UK - Nurse Lucy Letby, Faces 22 Charges - 7 Murder/15 Attempted Murder of Babies #20

[Xanadu62]

The feeds aren't necessarily as strictly scheduled as I think you think they might be.
More a guideline than any absolute need to a feed at any exact time.

JMO

Have you ever had your new born babe in ICU? My sister did with my niece who was a preemie and for a new mother it is devastating to have to watch and worry about the baby you just gave birth to, helplessly. There is no way any mother would miss a 9pm feeding or be late to it when it involves her sickly baby. She would be doing everything by the book, because there is nothing else occupying her time or thoughts. My sister would have spent every single minute of the day with her babe if they had allowed it.

From the mother below. There's no way she would have not showed up at 9pm if it was scheduled as a 9pm feed (and that is what even the defendant's notes said).

"She says she had decided she wanted to feed the twins her breast milk, and was helped to express that, and in the meantime had agreed to donor milk, but was able to provide her breast milk in due course as, she said: "That was very important to me."

She said: "It was the only thing I could do for them at that point. It was important to me. It was non-negotiable."

 

[Tortoise]

It’s not just that, I’m just tryin to figure out why nobody has seemed to notice her leaving her unit and entering the NNU. The feed timelines might not be vigorously adhered to but patients going from one unit to another is almost certainly something the prosecution should be able to prove IMO.

What would have made anyone remember it, years later, with a multitude of parents and staff coming and going to different nurseries all night, every night?

How about if you went to your local shop tonight. Do you think a member of staff there will even remember your visit, in two years time, let alone whether it was at 9pm and not 10pm?

 

[IspyWithMyBigEye]

The jig wasn't up at that point in fairness. She still maintained that they had no evidence, so I don't think she expected the police to actually arrest her. I think she assumed it would all blow over eventually and never get to a point she was on trial. That's why her notes don't mention anything about lawyers or prison or arrest or conviction or never working again. If she seriously thought the police would be involved and she was in trouble, there'd be some mention of legal advice. Also her nursing registration/PIN was still active until her arrest and so she had every chance of moving to a different trust and practising again if they couldn't stand up a case against her.

Also i think unless you're a serial killer or violent psychopath, it's really hard to think like they would. It's a completely different wiring and emotional language and I think a certain arrogance and invincibility is inherent - where they never think they'll be caught.

MOO

Absolutely agree, Xanadu.

LL never for one second anticipated the police calling at her house. Had she thought that, she’d have destroyed all her written confessions and handover notes. It took her by huge surprise when they turned up, and it’s that memory which makes her cry. She’s never cried over the babies dying - despite her sickly sympathy card to the parent’s of one baby. All she cries about is how HER life has changed: she’s never shown sympathy for the heartache the parents are going through having their babies die due to being injected with air, insulin or too much feed.

In her notes to herself when she was in panic mode, she mentioned “no evidence”or words to that effect, which an innocent person wouldn’t even consider.

 

[Sweeper2000]

We’ve heard that one before

Tbh I think I’m just pleased the surrounding evidence supports my original take on it. No mind though. Says what it says imo

only problem is figuring out what it does indeed say lol
xd

What would have made anyone remember it, years later, with a multitude of parents and staff coming and going to different nurseries all night, every night?

How about if you went to your local shop tonight. Do you think a member of staff there will even remember your visit, in two years time, let alone whether it was at 9pm and not 10pm?

It’s not just that Which I could understand by itself. No door swipe data corroborating someone coming onto the ward a touch before nine, if equipment was given to the mum to express, if a mom expec to be given The all clear for the9pm feed as per schedule, if she didn’t walk in with someone she was buzzed in both of which would potentially leave a witness to corroborate etc I just think this was a layered process that should have left at least something to corroborate The mms testimony.

if the staff can’t be expected to remember clearly so many years after I wouldn’t necessarily expect the moms recollection to be accurate either.

 

[JamesMcGillEsquire]

Have you ever had your new born babe in ICU? My sister did with my niece who was a preemie and for a new mother it is devastating to have to watch and worry about the baby you just gave birth to, helplessly. There is no way any mother would miss a 9pm feeding or be late to it when it involves her sickly baby. She would be doing everything by the book, because there is nothing else occupying her time or thoughts. My sister would have spent every single minute of the day with her babe if they had allowed it.

From the mother below. There's no way she would have not showed up at 9pm if it was scheduled as a 9pm feed (and that is what even the defendant's notes said).

