UK - Nurse Lucy Letby Faces 22 Charges - 7 Murder/15 Attempted Murder of Babies #9

[Sweeper2000]

I would dearly like to see more of that conversation as well as what and who the bitchiness involved. I would also like to draw attention to the fact that the conversation involved a former nursing colleague at the time thus removing any motive for reverse psychology. I can’t see any reason to think she would feel or see the need to employ reverse psychology in that conversation with someone who is presumably quite distant from the immediate situation. aside from there being a potential link from this former colleague to LL’s immediate circle of work colleagues. if that was the case she could be saying it in the hope that her words eventually reached her current colleagues which is a particularly weak manipulative strategy As she would have no reason to assume the words would be relayed word for word. Can anyone else think of a motive to manipulate a former nursing colleague Who is presumably distant from being of any effect in her current situation? I would also presume someone skilled at manipulating wouldn’t even mention something potentially conspicuous to someone who is irrelevant to the only group of people who if guilty would need to be manipulated And she had something to hide from. Classic manipulative strategy is the less said about it the better because there is less chance for it to go wrong. It’s a reason people say “no comment“ in police interviews, gives nothing away.

jmo

 

[Marantz4250b]

Not much but every little helps.

Ms Griffiths commended Ms Letby for "all your hard work these last few nights" and said it was "nice to see your confidence grow as you advance through your career".
Ms Letby thanked her, adding: "That's really nice to hear as I gather you are aware of some of the not so positive comments that have been made recently regarding my role which I have found quite upsetting.
"Our job is a pleasure to do and just hope I do the best for the babies and their family."

After Child H's second collapse on 27 September, Ms Letby exchanged messages with a former nursing colleague.
Ms Letby said: "It's all just so rubbish lately and always seems to happen at night when less people.

Lucy Letby: Parents saw baby resuscitated twice, murder trial told

Nurse Lucy Letby is accused of attempting to murder the premature baby girl on two occasions.

www.bbc.co.uk

It's been mentioned a lot about how given all these unexplained deaths and collapses were happening, how it wasn't picked up on much earlier. So, if there were already "...not so positive comments.." about her performance being made then you'd think that the person or persons making these comments would quite likely have put two and two together and started to raise actual, real concerns and tried to put these concerns to the appropriate people.

Also, if you were guilty of all this and you were trying to kill babies on a virtually daily basis, it's perhaps not the brightest idea to attract attention to yourself by reminding people that some people already think you're incompetent - or worse!

What we were saying before about her use of language in texts; that last line shows that "rubbish" is a word she obviously uses regularly so I don't think it's unusual that she uses it to describe patients conditions.

 

[Marantz4250b]

Oops!
The atmosphere in this ward must have been dense.
Thick enough to cut with a knife!

JMO

I think so!

Many months ago here people were mentioning potential bullying and I'm starting to get the distinct impression that they were perhaps right on that score.

 

[Tortoise]

I would dearly like to see more of that conversation as well as what and who the bitchiness involved. I would also like to draw attention to the fact that the conversation involved a former nursing colleague at the time thus removing any motive for reverse psychology. I can’t see any reason to think she would feel or see the need to employ reverse psychology in that conversation with someone who is presumably quite distant from the immediate situation. aside from there being a potential link from this former colleague to LL’s immediate circle of work colleagues. if that was the case she could be saying it in the hope that her words eventually reached her current colleagues which is a particularly weak manipulative strategy As she would have no reason to assume the words would be relayed word for word. Can anyone else think of a motive to manipulate a former nursing colleague Who is presumably distant from being of any effect in her current situation? I would also presume someone skilled at manipulating wouldn’t even mention something potentially conspicuous to someone who is irrelevant to the only group of people who if guilty would need to be manipulated And she had something to hide from. Classic manipulative strategy is the less said about it the better because there is less chance for it to go wrong. It’s a reason people say “no comment“ in police interviews, gives nothing away.

jmo

I think it's a former colleague as of today, not former at the time she sent it.

Chester Standard - The transport team arrived at 4.10am and Child H was handed to the transport incubator at 4.45am and the handover was completed at 5.20am. Further messages found on Letby's phone from that morning are relayed to the court. Letby informed two colleagues what had happened to Child H that night.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Wednesday, January 18

 

[Marantz4250b]

"After Child H's second collapse on 27 September, Ms Letby exchanged messages with a former nursing colleague.
Ms Letby said: "It's all just so rubbish lately and always seems to happen at night when less people.
"Everyone is pretty burnt out and unit been awful.""

