I have literally zero idea at this stage.
She’s a mass of contradictions.
As the other poster said the first thing you would do is burn the lot but she hung onto it all … she’s bizarre.
Nothing about her makes any sense.
Nothing about a mass murderer of newborns could make sense though (personally, I would be afraid, if anything Lucy Letby thought or did was understandable).
I think, like most serial murderers. She assumed she was one step ahead, that yeah they might question her but arrest her? No.
I think she thought she could hide behind how poorly those babies were.
She went as far as bringing her dad to a meeting with her employers, that doesn’t sound like someone who envisioned being arrested.
Although, like everything with LL, we can only guess. I doubt she will ever confess or “remember” anything.
I’m a barrister - civil child abuse not criminal, but there are very often criminal investigations in the background. IME there is an arrogance that they’ll never be arrested, which leads to much evidence being able to be gathered.
Yes - if you have what could loosely be called a God complex, then that arrogance and sense of power and control isn’t going to stop with the treatment of your victims. It will extend into your day-to-day life and all your actions.
You only need to read the messages sent between the baby killer and her colleagues that were published on the BBC website earlier today to realise that she thought she was untouchable. She loved having the sympathy of her fellow nurses and the support of the doctor she had some kind of relationship with (by the way, I hope he's been given a serious talking to/been struck off) She absolutely loved playing the hero and pretending 'its just what we nurses do'. She was lapping up sympathy from colleagues for having to deal with the death of a baby after actually, literally killing the baby. There are likely thousands more babies killed by her. She is the most prolific serial murderer in recent times. It takes a particular type of evil to murder a defenceless, helpless baby and then pretend to comfort the parents and expect sympathy and comfort from others. Lucy Letby should never be released from prison. I hope she lives for a hundred years and each single day is more torturous and miserable than the last. I hope she never gets a full night's sleep for as long as she lives. May she be plagued with chronic insomnia and nightmares if she finally does get to sleep.
> There are likely thousands more babies killed by her
Well, no - fortunately her murder count is very limited. Deaths on a neonatal unit are tracked, and in the most exceptional year of her career - her last - there were only\* 13 deaths (all of which she was present for, but not all of which were unexpected). Previous years had what, 2-3 deaths a year? So as far as actual murders, she can't have more than two dozen victims.
It's quite likely she harmed far more babies than that. The number of babies she harmed could be into the hundreds, or worse - they are looking at 4,000 babies
\*"only" in the context of the comment I'm responding to. 13 deaths is a massively exceptional amount of deaths in a one year period for a neonatal unit.
Watched a YouTube video this morning about the possible latest baby after baby k, there's a photo of her holding a baby that's supposed to be on oxygen 24/7 and I thought what arrogance! She was just caught red handed apparently 45 mins earlier with baby k.
Good question!
I’ve often wondered about this and firmly believe that she didn’t think she would actually be arrested and only questioned.
My reasoning is the fact she went on holiday with her parents to Torquay and only returned the evening before her first arrest.Perhaps her parents urged her to take a break from all the stress at home and holiday with them as she usually did each year.She could not have known she would be arrested the very next day and judging by the look on her face in the arrest video, I don’t think she saw that coming.
I imagine also that her parents spoke to her about being questioned by the police but like her, they thought she would handle this as she “hadn’t done anything wrong” and following the grievance procedure at work she may have had a false sense of confidence.On top of this, some of her friends and colleagues she confided in may have given her lots of reassurance and told her not to worry.The fact she didn’t dispose of any paperwork in her home, makes me feel that she didn’t anticipate the worst case scenario, and if she did she thought she was smart enough to fool the police.
The only thing I am confused about is the timeline.
Lucy was due to be reinstated in work following the grievance procedure and this is apparently when the consultants were able to persuade management to take it to the police and it finally became a criminal investigation.
At what stage was Lucy informed of this and in what manner?.Did she stay off work on a long term suspension and what explanation was given to her by management?
If she knew she was under the police radar then, this could completely alter how I’ve answered this question!.She certainly behaved like someone who was unprepared!.
That’s what I think. I think this woman has astronomical levels of cognitive dissonance. She’s living in an alternative reality to the rest of us. I don’t think she appreciates what she’s done, didn’t think she’d ever get caught out much less punished.