"She says she had decided she wanted to feed the twins her breast milk, and was helped to express that, and in the meantime had agreed to donor milk, but was able to provide her breast milk in due course as, she said: "That was very important to me."

She said: "It was the only thing I could do for them at that point. It was important to me. It was non-negotiable."

The mother could still be expressing the required amount of milk beyond the scheduled feed time though, this could push it back by however long that would take.

<modsnip - Rude, personalizing comment>

 

[IspyWithMyBigEye]

The part that I find difficult to get my head around, is not whether someone could have done this. I understand there are some very sick, evil people out there. Thes kinds of people would undoubtedly have no quarms with studying nursing, going to uni, focusing intently on becoming an elite nurse only to intentionally hamr babies.

I am certainly not naive enough to not want to accept that the above scenario is possible.

Where I am having trouble, is believing that this same sick, evil, twisted person would exhibit practically zero psychopathic traits.

Normally when you have a psychopath accused of murder, somehwere along the line, their character reveals something about themsleves that backs up the hypothesis that they could have behaved in the ways being suggested.

With Ms Letby, salsa dancing aside, we have nothing like this.

You haven’t read her latest remarks, then.

But even her earlier ones, including her actions, would alert anyone to the fact she’s only feeling sorry for herself. But if she’s found guilty she’ll have the rest of her life to practice salsa dancing in her cell, so don’t worry about that, James.

 

[WaxLyrical]

Tbh I think I’m just pleased the surrounding evidence supports my original take on it. No mind though. Says what it says imo

only problem is figuring out what it does indeed say lol
xd


It’s not just that Which I could understand by itself. No door swipe data corroborating someone coming onto the ward a touch before nine, if equipment was given to the mum to express, if a mom expec to be given The all clear for the9pm feed as per schedule, if she didn’t walk in with someone she was buzzed in both of which would potentially leave a witness to corroborate etc I just think this was a layered process that should have left at least something to corroborate The mms testimony.

if the staff can’t be expected to remember clearly so many years after I wouldn’t necessarily expect the moms recollection to be accurate either.

Aw, pay me no attention sweep, I was hoping to make you smile

 

[Sweeper2000]

You haven’t read her latest remarks, then.

But even her earlier ones, including her actions, would alert anyone to the fact she’s only feeling sorry for herself. But if she’s found guilty she’ll have the rest of her life to practice salsa dancing in her cell, so don’t worry about that, James.

How is she supposed to practice salsa if she isn’t married?

 

[JamesMcGillEsquire]

What would have made anyone remember it, years later, with a multitude of parents and staff coming and going to different nurseries all night, every night?

How about if you went to your local shop tonight. Do you think a member of staff there will even remember your visit, in two years time, let alone whether it was at 9pm and not 10pm?

I take your point, but your local shop are not required to take notes on whether their customers enter at 9pm or 10pm.

At what time Sweeper buys a pack of jammie dodgers is hardly going to feature in any kind of meaningful legal dialogue.

 

[Sweeper2000]

Aw, pay me no attention sweep, I was hoping to make you smile

It worked. I’m still giggling tbh if everyone whoever discussed that bloomin note put in a hours worked sheet for it we would have a century of discussion about it. We neeeed a professional opinion on it lol

 

[Parker Knoll]

I take your point, but your local shop are not required to take notes on whether their customers enter at 9pm or 10pm.

At what time Sweeper buys a pack of jammie dodgers is hardly going to feature in any kind of meaningful legal dialogue.

Really ? Can we try and keep it a little bit sensible ?

 

[Xanadu62]

The mother could still be expressing the required amount of milk beyond the scheduled feed time though, this could push it back by however long that would take.

<modsnip - rude, personalizing comment>

The mother also said she was expressing in the neo natal unit between 7-8.30pm and made it to nursery 1 just before 9pm. So we don't need to guess or assume what happened, she's told us in her statement.

<modsnip - response to snipped comment>

 

[esther43]

The pump, is that just something that would be given to her to use as and when or would she have one to use by herself? I thought maybe every time she needed to express she might be given a new set, fresh and clean?

I did question if any mother would have the capacity to be abl to deliver as per the schedule, that’s one of the things I thought might mean she wasn’t punctual for the 9pm feed but obviously through no fault of her own.

