UK - Nurse Lucy Letby, murder of babies, 7 Guilty of murder verdicts; 8 Guilty of attempted murder; 2 Not Guilty of attempted; 5 hung re attempted #38

[Tortoise]

Here's what I think of Letby's supporters' claims.

As my elders used to say,

all mouth and no trousers.

 

[Parker Knoll]

Apologies that this is taken from The Sun - Nigel Bunyan is an independent Journalist so writes for all.
He attended the trial and retrial daily so heard all the evidence and these are his thoughts.
Interesting piece.

https://archive.is/2025.07.10-161942/https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/35770404/lucy-letby-killer-nurse-guilty-proof/

 

[marynnu]

Yes but when you look into all that evidence closely, you see none of it stacks up.

Before so much of the transcript and evidence had come to light and been analysed after the trial, there were very credible people with statistical knowledge saying that she was really unlucky to have been on shift for so many of these cases.

But given what we now know, none of these people think there is anything improbable at all. The whole thing was one huge error of confirmation bias.

The jury weren’t told of the deaths of other babies who died during this period, babies who were in much better health, for instance.

The idea that there is a statistically significant pattern here is completely fake. Yet the entire case was constructed around this idea. The idea of her manipulation being one part of it. If you look into it, the prosecution tried to argue on one occasion that Lucy was being manipulative by texting to others that baby E had haemophilia and it was a complex case even though the baby wasn’t strictly under her care. They take her behaviour in texting friends and looking up the condition etc and try to paint it in some kind of sinister light. But it’s actually just a perfectly normal thing for a nurse to do.

Just like ‘I carry a lot of babies round in my head’ is a perfectly normal thing for a nurse who works day in day out with sick babies to do and think and say.

There’s tons of this stuff. And as evidence it’s all unfounded assertions and less than negligible.

Excuse me, 'I carry a lot of babies around in my head' is absolutely not a normal thing to say. To be brutally frank, most neonatal patients are forgotten almost immediately and you get on with caring for the new admissions. Most of them have the same problems & path to recovery so they blur into one. If parents visit when coming back to clinic, there's usually a panic on - 'who are they'?
How many more times must it be stated that, Baby K aside, it would be assumed that all of those babies would survive. It's not about numbers primarily, it's about the nature of the incidents, including difficulties in resus and in some cases the sudden inexplicable recovery. The strange rash. Who on earth has ever witnessed a rash which moves around?
The other babies who died were not 'in better health', that's ridiculous. If you think severe congenital abnormalities, birth asphyxia and overwhelming sepsis aren't that serious you need to give your head a wobble.

 

[Parker Knoll]

It’s all just smoke and mirrors as she has to keep this going as she has nothing else.
When I see her “legal” team spouting their utter nonsense it just screams The Emperors New Clothes to me.

 

[Marantz4250b]

I only started following this trial a couple of months in. It was the first trial I've read about on WS. As time went on, I became certain that she was guilty. When she was found guilty my initial reaction was that justice had been served, however I then had a massive wobble (all three of my children were born premature so it was always quite an emotional trial for me). The day we found out she was convicted I said to my husband "but what if she's innocent?" She wasn't and IMO she isn't, I just wanted to hold onto that idea because the thought that a neonatal nurse could do this was terrifying to me, because it presented an additional risk to my children when they were already so vulnerable. Perhaps this is why people want to defend her and make excuses for her, not because it's her, but because it's too difficult to believe that someone could harm someone so vulnerable.

I will say that in light of the trepidation, and given I didn't follow the trial from the beginning, I have gone back to the very early threads about this case. The one person everyone should really listen to is @Marantz4250b. Re-reading the early threads I'm so irritated by their posts, all in defense of Letby. But that's why their opinion is so important now - they followed the evidence and it lead them to change their mind.

That, imo, is the driving influence behind why most people fall for conspiracy theories and why they are falling for this one - lots of people simply won't follow the evidence and base their decisions on said evidence because doing so opens up the vary scary thought (to them) that things are beyond the control of those who are supposed to look after us.