I have a couple of people in my life who have personality disorders and I call this ‘pick your own reality’.
They really just roll along, changing their reality on a dime and expecting the whole world to fall in with whatever reality they choose for that day.
They do not cope well when they come up against a person or institution that they can’t manipulate.
Same.
They can be confronted with the most robust, compelling evidence for X and the mental gymnastics they can do, to justify their mindset of Y, is both terrifying and bewildering.
Yes, as an example - this is a conversation I had with one person, as I was standing by her bedside.
Her - "I can't get up. I'm dying of stomach cancer."
Me - "You're not dying of stomach cancer; you're withdrawing from alcohol. You're an alcoholic."
Her - "That's ridiculous - I don't drink!"
Me - "From where I'm standing, I can see at least 4 empty brandy bottles on the floor around your bed. I can't stop you saying what you're saying, but I know what reality is."
Her - (shouting) "I am NOT an alcoholic. I just drink a normal amount to help me sleep!"
etc etc
She died a few months later from alcoholism - in denial the whole time.
I have an alcoholic friend like this. Every time I see him he claims he hasn’t drank in “months” until the day before I see him when he meets me with a hangover….sorry about your friend that’s terrible
I know 2 people exactly like this. And when you start challenging their reality, those people become vengeful and aggressive. However we do all to an extent live in our “own reality” in which the contrasting realities are especially striking between the neurodivergent vs neurotypical communities.
I’m intrigued as to why Letby isn’t more emotional. I think I read somewhere that they put her on drugs / anti-depressants which could explain it.
It was shown in court by the prosecution that she operates on cognitive dissonance. One of her friends was interviewed in September for a podcast and he said that it took him time to accept what she had done, but that Letby was in a state of denial. She may never fully grasp in her mind what she has. No matter how clear cut psychologists like to believe a diagnosis of someone's psychopathy is, Letby might be the aberration that none has ever dealt with before.
I think that’s what scares me though. Letby isn’t an outlier.
I’ve known many, many people who are able to cognitively dissonate themselves from their actions. None of them have official diagnoses that I’m aware of. Some of these actions have been horrendous. Stealing children’s inheritance, physically abusing children, stealing money from a friend. I remember a guy went viral on Reddit a few years back. He was a phone snatcher in London, but justified his actions in that people who were careless with their phones deserved to have them stolen, and he was probably doing them a favour by helping them realise how at risk they were. Ruby Franke is an influencer who abused her children (probably because she never truly wanted them but was conditioned to believe she did because of her Mormonism). On her blogs, the cognitive dissonance is visibly at play. She wasn’t being cruel for depriving her kids of Christmas presents, she was *teaching them a lesson in gratitude*. She wasn’t being a bad mother sending her son to a wilderness camp, she was *helping* him.
the specifics of Letby’s circumstances are unique to her - she was a pretty blonde, disarming nurse tending to vulnerable babies.
But lots of people abuse or kill kids and can distance themselves from what they’ve done, or delude themselves into thinking it wasn’t that bad, or they had no choice.
Lots of people make shitty choices, and shrug it off and do a little mental gymnastics to justify it. On a daily basis.
That’s what is so harrowing about it. It’s a totally normal human thing to do. We each live in our own little reality. For a big portion of us, it’s relatively aligned with other people’s perceptions. But for some people, they don’t sing form the same hymn sheet and construct their own realities that are palatable to them.
Oh yeah, this is so true. I know someone who bullies others and truly believes they deserve it because her targets are the type of people who get bullied and anyway if they were that bothered about being abused, they should’ve stopped her from bullying them in the first place, so ‘any’ harm caused is their fault!! Right.
Yea. I know a couple of these. I had to distance them in my lives. I also think that the public were so convinced of Lucy’s guilt precisely because most people know one or two people who are capable of serious lies. It’s a bad problem in todays society. People are lacking integrity and it feels like it’s becoming more normal.
Did any psychologist diagnose her as a psychopath though? I thought that the big controversy about this case is that professionals DO NOT think she’s a clinically diagnosable psychopath. She’s not on anti-psychotics either but anti-depressants
If she has been diagnosed, it's not public information. It was not claimed as a mitigating factor by her defence even today at sentencing, but then, her defence is a claim of total innocence so claiming psychopathy as a mitigating factor would not help that.