To me from what you have written I would assume that the mom would be prompted by staff to have the milk ready and then perhaps to deliver it? Or at least given the all clear for her to attend at 9pm?
I think that’s absolutely vital to ascertain, could be one of the biggest points in the evidence.

the prosecution are alleging that ll attacked this child almost immediately before the mum turned up and thus ll would know about the 9pm feed and presumably wouldn’t do something like that if she was aware that the mum would turn up and catch her more or less red handed.

I think it's pretty much a given that most Mother's will be aware of the feeding regime and the importance of breast milk to mitigate the risk of NEC. This is usually one of the first conversations about how the mother 'can help'.
As such it is normal for the Mother to build her routine around expressing. Most Mother's will be on a two hour expressing regime to begin with to build up milk supply. Whilst on postnatal it will be a key focus for them and their time will be divided between eating, expressing and being with their child.

 

[IspyWithMyBigEye]

They may not have leaked, in that hypothetical scenario.

The hole created may be so minute, and the elasticity of the bag may behave in a manner that effectively, to a greater extent, temporarily reseals the hole.

Or if tiny amounts of liquid escaped then those could have been unnoticable, or gone unnoticed.

I seem to remember a similar set of circumstances in 'The Good Nurse'. It wasnt until the bags that had been tampered with were squeezed that the holes reopened.

In that case, or the more reason LL would’ve known a tiny hole would be unnoticeable…had she injected the bag herself, of course.

Still can’t think who would have done that from outside not knowing where they’d end up.

And huge, huge coincidence out of all the staff only LL picked those bags up…don’t you think?

 

[IspyWithMyBigEye]

"The court is shown the timeline for the night shift on August 3-4. Letby is shown administering medication for Child F at 9.13pm, with nurse Caroline Oakley also present, in room 1 - the same as Child E.

Letby is asked if Caroline Oakley observed blood on Child E's face at that point, or if it was noted. Letby replies: "No.""

So a timeline was shown which is not the same as clinical notes (unless they also showed clinical notes and just not reported.). However, below are the defendants own notes that prosecution shared and there's no mention of Caroline Oakley anywhere. So really not sure where this has come from? The defence haven't actually presented any evidence of her being there or not observing there was blood.

Also noticed on her notes below, there was supposed to be a 9pm feed!! So mum was right to show up at 9pm. But defendant says it was omitted, yet there's no evidence of this and the SHO has no recollection of advising to omit the feed. So basically, the mum, SHO and Caroline Oakley would all have to be lying or misremembering to support the defendant's version of events.

8pm: Letby's note for 8pm at August 3 is written, written at 4.51am retrospectively, to say: "Mummy was present at start of shift attending to cares."

A further Letby note reads: 'Prior to 9pm feed, 16ml 'mucky' slightly bile stained aspirate' recorded for Child E.

9pm: The neonatal fluid chart for the 9pm column records, under milk feeds, 'omitted', and the word 'discarded' is in a non-specific line. For aspirates, the note '16ml mucky' is made.

10pm: To the right of that, at the 10pm column, is '15ml fresh blood' on aspirates.

The two columns for that chart are signed by Lucy Letby's initials.

How is she going to wriggle out of that when she’s cross examined?

 

[Sweeper2000]

Absolutely agree, Xanadu.

LL never for one second anticipated the police calling at her house. Had she thought that, she’d have destroyed all her written confessions and handover notes. It took her by huge surprise when they turned up, and it’s that memory which makes her cry. She’s never cried over the babies dying - despite her sickly sympathy card to the parent’s of one baby. All she cries about is how HER life has changed: she’s never shown sympathy for the heartache the parents are going through having their babies die due to being injected with air, insulin or too much feed.

In her notes to herself when she was in panic mode, she mentioned “no evidence”or words to that effect, which an innocent person wouldn’t even consider.

She actually cried today when discussing what seems to be one of the more extreme cases, she cried on the unit, at home etc. You would really need something solid to suggest she is a false, glib and calculating individual and something that doesn’t need a “if guilty” within it. Imo.

 

[marynnu]

In that case, or the more reason LL would’ve known a tiny hole would be unnoticeable…had she injected the bag herself, of course.

Still can’t think who would have done that from outside not knowing where they’d end up.

And huge, huge coincidence out of all the staff only LL picked those bags up…don’t you think?

Nobody would see a 'hole', there is a self-sealing bung.

