UK - Nurse Lucy Letby Faces 22 Charges - 7 Murder/15 Attempted Murder of Babies #5

[JosieJo]

Replying to a colleague who texted about how deaths affect nurses, Ms Letby said “It’s not about me or anyone else. It’s these poor parents who have to walk away without their baby. It’s so unbelievably sad.”. @BBCNWT

@merseyHack twitter BBC

 

[Tortoise]

It is never a nurse's job to make an official pronouncement of death. Only the person accountable and responsible for the patient's medical treatment can do that. And LL would absolutely have know that given the number of years she worked on that unit and the fact the defence said she was always professional.

The ICU has 1-2 beds in it max. She clearly wasn't that overworked or they weren't that understaffed because she'd spent time 20mins before, whatsapping colleagues to discuss lack of team spirit and what used to happen in her previous hospital. They said the message conversation lasted from 9.48 to 11pm while she was on duty. Where does someone get this kind of time to have text convos if it was so understaffed?

She wasn't even supposed to be in that room - argued with her supervisor to go into the room, and then complained about lack of team spirit when she was told no. The defence argued she was dedicated to her job - I'm not sure she was actually dedicated to her patients, more just the job itself.

The parents also talked about how supporting another nurse Joanne Williams was - so clearly other nurses did make them feel at ease.

There were three cots in the ICU

Quote from live updates for 20th Oct:
"Dr Harkness said because the night of June 8 was a "traumatic event", his memory of entering the unit room was "quite fresh" and he explains there were three babies in the nursery room 1 - the intensive care unit, at the time, and two of them would have been Child A and Child B."

 

[Tortoise]

I can do Chester Standard updates for a little while.

10:34am

The trial is now resuming.

10:37am

Intelligence analyst Kate Tyndall is continuing to give evidence, providing a walkthrough of the clinical notes and other documents, presented in electronic form, to the jury.

10:58am

Text messages and Whatsapp messages sent to and from Letby's phone the morning after Child C died are shown to the court.
Letby messages a colleague: "Sorry I was just off [last night], was not a great start to shift but sadly it got worse."
The colleague responds: "You weren't off, you just were not happy and there is nothing I could say that was going to make it any better."

11:04am

Letby: "I was struggling to accept what happened to [Child A], now we have lost [Child C] overnight and it's all a bit much."
The colleague replies: "It will be but it does happen to these babies unfortunately."
"It's a very sad part of our job."
The colleague recalls a baby who had previously died in the neonatal unit, but had "overwhelming sepsis" so "nothing would have saved that baby".
Letby: "[C] is the little 800g baby...went off very suddenly. I know it happens but it's so sudden..."
Messages are relayed detailing how nursing staff on the night were upset by what happened.
Letby's colleague messages: "This is where we have to pull together and look after each other."
Letby: "Think we support each other brilliantly...just such a shock especially after Monday."
Letby is advised to "switch off for a bit".


LIVE: Lucy Letby trial, Thursday, October 27

 

[Tortoise]

11:05am

Letby messaged her mum that morning to say: "We lost a little one overnight. Very unexpected and sad xx"

11:10am

Letby added, in the message to her mum: "He only weighted 800g...new girl was looking after him, she is devastated."
Letby's colleague, in a message to Letby, said: "Hoping you are going to ok, this is not like you. Sending the biggest hugs."
Letby, in her reply, says: "It's heartbreaking but it's not about me."
Letby's colleague, in her reply, says to use a 'northern phrase': "Chin up chuck we will get through it together."
Letby: "It's not about me or anybody else, it's those poor parents who have to walk away without their baby."

LIVE: Lucy Letby trial, Thursday, October 27

 

[Tortoise]

11:12am

Letby messages another colleague asking when she is next work, before adding: "We lost little [Child C] overnight, everyone's devastated."
The colleague responds: "Damn. Infection? Crap week. How is [Child B]?"
Letby gives an update and says, for Child C, "it happened very quickly."
The colleague responds: "Damn. As quick as [Child A]? Yeah, s*** week."

11:15am

Letby messaged the colleague: "Parents sat with [Child C] in the family room...persuaded them to have hand and footprints but they just wanted to go home."
The colleague responds: "That is so sad, don't know what to say."
Letby: "There are no words, it's been awful."
The colleague: "It's a really tough week, especially for you."
The conversation ends at 10.12am.

11:15am

Letby searched for both the parents of Child C on Facebook later that day, at 3.32pm.