She was evaluated and deemed fit to stand trial. In evidence, it was mentioned that she had been prescribed antidepressants and sleep aids, though it is unclear if she is still on those medications (seems likely, given the circumstances). She was diagnosed with PTSD while in police custody.
She was assessed for mental fitness to take the stand and found she had ptsd and anxiety/depression. You can't force a psychological assessment on someone.
The prosecution didn't need to prove a motive, and Letby denied she did anything wrong, meaning defence wouldn't use psychopathy to explain the crimes because there were none as far as they were concerned.
Many psychologists have weighed into the fray; covert narcissism seems to be something they agree on, but they all deny she's a psychopath. If anything, the common consensus is that she's an abberation because she blends in and operates what appears to be a normal life.
As far as I remember she had been seconded to an admin tole in the Risk&Safety Office (you could not make this up) so I THINK up until her first arrest she was still working? And I do believe the search for the surname of Child K must have been related to either a tip off or something she herself found out at work in that case otherwise it is just too hard to understand it (none of the paperwork in her home featured Child K or her parent's surname)
Was she still in the risk and safety office up until her arrest though?.Im unclear about that part.
Her managers must have known she was going to be arrested as the police would require her work and holiday schedule prior to arresting her.
I highly doubt the police would have informed hospital management about their plans to arrest her. They will have wanted to make sure she would be at home when they went to arrest her, but they'll have various discrete/covert means of finding out things like that
I'm not exactly sure what happened in terms of her working between her grievance being upheld and her first arrest - I'm not sure if it has ever been explicitly stated?
I wonder if it has sunk in that’s she’ll never be released. In the UK less than 1% of convictions ger overturned. Her convictions are solid, she’s banged up for life.
Yep, I think she thought she'd get called in for a voluntary interview. She didn't realize they would arrest her or she'd have gotten rid of everything she had related to those cases.
She had plenty of time to do it but she was arrogant.
You’re giving her too much credit. Psychopathic serial killers don’t think logically like normal people. She will have struggled to get rid of things she treasured most and she will have had a big enough ego from getting away with so much to bolster her belted she wouldn’t actually be caught.
I know what you mean, but then again she was so cunning and crafty on the ward hiding her actions and covering her tracks you would think she would realise she should probably do the same with anything incriminating at home knowing the police were investigating....but who really knows what goes on in her head!
She wasn’t really though, she was doing lots of risky things. She was physically caught. She said odd things, she made it quite obvious it was her when you look at the evidence.
It's so curious to me, the FIRST thing I would have done at the mere mention of a police investigation is get rid of anything potentially incriminating - guilty or not..!
If she was using them to remind herself of what she did, she would have believed she needed them for as long as possible.
They arrested her fresh upon her return from vacation. Caught her relaxed and unaware.
Oh yes, for about two years total, with a full year+ after police investigation began. Probably got nice and comfortable.
July 2016 removed from care
September 2016 files grievance, which she wins
Spring 2017 hospital is prepared to reinstate her with career advancement
May 2017 police investigation begins
June 2017 - writes note about triplets, searches their surname
April 2018 - searches K's surname
July 2018 - first arrest
(Edit: formatting)
This is what is so confusing with me, she was being so risky leaving it SO long...did she think it would just not happen after a while? ie 'they've got nothing on me it seems...'
I think if you've been harming babies your whole career without consequence, you might get lulled into a sense of invincibility, or at least be convinced you could rebut anything you were faced with - like you'd always done.
I think not getting rid of incriminating things speaks to her guilt actually. Serial killers keep trophies and get off on looking at them, using them to remember the crimes and get a thrill from going over it again in their head while looking at the trophies for reminders. Like an addict kind of.
I think she probably took so long getting rid of evidence because it did something for her that she needed, some kind of dopamine hit she was addicted to and she couldn’t bring herself to get rid of it even in the face of police investigation. An innocent person would get rid of it right away, knowing how it looks. The only reason you’d hang on to stuff like that in that situation when it could incriminate you is if you have a weirdly strong emotional connection to it/need for it.
