I do totally get that angle. It's just the scale of that underestimation that I can't place. Any half smart person would know the scale of what was against them in that circumstance, they would also know that those handover sheets are to be gotten rid of preferably never kept and at the end when on office duties and told of police involvement, she's just going to outsmart all of them annd not get raided? That's a quantum leap to me, just not feasible. Unrealistic. I never got that clinical level of arrogance from her, she imo only showed that when the mask slipped.
Well, Bundy was a smart guy who certainly would have heard the maxim about self representation, and yet he sabotaged himself at every turn in Florida because he wanted to control the show.
Intelligent people lose the shirts off their backs because they just want one more thrill, one more spin of the roulette wheel or roll of the dice or deal of the cards.
She was reckless towards the end on the ward at CoC. The triplets... She knew she was suspected, she knew all eyes were on her, and yet she killed them anyway the moment she was back from holiday. And in all likelihood, attacked another child the very next day though a verdict was not reached on that charge. She was decompensating, like Bundy did. More and more risk, just to get a hint of that high.
When she got put on admin, then on leave, all she had were those papers, to relive that feeling. To revel in those deaths and near deaths.
I think she was arrogant, but I think she was also an addict. Addicted to the high she got from killing and torturing babies and the high she got from the grief and suffering of the families. When they took her off the ward, all she had were the handover sheets and the Facebook pages she'd check on holidays and anniversaries to get a warm glow from the grief she'd left in those families' lives. Because that's all she is, inside. A vampire feeding on the pain of others.
Without those handover sheets, did she even exist? In her house overlooking a garden of innocents cemetery, and her spare room decorated as a nursery for the child she was never going to have with the doctor who was never going to leave his family for her?
Letby is beige because she cultivated the most perfect camouflage, but it went too far into uncanny valley territory. It highlights that everything you see of her is just a reflection. Underneath it all, the perfect nurse, perfect nice Lucy, she's just a void she tried to fill up by hurting people. She's never going to stop being that way, and she'll never not be a danger, which is why she is exactly where she needs to be for the rest of her life.
MOO