Look at the JFK assassination; people find it scary that a lone nut-job can do nothing more than open a window and blow the brains out of someone who was one of the two most powerful men on the planet, in all history, indeed. It should be an impossible thing to do so the only explanation in the minds of lots of people could only be that it was some elaborate conspiracy. An elaborate conspiracy must have been the cause of it because it's surely so difficult to pull off!

So, people basically lose their sense of reason and believe all sorts of nonsense; the pictures were doctored; the Cubans did it; the Russians did it; the CIA (other dark government forces) did it; it was impossible because it was such an incredibly difficult shot (as a firearms dealer I can assure you that it was nothing of the sort); the shot came from the front - no it didn't. All of these are either obvious fantasy or easily disprovable with physics. That's not what people want to hear, though, because of fear.

I completely get that people don't want to hear that a young, ambitious, hard working, three bed semi owning, middle-class woman with a seemingly perfect life could be responsible for the absolutely horrendous acts that she was convicted of. It's totally understandable that that scenario frightens people. It should do!

This case, in particular I think, does lend itself to being questioned more than others as it was so huge and involved so many witnesses, expert testimony and medical facts. Anyone who didn't follow it pretty closely could be forgiven for accepting the sound-bites such as "no one saw her do anything" or "she's being scapegoated for a failing trust/hospital/system". It becomes extremely difficult to counter one-liners due to the complexity of the case and volume of evidence.

Thanks for the kind words, btw. Yes, I did think she was innocent at the outset. What drove my opinion on that was the information that was in the public domain at the time which was basically just photographs of her.

Now, people were saying that "serial killers don't look like serial killers", which is true and also not true at the same time. True, you can't spot a serial killer just by looks. It's also true, however, that serial killers who are 25 year old females with a good education and family background in a respected profession are exceptionally rare to find. I literally can't think of another one anywhere, ever.

Also, as to her photos (which is all that was out there at the time), the nature of her pictures was also what pushed me towards the "not guilty" side of things, not necessarily her looks. It's unusual, as far as I can tell, for serial killers to be well liked, have a large circle of friends and, importantly, be very social. Lucy Letby was all of these - especially the social part of it. That was confirmed during her trial, she was almost never doing nothing. When she wasn't at work she seemed to be socialising with people.

What struck me about her pictures is that she is almost always surrounded by other people. In addition, she was never the shy and retiring wall-flower as though she had things to hide, she always front and centre, it would seem.

It's extremely unusual behaviour for such a prolific serial killer, from what I can tell. I fully admit that I find her utterly fascinating.

 

[Marantz4250b]

Apologies that this is taken from The Sun - Nigel Bunyan is an independent Journalist so writes for all.
He attended the trial and retrial daily so heard all the evidence and these are his thoughts.
Interesting piece.

https://archive.is/2025.07.10-161942/https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/35770404/lucy-letby-killer-nurse-guilty-proof/

Excellent article!

 

[marynnu]

@Marantz4250b In a similar vein (sort of!), people also find it alarming that not everything is preventable. No number of CCTV cameras & no amount of profiling can totally prevent a person like Letby slipping through the net & committing appalling acts. All you can do is minimise the risk.

 

[marynnu]

It’s all just smoke and mirrors as she has to keep this going as she has nothing else.
When I see her “legal” team spouting their utter nonsense it just screams The Emperors New Clothes to me.

Possibly a bit of a leap, but does the fact that she has chosen not to waive privilege have any relevance? As her counsel has nothing else all he can do is court publicity and try as hard as possible to influence public opinion. I ask myself if he would be so keen if he had access to all the information in Mr. Myers' possession.