Was it confirmed WHEN she wrote the draft sympathy note about the triplets? I had always assumed it was written while they were still on the unit and while she was still working on unit. Thats the only way it would make sense to me.
She said in cross exam that she believed she had written it on the anniversary of their death:
>Becoming emotional, the nurse said she wrote it on the anniversary of their death because she was “thinking of them”.
[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/02/lucy-letby-trial-nurse-devastated-to-hear-she-was-accused-of-murdering-babies](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/02/lucy-letby-trial-nurse-devastated-to-hear-she-was-accused-of-murdering-babies)
Letby searched the surname of Babies O and P on 23 June 2017 - that likely puts the note written at the same time.
How would the note make any sense if she wrote it AFTER the surviving baby left the ward? It was addressed to all three triplets as if they were all dead.
I have always interpreted this as she must have written the note while they were on the unit in anticipation of what she would want to say on their anniversary after she killed all three.
How does it make sense otherwise?
That she was fantasizing about having killed all three, which was her apparent goal alleged by the prosecution given the charge for attempted murder of Child Q on the day after Child P died and O &P's brother was transferred out of CoCH
All that information could have been transcribed onto a separate non-internet device or a micro-usb card or something and then swallowed when police showed up.
Either she never thought she'd get caught, or the compulsion to keep those sheets was greater than the fear of what would happen if anyone else ever found those sheets.
When the doctors previously had her removed she brought a grievance and won an apology - in her mind this was vindication she was doing no wrong.
I think she was so caught up in the attention and drama she caused that the babies were only objects to achieve this. Since she had been vindicated before and murder wasn’t her primary intent (attention for herself was, she was focused on the drama she would be the centre of and harming babies provided that) she (potentially) thought the police investigation wasn’t for her. And if it was she would be vindicated again like last time.
Lucy Letby does not think like the rest of us. My view - she is an only child to elderly parents who had her after a difficult birth. She was coddled, smothered with love and everything she did got large amounts of attention from her parents. As an adult others didn’t give her the attention she received from her parents for just existing. She discovered after a baby dies on her ward she would get attention and check ins from concerned people and bam, a child killer is formed.
Yes, I wonder if 2015 was a tipping point for LL when she began to seriously come up against the fact that as an adult in the real world, the universe didn't revolve around her. There is still something quite childlike about her to me. And her over-involvement with certain babies and their families in some ways seems to mirror her own parent’s over-involvement in her life. As well as defending her to hospital staff, I’ve seen press photos of her Mum accompanying her to report to a police station between her arrests and her Dad drove her in a car with blacked out windows. It really wouldn’t surprise me if LL still believes her parents can somehow help her get out of her whole life orders.
I think her narcissism goes a long way to explain why she didn’t burn the notes and hand-over sheets. She genuinely thought she’d be able to outsmart everyone.
They called it an 'operation' because there was a high level of planning in their tasks and the police's main goal is to gather evidence and do whatever it takes so that the suspect doesn't get rid of evidence. They have strategies to make the suspect feel comfortable so that she doesn't think of ways to get rid of evidence and doesn't change her behaviour.
Also I believe LL thought the evidence would be documentation on clinical interventions, not her cellphone or other private matters. Also she thought about 'potentialities' like being part of a team, the prematurity of the babies, some senior staff on her side, she thought there were many 'contributing factors' that would in the end diffuse guilt.
Yes I’m sure I read she kept the first handover sheet she ever handled as a neo natal nurse in a special box with a flowery lid under her bed with a few other choice items…so weird and creepy…
She’s seen thousands of patients. She selected *only 257 handover sheets to take home with her. Contained in these 257 sheets are ALL BUT ONE of the babies she is accused of harming.
That’s not correct. 21 notes on 13 children she was convicted of harming. She was accused of harming 17 children.
She has 99 from her training including her very first hand over sheet so she had a history of keeping them for reasons other than harm.
Less than 10% of the handover sheets relate to charges.
I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. It’s not that “less than 10%” of the sheets related to the charges, its that she had sheets for “~ 90%” of the victims on the indictment. That is the significance.
I recognise that. Already. Although it’s 76%.
She kept 1.6 handover sheets per child for 76% of the children she was taken to trial for harming.
