on shift and that is why lots of people are leaning towards guilty. Do we need to go through everything that’s been presented so far when it’s all on the wiki? That not only is she the only one there but the way the babies died, the unexpected nature, the suspicious comments and behaviour, the note, the searches, the fact two babies HAVE to have been poisoned (even Letby concluded this!), the fact that multiple medical experts are detecting air embolism.. there is more!
So instead, we’re going to look at each and every incident and say how other murderous nurses there could have been (at least two), how many are simply natural, how many are negligence, how many people must have conspired to have put this very strong case together - I’m still seeing people saying “it happens” and giving totally different scenarios on totally different scales and no evidence at all that this is what happened HERE in this case (except going as far as saying poor individual docs were ‘reaching’ and covering their own backs) .. that’s fine but I see a very different picture.

My comment was purely on the fact that although it seems unlikely lots of different services would make things fit their narrative or turn the other way about something, it does happen. Wasn't necessarily in relation to this case just a thought I had