Another interesting snippet from today was LL mentioning that it always seems to happen at night.

Lucy Letby: Parents saw baby resuscitated twice, murder trial told

Nurse Lucy Letby is accused of attempting to murder the premature baby girl on two occasions.

www.bbc.co.uk

If guilty then why repeatedly say things to other people which connect you to the crimes? The more you do stuff like that then sooner or later people are going to put it all together. It makes no sense.

 

[Marantz4250b]

Yes, (if guilty, IMO etc) it’s almost as if she’s deliberately doing things at night so that there’s 1) a reasonable explanation for poor treatment due to understaffing, or 2) less people to witness her.

Either way, it shows her heightened awareness of circumstances.

Does it though? Drawing attention to yourself like that if you are guilty, in my opinion, shows anything but a heightened awareness of things.

 

[Dotta]

I think so!

Many months ago here people were mentioning potential bullying and I'm starting to get the distinct impression that they were perhaps right on that score.

Well
I noticed that her state of mind was very worrying - especially the text about feeling "burnt out".
Friendly atmosphere at work place is my priority.
Money can never compensate being depressed while working

 

[Marantz4250b]

Well
I noticed that her state of mind was very worrying - especially the text about feeling "burnt out".
Friendly atmosphere at work place is my priority.
Money can never compensate being depressed while working

I thought the "burnt out" comment was relating to unit staff as a whole and not just herself?

If her texts are to believed then the general level of stress among the staff seem epic!

 

[Marantz4250b]

I think it's a former colleague as of today, not former at the time she sent it.

Chester Standard - The transport team arrived at 4.10am and Child H was handed to the transport incubator at 4.45am and the handover was completed at 5.20am. Further messages found on Letby's phone from that morning are relayed to the court. Letby informed two colleagues what had happened to Child H that night.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Wednesday, January 18

From the way it's written I'm fairly sure that it refers to the person being a former colleague at the time of the message rather than now.

 

[Sweeper2000]

It's been mentioned a lot about how given all these unexplained deaths and collapses were happening, how it wasn't picked up on much earlier. So, if there were already "...not so positive comments.." about her performance being made then you'd think that the person or persons making these comments would quite likely have put two and two together and started to raise actual, real concerns and tried to put these concerns to the appropriate people.

Also, if you were guilty of all this and you were trying to kill babies on a virtually daily basis, it's perhaps not the brightest idea to attract attention to yourself by reminding people that some people already think you're incompetent - or worse!

What we were saying before about her use of language in texts; that last line shows that "rubbish" is a word she obviously uses regularly so I don't think it's unusual that she uses it to describe patients conditions.

I think her usage of the word “rubbish” used informally is actually warm rather than cold. It’s emotionally distant from its proper use and might actually show LL has an empathic understanding of effect on other by not saying something like “that baby is messed up” or “that baby looks like its on deaths doorstep” Which would be very disregarding of affect on other.

I think it's a former colleague as of today, not former at the time she sent it.

Chester Standard - The transport team arrived at 4.10am and Child H was handed to the transport incubator at 4.45am and the handover was completed at 5.20am. Further messages found on Letby's phone from that morning are relayed to the court. Letby informed two colleagues what had happened to Child H that night.

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Wednesday, January 18

this reporting Is so patchy. I don’t see any reason to think the journalist would feel the need to include that detail if only applicable to the current situation, it’s not really relevant to evidence presented in court either If she became a former colleague after the events in question. I would sooner think they are all her former colleagues. Granted without knowing anything else about that conversation we can’t say for sure but just by that article we can’t say she informed this former colleague of what happened to child H. I would think from a journalists perspective it would be better to include the details of the conversation rather than whether or not this individual is a current or former colleague If any of them are current colleagues which I doubt very much.

 

[Sweeper2000]

True.
And as a foreigner/not native speaker I might perceive language used differently than native speakers.

So - Im not going to die on THIS hill

if a native English speaker had been out drinking with a friend and woke up on their couch and that friend asked them how they looked. A friendly and informal way of responding would be to say “you look rubbish“, A funny way would be to say “you look like you were dragged through a bush backwards”.

 

[Parker Knoll]

I use the term rubbish now and again to describe things, situations or feelings.
It’s a word my mum would use a lot.
I get the impression LL a bit of an oddball or at least that’s how she appears to be being portrayed.