11:18am

A conversation Letby has with a third colleague, later that day, is shown to the court.
Letby: "I don't really want to go in tonight."
The colleague responds: "I don't particularly but we will get each other through it."
Letby: "We are a good team and we will get through. You did so so well."
The colleague: "We all did - so lucky to work with such an amazing and supportive team."

LIVE: Lucy Letby trial, Thursday, October 27

 

[JosieJo]

11:12am

Letby messages another colleague asking when she is next work, before adding: "We lost little [Child C] overnight, everyone's devastated."
The colleague responds: "Damn. Infection? Crap week. How is [Child B]?"
Letby gives an update and says, for Child C, "it happened very quickly."
The colleague responds: "Damn. As quick as [Child A]? Yeah, s*** week."

11:15am

Letby messaged the colleague: "Parents sat with [Child C] in the family room...persuaded them to have hand and footprints but they just wanted to go home."
The colleague responds: "That is so sad, don't know what to say."
Letby: "There are no words, it's been awful."
The colleague: "It's a really tough week, especially for you."
The conversation ends at 10.12am.

11:15am

Letby searched for both the parents of Child C on Facebook later that day, at 3.32pm.

11:18am

A conversation Letby has with a third colleague, later that day, is shown to the court.
Letby: "I don't really want to go in tonight."
The colleague responds: "I don't particularly but we will get each other through it."
Letby: "We are a good team and we will get through. You did so so well."
The colleague: "We all did - so lucky to work with such an amazing and supportive team."

LIVE: Lucy Letby trial, Thursday, October 27

I cant help but feel.she is overly invested in these cases ..initiating conversations with multiple different people.

 

[JosieJo]

Also in court

https://twitter.com/x/status/1585575205975490560

 

[BabaVanga]

“It’s not about me” I don’t like her attitude one bit.

 

[Tortoise]

I cant help but feel.she is overly invested in these cases ..initiating conversations with multiple different people.

I'm picking up a sense of ultra-vigilance too.

 

[Tortoise]

11:26am

The court is now hearing evidence from Dr Sally Ogden, who in 2015 was a paediatric registrar at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Child C was born at 3.31pm on June 10, 2015, with Dr Ogden confirming she was present at the birth and facilitated the baby boy's transfer to the neonatal unit.
Child C was "smaller than expected for that gestation", with a C-section made necessary.

11:29am

The birth weight of 800g was within the range for Child C to be allowed to be treated at a Level 2 neonatal facility - the one at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
An 'Apgar score', recording how well the new-born is doing immediately after birth, is noted, rising from 7, to 9 out of 10.

11:33am

A clinical note showed there were 'no RF [risk factors] for sepsis', and Child C was "born in good condition", "came out crying, good resp[iratory] effort...no resus[citation] needed...pink...well perfused."
The heart rate was ">100", the saturation was "95% air".
Dr Ogden said those latter two readings were what would have been expected.

LIVE: Lucy Letby trial, Thursday, October 27

 

[Sweeper2000]

“It’s not about me” I don’t like her attitude one bit.

People say that when discarding their own sufferings as a form of comparison to others “greater degree of suffering” as in “don’t focus on me when it’s the parents who are really suffering”.

 

[amandab]

I cant help but feel.she is overly invested in these cases ..initiating conversations with multiple different people.

I wondered from this if she was trying to see if anyone suspected her.

 

[Sweeper2000]

I cant help but feel.she is overly invested in these cases ..initiating conversations with multiple different people.

That conversation was started as a question to when Lucy is next working not purely for the purpose of discussing Baby c. I might assume it is normal to seek support and reassurance after something like that especially when working with “such a supportive team”. It’s certainly not excessive either in language or in volume of requests.

 

[Noseyposy76]

I have been thinking about LL's notes and why she might have written such words if she were innocent of the crimes of which she is accused. An innocent person accused of serious crimes will sometimes be offered a "way out" under intensive police interrogation. "Admit to what you did, we know you did it, if you confess it will be much better for you". It is well documented that numerous miscarriages of justice have been caused by a suspect, convinced that they were going to be found guilty anyway, deciding to admit guilt. They will then try to say what they believe the interrogators want them to say. Sometimes, the interrogator's ideas of details of what actually happened later turn out to have been definitely wrong.

Anyway, if you are considering admitting guilt, you could experiment with the words you would say. A reliable confession to a murder includes information which only the actual murderer could have known, and which was not previously known by investigators.

This is exactly what happened with Amanda Knox! With LL’s seemingly odd behaviour and social awkwardness, I have already recognised a parallel between the two cases, which we know was what raised the suspicion against AK in the first place.