 

[Ruthbullock]

The doctors would have been in the same position as those trying to bring cyclist Lance Armstrong to justice, or pedophile priests etc. Those who allowed LL to proceed murdering for so long should be held accountable, just like those covering up for the Lance Armstrongs or miscreant priests of the world.
Look at the doctor who alerted authorities to a potential mass murderer in Erin Paterson in their midst. What happened to him, did he get an award, no he's facing the sack.
Something's butchered the process to bring the LL's of the world to justice. If it's enough evidence they want, all the evidence they needed to take action was right before them but the superiors and administrators of LL, for example, chose to take the wrong side. Fancy having to apologise to a serial killer in order to keep your job.
Something seriously needs to change before another LL can have a virtual field day in full view of those working around them. That's just MOO.

I get your point, but instead of sitting in their offices coming up with charts and debating about how difficult the whole process was to be listened to, why weren’t they creating the evidence to back up their suspicions. Why weren’t they logging all the suspicious deaths, why weren’t they encouraging parents to get post mortems? There’s a few reasons I can think of that made them not follow the proper protocol- were they genuinely poor at their roles (really doubtful), or was there some sort of hero mentality going on and point scoring where they wanted the management to fail, so were not ensuring all the paperwork was complete and submitted, whilst doing their own secretive background investigations in order to make their point to management that they were right and management were wrong. Sadly I think the latter approach is what caused such a delay in thorough investigations. What we don’t know is the state of relationships between the doctors and the management prior to all of this and that would be interesting background- we only know about the one doctor who was found to have caused the death of baby <modsnip - name of minor is under seal>. The articles keep getting deleted on here as it’s a different unit and keeps being reported as irrelevant (so you will have to search yourselves), but it is relevant as we know the doctors had to flex and work on both the units, we know the same doctor was also involved in the trial testimony (although protected)- but this happened shortly before Letby and gives some context perhaps, as to why management were dubious about these new allegations and also attempted to focus on the doctors failings as well- which didn’t go down well. If the doctors had been more transparent, instead of defensive and logged officially every concern they had- would things have been different- who knows, we will never know- but I suspect something prior to this being investigated had already broken trust between the doctors and management.

This is just musings, as it’s not really relevant to Letby, but will probably become more relevant to charges brought against the COCH or the senior management team, but if evidence of this happening does come out in the wash, it will fan the flames a little more.

 

[Ruthbullock]

Apologies that this is taken from The Sun - Nigel Bunyan is an independent Journalist so writes for all.
He attended the trial and retrial daily so heard all the evidence and these are his thoughts.
Interesting piece.

https://archive.is/2025.07.10-161942/https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/35770404/lucy-letby-killer-nurse-guilty-proof/

It’s interesting that they are now completely on the fence as a paper, as today they have published an opposing piece by another of their journalists and both journalists attended every day of the trial.

https://archive.ph/2025.07.11-110104/https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/35782460/lucy-letby-killer-nurse-innocent/

 

[WaneLyrical]

I get your point, but instead of sitting in their offices coming up with charts and debating about how difficult the whole process was to be listened to, why weren’t they creating the evidence to back up their suspicions. Why weren’t they logging all the suspicious deaths, why weren’t they encouraging parents to get post mortems? There’s a few reasons I can think of that made them not follow the proper protocol- were they genuinely poor at their roles (really doubtful), or was there some sort of hero mentality going on and point scoring where they wanted the management to fail, so were not ensuring all the paperwork was complete and submitted, whilst doing their own secretive background investigations in order to make their point to management that they were right and management were wrong. Sadly I think the latter approach is what caused such a delay in thorough investigations. What we don’t know is the state of relationships between the doctors and the management prior to all of this and that would be interesting background- we only know about the one doctor who was found to have caused the death of baby <modsnip - name of minor is under sal>. The articles keep getting deleted on here as it’s a different unit and keeps being reported as irrelevant (so you will have to search yourselves), but it is relevant as we know the doctors had to flex and work on both the units, we know the same doctor was also involved in the trial testimony (although protected)- but this happened shortly before Letby and gives some context perhaps, as to why management were dubious about these new allegations and also attempted to focus on the doctors failings as well- which didn’t go down well. If the doctors had been more transparent, instead of defensive and logged officially every concern they had- would things have been different- who knows, we will never know- but I suspect something prior to this being investigated had already broken trust between the doctors and management.