What is your point you are inferring from that?
That for over three quarters of the babies she was charged with harming, she had handover sheets and there was enough evidence of harm to proceed to trial. Given that she was not acquitted of all charges for a single baby for which she was brought to trial, that high correlation of retained records is significant, regardless of what those records represent to Lucy Letby. If she has a sheet for a baby, the investigation into that baby's care should be at the front of the line among the 4,000 they are considering.
It's a massive task with limited funds. They have an easy way to suggest where to start with cases that would be most likely to lead to conviction.
Unless Letby comes clean, it will never be "proven."
Given the prevalence of this evidence among her convictions, it will remain a strong indicator of likely malfeasance
You have 257 possible sheets….. 1.6 sheets roughly per child based on 21 collected for 13 victims, which gives a guesstimated total of 160 babies. If there was a correlation based on the hypothesis that she collected handover sheets for children she harmed, based on a Gaussian distribution, at the moment with all available evidence to ourselves, the most likely explanation would not be that they were trophies, all children she harmed or collected from babies she harmed as memories. For this to be correct it would an extreme statistical anomaly in either direction.
Edit// 0.5 is statistically significant, 0 or 1 which is roughly what would be the result of this dataset is therefore not statistically significant.
You keep inserting trophies into this conversation. That's not what either myself or u/physicalwheat are saying. Given the high rate of convictions among those 13 victims for whom 21 sheets were retained, regardless of what the sheets were to Lucy Letby, the guesstimated\* 160 babies would be a good initial focus to be included among the 4,000 possible. They deserve looking at closely.
\*your guesstimate, whatever the actual number is
That’s because that’s I was responding to a response regarding trophies, because I don’t think there is anything to suggest they are trophies. I then stated the majority have no correlation to deaths which is also true currently. However I agree it makes sense to look at those first. I already said that “Yes it is a sensible place to start to see if there is a correlation” so I already agreed. However I also stated early on. that I believe the police will already have done that.
As I will repeat, it’s a good place to look but the stats don’t show anything will definitely be found. You stated they had relevance which the stats just don’t show currently. If I’m wrong in the future I’m wrong but right now the stats do not say anything other than they are coincidental. However yes it makes sense to look there again. Although again I am sure they have looked already in the many years since they had doubt on her conduct as that’s part of any investigation.
> That’s because that’s I was responding to a response regarding trophies,
You brought up trophies [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/lucyletby/comments/1dvcx71/comment/lbqjkkn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), in response to a comment of mine that did not mention them. Yes, the top comment in this chain calls them trophies, but I did not, and have deferred from that suggestion at every point in this conversation.
>Although again I am sure they have looked already in the many years since they had doubt on her conduct as that’s part of any investigation.
This part I disagree with. Their initial investigation concentrated on March 2015-July 2016. As I'm sure we will agree, that represents only a fraction of the 257 sheets, and a smaller number that led to charges.
While we know that Dewi Evans did not know about the handover sheets until after trial, we also know that he recommends the babies represented in them should be investigated. And that (plus the limited number of cases that he investigated, plus a limited further few that he was asked to look at) suggests that he did not already look at all babies represented in the sheets.
On that point, I am curious what your reason for her keeping them are and ignoring the stats that there is no correlation?
The prosecution themselves stated the suspicious incidents began in 2015, hence they would have had to investigate her career prior to that to understand when a change occurred in the outcome of babies under her care. Whilst Dewi Evans was tasked with investigating only 2015 and 2016 incidents, the police also had their own specialists on the case as well who would have had to have analysed prior events to determine the start date of the circumstances otherwise that date has just been plucked out of thin air.
But I do wonder if the link between handover notes and harm will change given that investigations into 4000 admissions of babies LL has been involved with since 2012 are still ongoing. As others in this sub have said, I find it hard to believe LL suddenly started attempting murder and killing in 2015. I wouldn’t be surprised if more of those handover sheets or all of them have a sinister significance. Same for her many Facebook searches and that so far detectives just haven’t been able to join the dots.
Yes, given the sheer scale of numbers and the impracticality of charging, AND the fact that the content/context of handover sheets not connected to charged events or existing convictions can't be presented as evidence, there will always be a counter argument that she possessed far more sheets than babies she was charged with harming.