 

[Marantz4250b]

If she were a murderer, she would be able to prove it, by revealing how she did it. She would have information that only the murderer could have.

I agree here. She knew that the police had the note - I don't know when they told her they had it but she will certainly have been questioned on it or it wouldn't be in evidence. We know it was found when they searched her home at the time of the first arrest in July 2018. If she did do this and they have this "confession" by her then it's a fair bet that they'd have confronted her with it early on. I find it extremely unlikely that she would keep denying it - over years of police interviews, no less - if she'd already confessed in writing. If she has confessed to herself once then it's probably not a big stretch, mentally speaking, to do so to the police and she's likely have fessed up as to how she did it rather than continuing to deny something which was obvious.

 

[Marantz4250b]

She didn’t say “deliberately” or “intentionally” she said “on purpose” as opposed to “by mistake”. I’m not really talking about technicalities of language, words often have more than one meaning. Another dictionary definition of the phrase “on purpose” is”purposely” which is different in context to intentionally. I’m talking more about the way and in what context language is used.

As I said several posts ago, the use of the phrase "on purpose" is strange to me. It's not really a phrase you'd expect an adult to use, when you think about it. It seems of out keeping with the rest of the note too.

She clearly wrote it but, to me, it suggests immense emotional trauma, rather than an outright confession. I think she's writing about how she perceives other people are thinking about her and judging her, to be honest.

Also, the prosecution have said that there were multiple notes taken from her house. I think it's a fairly safe bet that this is the only one expressing anything which can be remotely associated with guilt or a confession. If there were others they would have said so and used it in their opening statement.

 

[Marantz4250b]

My impression as we progress to child C: the medical evidence so far has not looked good for LL. Prosecution, from what we have seen and heard (and important to remember that this is just snippets via Twitter, mainly) have done a robust job in showing air embolism as the most likely cause of death for babies A and B.

They have yet to show that only LL could have administered this, but no doubt they will come to that in due course.

LL’s defence seem to be treading a murky line between “it didn’t happen” and “if it did happen, it was caused by accident or by the equpment and procedures”. Will be interesting to see if they bring any of their own expert testimony in the coming days - but is this likely now the prosecution have moved on to child c?

This is the key thing. As far as I can see they have shown nothing of the sort. Even if they have proved beyond any doubt what-so-ever that this was the cause of death they have done nothing at all to show that it was caused by the unlawful act of LL, unless I've missed something.

So far they seem to be saying that "she was there, she must have done it because we say she did".

 

[Sweeper2000]

I agree here. She knew that the police had the note - I don't know when they told her they had it but she will certainly have been questioned on it or it wouldn't be in evidence. We know it was found when they searched her home at the time of the first arrest in July 2018. If she did do this and they have this "confession" by her then it's a fair bet that they'd have confronted her with it early on. I find it extremely unlikely that she would keep denying it - over years of police interviews, no less - if she'd already confessed in writing. If she has confessed to herself once then it's probably not a big stretch, mentally speaking, to do so to the police and she's likely have fessed up as to how she did it rather than continuing to deny something which was obvious.

That’s my thinking as well, I don’t believe she would pursue the “not guilty” had she already made a confession that was known. Again considering that note isn’t a total and clear admission of guilt then it’s more likely that that notes validity as a confession is slim to none.

<modsnip>

 

[BuzzC]

As I said several posts ago, the use of the phrase "on purpose" is strange to me. It's not really a phrase you'd expect an adult to use, when you think about it. It seems of out keeping with the rest of the note too.

She clearly wrote it but, to me, it suggests immense emotional trauma, rather than an outright confession. I think she's writing about how she perceives other people are thinking about her and judging her, to be honest.

Also, the prosecution have said that there were multiple notes taken from her house. I think it's a fairly safe bet that this is the only one expressing anything which can be remotely associated with guilt or a confession. If there were others they would have said so and used it in their opening statement.

Out of curiosity - why wouldn’t an adult use the term?

If you go to the news tab on a popular search engine and search for the phrase “on purpose”, you’ll find lots of, presumably, adult journalists using that very phrase in articles discussing all kinds of different subjects.

 

[Marantz4250b]

I guess if the note was a kind of confession, then if she is guilty, she might really confess at some point.

This case reminds me of a story of a priest I read some time ago - but I don't remember if it was fiction or fact - well, he killed young boys b/c he honestly believed he was saving them from the wicked materialistic world.

He considered himself their saviour, and pled not guilty.
He said the boys were now in Heaven - blisfully happy.
Moo

I think that if she was going to do that then she'd have already done it. Especially if she's already confessed to it in a note.