 

[Tortoise]

From the way it's written I'm fairly sure that it refers to the person being a former colleague at the time of the message rather than now.

Sorry but that BBC reporter uses the expression 'former colleague' all the time to refer to nurses who were LL's colleagues at the time of the messages.



I'll quote you an example -

https://twitter.com/MrDanDonoghue
Jury now being shown text messages sent between Ms Letby and colleagues on the morning after Child E's death. Ms Letby to a former colleague, who cannot be named for legal reasons, says she felt 'numb'

When her former colleague says 'you seem to be having some very bad luck' Ms Letby replies: 'Not a lot I can do really he had a massive haemorrhage, could have happened to any baby x'



Chester Standard report -
Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Tuesday, November 22

During the handover period at 7.30-8pm, a message from Letby's colleague Jennifer Jones-Key is sent to Letby's phone, saying: "Hey how's you? x"
Letby responds at 8.01pm: "Not so good. We lost [Child E] overnight. x"
[8.02pm] Ms Jones-Key: "That's sad. We're on a terrible run at moment. Were you in 1? X"
[8.02pm] Letby: "Yes. I had him & [another child]
Jones-Key: "That's not good. You need a break from it being on your shift."
Letby replied it was the "luck of the drawer [sic]".
Jones-Key: "You seem to be having some very bad luck though"
Letby: "Not a lot I can do really. He had massive haemorrhage which could have happened to any baby x"
Jones-Key: "...Oh yeah I know that and it can happen to any baby. Very scary and I have seen one"
Jones-Key: "Hope your [sic] be ok. Chin up"
Letby: "I'm ok. Went to [colleague] for a chat earlier on [and with] nice people tonight."

 

[katydid23]

During the flu season I guess we will see this notice quite often.
Too bad...

JMO

I wonder if one or two of the jurors caught Covid over the holidays?

 

[Sundial]

If guilty then why repeatedly say things to other people which connect you to the crimes? The more you do stuff like that then sooner or later people are going to put it all together. It makes no sense.

A valid point, but equally this may be something she might be relaying from other colleagues conversations. We’ve heard in statements thus far where her colleagues have said things like “overwhelming sepsis” (from their own experiences not even connected to these cases) for her then to use very similar comments on some of those included in the charges. It appears as though she’s using these discussions as her own words and diagnosis’s which follow on from past conversations. It is a little bit strange to say the least.

Perhaps she had heard a discussion of something similar regarding night shifts and technically, she would also be privvy to staffing circumstances of those shifts (or any shift in fact) regardless, given this was when the charges first start from (allegedly). Is she just playing along with the general chat from these conversations and genuinely knows this anyway (as we might expect) and (if guilty) using this as a cover? It’s difficult to know for certain, but personally, her discussions with colleagues and police statements seem quite contradictory to me.

You only need to look at what she has said to the unit manager and compare it against the police statements she gave. To me it tells a completely different viewpoint that people were actually discussing her role, people were asking questions, even some of her colleagues stating certain nights or babies was odd.. she even mentions this to the manager “I gather you are aware”;

And yet in the police statement she appears to totally backtrack this claiming no-one mentioned anything, no-one has raised xyz.. as if any of the odd questions we’ve seen thus far between colleagues and even her manager don’t exist. IMO I’m completely thrown and I’ve never known a case quite like this.

 

[ColourPurple]

Does it though? Drawing attention to yourself like that if you are guilty, in my opinion, shows anything but a heightened awareness of things.

She wasn't drawing attention to herself though by pointing out that "it" seemed to happen on the night shift. If guilty, she was deflecting attention away from herself!

After Baby E's death LL's colleague had commented on the fact that the deaths and collapses were happening on LL's shifts.

"Letby responds at 8.01pm: "Not so good. We lost [Child E] overnight. x"
[8.02pm] Ms Jones-Key: "That's sad. We're on a terrible run at moment. Were you in 1? X"
[8.02pm] Letby: "Yes. I had him & [another child]
Jones-Key: "That's not good. You need a break from it being on your shift."

Yes LL was working nights but the collapses weren't happening on every night shift. They were only happening on LL's night shifts! In simple terms, Her colleague had noticed that the link was LL. (not that I think she was suggesting it being anything more than coincidence/bad luck)

So when LL later mentions that the collapses are happening on night shifts when there are fewer people, it gives the impression that the only thing the collapses have in common is that they're happening on night shifts when there are fewer people around. If guilty, that plants the idea that the collapses are connected to there being fewer people around on the night shift, rather than the collapses being connected to LL.