 

[Tortoise]

Tbh I think I’m just pleased the surrounding evidence supports my original take on it. No mind though. Says what it says imo

only problem is figuring out what it does indeed say lol
xd


It’s not just that Which I could understand by itself. No door swipe data corroborating someone coming onto the ward a touch before nine, if equipment was given to the mum to express, if a mom expec to be given The all clear for the9pm feed as per schedule, if she didn’t walk in with someone she was buzzed in both of which would potentially leave a witness to corroborate etc I just think this was a layered process that should have left at least something to corroborate The mms testimony.

if the staff can’t be expected to remember clearly so many years after I wouldn’t necessarily expect the moms recollection to be accurate either.

She has an attachment to that memory, because it's the last hours of her baby's life and she wanted to feed him, she was hardwired by very strong maternal needs to nurture her babies. That memory will probably be seared on her brain forever. Nobody else that night had that mother's experience, for them they did not know there would be a need to memorise it, or recall it ever again. Staff do the same thing over and again with all mums, helping to express milk, it's just not memorable, unless it's an event out of the ordinary, like an emergency call is, which then gets recorded in the patient's notes. No one is going to remember the time a mum turned up to feed her baby, it's not a stand out event, especially when she was there earlier and later as well.

There is no one to corroborate LL's notes, which are off by one hour with the feeding regime, and mention cares which the mother had already done before LL's shift started, and mention a doctor on a different ward who has no record of advising LL to omit the feed. If it's a choice between all of those factors weighing in anyone's favour, and corroborated by the call to the father, I know whose account I'm going with. It's not LL's, for all of those reasons.

 

[JamesMcGillEsquire]

She has an attachment to that memory, because it's the last hours of her baby's life and she wanted to feed him, she was wired by very strong maternal needs to nurture her babies. That memory will probably be seared on her brain forever. Nobody else that night had that mother's experience, for them they did not know there would be a need to memorise it, or recall it ever again. Staff do the same thing over and again with all mums, helping to express milk, it's just not memorable, unless it's an event out of the ordinary, like an emergency call is, which then gets recorded in the patient's notes. No one is going to remember the time a mum turned up to feed her baby, it's not a stand out event, especially when she was there earlier and later as well.

There is no one to corroborate LL's notes, which are off by one hour with the feeding regime, and mention cares which the mother had already done before LL's shift started, and mention a doctor on a different ward who has no record of advising LL to omit the feed. If it's a choice between all of those factors weighing in anyone's favour, and corroborated by the call to the father, I know whose account I'm going with. It's not LL's, for all of those reasons.

Would you expect the mother in this instance to want to be more helpful to the prosecution, or the defence?

<modsnip - not victim friendly>

Totally understandable, I have no problem with it and all the sympathy in the world for the parents in this case. However, in a court of law, up until victim impact statements are to be read for sentencing, feelings shouldn't come into it.

JMO

 

[Jazmania]

Tbh I think I’m just pleased the surrounding evidence supports my original take on it. No mind though. Says what it says imo

only problem is figuring out what it does indeed say lol
xd


It’s not just that Which I could understand by itself. No door swipe data corroborating someone coming onto the ward a touch before nine, if equipment was given to the mum to express, if a mom expec to be given The all clear for the9pm feed as per schedule, if she didn’t walk in with someone she was buzzed in both of which would potentially leave a witness to corroborate etc I just think this was a layered process that should have left at least something to corroborate The mms testimony.

if the staff can’t be expected to remember clearly so many years after I wouldn’t necessarily expect the moms recollection to be accurate either.

Okay so I haven't had a baby in a neonatal unit, but I have had a baby and been on a postnatal ward. I was given my own pumping machine, to use whenever I liked. I don't think there would be any case of needing permission to visit your baby in NICU, LL herself has testified that the policy was that parents could visit whenever they like. you would not need to be given an all clear to visit. Newborn babies are usually expected to be fed every 2 hours. From the evidence we have heard, that feed was due at 9pm. The mother would make her own way there freely, she wouldn't need permission. Midwives are busy people and would not be monitoring where mothers went and at what times. As we've heard, there was no swipe card needed to enter NICU if you were coming from the maternity ward.

I think it's well established in psychological/neuroscience research that people remember what is most salient to them. Most important. Now no one's memory is 100% accurate, as memory is a fallible thing. However seeing your baby with blood around their mouth and screaming is not something someone would forget. Ever. Plus the phone records confirm her account, and her husband said she was inconsolable on the phone about the blood and screaming.