This is just musings, as it’s not really relevant to Letby, but will probably become more relevant to charges brought against the COCH or the senior management team, but if evidence of this happening does come out in the wash, it will fan the flames a little more.

I agree when it comes to the doctors’ inaction. Even when it came to crunch time, them telling management to prevent her working on the ward, Brearey was asked for evidence, yet all he said was gut feeling and a ‘drawer of doom’ of which he refused to provide the contents. Assuming Letby is guilty, what exactly were the managers supposed to do? From their perspective they have a full time nurse who’s also working overtime and swapping shifts at short notice, assigned to the higher dependency rooms, who was present at a high proportion of collapses/deaths, as would be expected, with no other concerns raised about her practice. They needed evidence and the doctors were about as unhelpful as they could possibly be.

These doctors should have written up the issues. Starting after Baby D when their suspicions became rooted. Here are the ones we’re concerned about, this is why we’re concerned, this is who is concerned, and here is the clinical evidence/notes that support our concerns that these were not natural or explainable collapses. (And here is where we document our suspicions about the rashes.) And that should have been presented promptly to the management, who would have absolutely needed to act on it immediately, and been able to rely on it when assessing next steps, providing it when requesting external reviews etc. After all, we’re talking about the clinical leads here, the ones with the actual medical knowledge and experience to be able to back up their suspicions and allegations.

It seems the first time they did that was when they were preparing a document for the police. Prior to that it was whispers in the break room, and an absolute avoidance to leave any paper trail whatsoever. This behaviour meant issues like no post-mortem on Baby E, and concerning insulin results in Baby F being ignored, were able to happen.

The consultants seem to have wanted to just say “hey you need to take a look at your nurse, over to you now, bye” and for the management to magically build a case against Letby. It’s beyond ridiculous.

 

[Parker Knoll]

The Sun do not give a flying F what side of the fence they sit on at any given time.
They just want clicks.

 

[WaneLyrical]

It’s interesting that they are now completely on the fence as a paper, as today they have published an opposing piece by another of their journalists and both journalists attended every day of the trial.

https://archive.ph/2025.07.11-110104/https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/35782460/lucy-letby-killer-nurse-innocent/

Oliver Harvey didn’t attend the trial I don’t think

 

[WaneLyrical]

Possibly a bit of a leap, but does the fact that she has chosen not to waive privilege have any relevance? As her counsel has nothing else all he can do is court publicity and try as hard as possible to influence public opinion. I ask myself if he would be so keen if he had access to all the information in Mr. Myers' possession.

She doesn’t need to file a waiver for her new lawyer and old lawyer to speak to each other. I don’t know why this thing of legal privilege keeps being brought up, if the CCRC needs it they will ask for it. Same with the court of appeal

 

[Parker Knoll]

Yes she does.

 

[marynnu]

@Ruthbullock Maybe you should save your energies by looking at the appalling crimes of Lucy Letby rather than obsessing on tearing to shreds the very people who battled to get her removed from the ward. It was not their job to gather evidence, they asked for the police to be brought in as nobody in the Trust had that skill set, obviously. Their suspicions should have been enough for her to be removed, harsh as it sounds.

 

[Ruthbullock]

Oliver Harvey didn’t attend the trial I don’t think

I stand corrected, my misinterpretation of the line about seeing her face with the guilty verdict- but it was her mugshot.

 

[WaneLyrical]

Yes she does.

Why?

 

[Sweeper2000]

just had a thought. maybe the docs pushed for management to do something due to them being shielded from the consequences if incorrect whereas its outside the docs role? no idea about the safeguards and such and such and legislation but maybe if with good reason the management suspend someone they don't get the fallout whereas the docs would be at risk?

 

[Parker Knoll]

Why?

Please look up thread or google it.
It’s been explained so many times.