Bear in mind at that point LL did not know that she would later be moved to day shifts. And the prosecution has said that once she was moved to day shifts, the collapses started happening on the day shifts instead of the night shifts, and that they believe the common factor linking all the collapses was LL's presence!

So... if the prosecution are correct and it was LL's presence that linked all the collapses, if guilty, at that point, it was in her interests to make people think that the only thing linking the collapses was that they occured on night shifts when there were fewer people around.

Of course after Baby E, she is alleged to have put insulin in Baby F's TPN bag which affected Baby F on the day shift too (which may have been an attempt to cause a collapse or death on a shift other than hers) but at this point nobody had picked up on that and luckily the alleged insulin poisoning was not fatal so there was no collapse or death on the day shift.

All IMO

Recap: Lucy Letby trial, Tuesday, November 22

The trial of Lucy Letby, who denies murdering seven babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital neonatal unit and attempting to murder 10 more,…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[katydid23]

any Reasons why the shift leader or other nurse didn’t note the presence of air as unusual and or questionable? Isn’t it a recurring feature in the cases as well that the presence of air in the stomach is noted?

I think nurses are meant to do the tests, feedings, medications, observations and log in the results. They make some notes on the side if they think the doctors need to evaluate things of course.

But I don't think as a general rule the nurses are diagnosing as they take down the notes concerning the daily routines and data of each patient. That is what the doctors are trained to do. JMO

 

[MsBetsy]

Thank you for this.

The part highlighted; that’s an interesting perspective she has.
We could assume from what she says here that her unit manager would be aware of some points which are not positive from other colleagues.

She then appears to share this text exchange from the unit manager with another colleague, to prove (?) maybe, demonstrating the manager feels she is doing well.

Interestingly, it was reported in the statements no-one had raised any concerns/issues with her (something along the lines of no-one saying anything at the time). Didn’t she quote in police statements something like, “who said that, no-one had mentioned anything”..
Yet she is stating: “I gather you are aware”therefore, she must have been aware people were raising questions and when someone else states “something odd about baby H” she’s quite defective in her reply. If I knew genuinely and I was completely innocent of such awful things, personally I would question what my colleague meant by “odd”. She doesn’t even question it.

Also the point with “always seems to happen on nights and less people around” seems quite a weird thing to say imo.

I wonder what her explanation was when she was moved to the day shift and the pattern continued.

If Letby's colleagues thought the deaths of Babies A, C and D were odd, they were probably suspicious two months later when Baby E suddenly died. Maybe this time Letby didn't ask why her colleague thought it was odd because the last time she asked she didn't like the answer. After Letby stated that Babies A, C and D all died under "different circumstances," her colleague questioned whether they were really "that different."

Or maybe she knew why it was odd and had no need to question it.

By the time Baby H was attacked there must have been even more talk on the ward. Maybe some started to question LL's nursing ability. They too probably noticed a connection between Letby and the sudden collapses and deaths.

I think the text messages served several purposes. They would have given LL an idea of what others were thinking about the incidents and if they suspected any wrongdoing.

It gave her a chance to diagnose and suggest explanations for the deaths and unexpected collapses. When she was unable to come up with a reason she told them it must have been "fate" or "bad luck." If guilty this could be seen as trying to steer the narrative.

And lastly, the texts of support and admiration likely boosted her self esteem. They would have provided assurances that she was a good nurse and it was okay to carry on as usual.

IMO

 

[katydid23]

If guilty then why repeatedly say things to other people which connect you to the crimes? The more you do stuff like that then sooner or later people are going to put it all together. It makes no sense.

I have to go back to one of the speculative motives for the alleged assaults, to answer that question.

If one possible motivation for the attacks is for sympathy, attention and martyrdom, then one would have to point out one's 'connection' to the incidents in order to receive that attention from others.

Allegedly, one would not want to be connected to the 'crimes' ---but one would want to be connected to the tragic incidents and be recognised as the caretaker and the one who took heroic action at the time.

I assume she did not expect anyone to recognise it as a potential crime.

 

[katydid23]

Does it though? Drawing attention to yourself like that if you are guilty, in my opinion, shows anything but a heightened awareness of things.

In alleged crimes like this, 'drawing attention to oneself' is often one of the motives for the crime.