What we can say, is that for MOST of the babies she was convicted of murdering or attempting to murder, she had retained a handover sheet and/or made a facebook search. It then follows that the existence of a handover sheet in her possession or a facebook search made are a good indication that a baby's care should be investigated for a possible harm event.
That doesn't mean it will lead to a charge, much less a conviction. **But minimizing the relevance of the handover sheets and facebook searches because of their sheer number in relation to the charges/convictions is a logical fallacy.**
4,000 babies. Only 17 were brought to trial over 8 years, and probably fewer still will be brought to trial in future. Maybe, maybe at the end of this we will be able to say she had handover sheets for 20 or 30 babies she was **convicted** of harming - that still only 10% of what she possessed. And it could well be simply due to the scale of the numbers and impracticality of bringing them all to trial.
4000 babies she treated. Not 4000 possible cases. They are investigating every baby she treated for completeness but that doesn’t mean that she has harmed or attempted to harm or even considered harming them.
The Handover sheets and Facebook searches (Is there anything to say these were the only babies she searched for?) will have already been investigated to some extent. Not every case that was brought to court was due to suspicion from a colleague. Some would have been found to be suspicious due to other evidence. They will have acquired medical records for each baby there was a handover sheet for (as shown in the reports after the original trial where parents came forward to state they were told that their child’s treatment was under investigation for malpractice.) They will have already gone thru each one, checked the baby and checked the circumstances around LL’s involvement with them.
There is nothing to show that they were trophies nor that she specifically kept handover sheets from babies she harmed. It’s not minimising it in relation to charges, it’s at the moment there is no evidence to suggest they are trophies of her acts. If in the future there is evidence to suggest that then I would change my view but at this point in time, you have to assume she harmed further children for that theory to work without having any evidence of that. That isn’t very scientific and certainly not based in law.
>4000 babies she treated. Not 4000 possible cases.
4,000 babies she treated IS 4,000 possible cases. That's literally the definition of possible. Doesn't mean likely, doesn't mean guaranteed. There are approximately 4,000 babies in this world she had the opportunity to harm.
As to the rest, you have missed my point and are falling into the logical fallacy I mentioned. Now that we know - unequivocally - that there is a very high correlation between babies she harmed and handover sheets and fb searches, the act of having searched or having kept a handover sheet is a strong indicator that a baby is among those out of the 4,000 that deserve increased attention.
That's not saying what they were for, to her. But they have a VERY high presence among her confirmed crimes. Ergo, looking at the care around babies for whom that behavior is repeated is a good focus.
A case is only a case if there is something to suggest there was malpractice. Not just anyone that’s ever been in contact with someone. Potential case has a meaning in law. Otherwise that is like saying, Ted Bundy had a potential case with every young woman he ever met. It’s extrapolating the small percentage of cases to a rather extreme degree.
As we don’t know the number of babies the handover sheets represent, nor the number of baby’s she treated that she searched for (we only have the number of Facebook searches but that doesn’t mean they are all baby related and that number is around 2300). This is guessestimates, but the pure maths of it means it’s a dreadful correlation currently. Correlation has to be symmetrical in its definition, it’s not just one way. There has to be a matching strength in correlation in both directions but there isn’t. The math just doesn’t show that right now. The math only shows a connection in one direction not both, so thus it’s not a correlation. The amount of current anomalies in that data set is the majority currently.
That’s not to say in the future that they couldn’t find more but it’s not at all to say they will. Yes it is a sensible place to start to see if there is a correlation. 100%. Does that mean there is? No. Not until there is actual evidence that suggests it.
[I refer you to this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/lucyletby/comments/1dvcx71/comment/lbqtte6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), and repeat my previous assertions.
Absolutely. I think she kept the handover sheets so she could study who to target and how best to make her murders seem like natural causes, which then became trophies when she succeeded.
If there are handover sheets missing for babies she’s been convicted of murdering then I think that’s because she wasn’t able to obtain them.
I can’t wrap my head around anything related to this. I listened to the Daily Mail trial on it which was interesting, but I’m baffled. So many children, so many complicated aspects and absolutely no motive (unless you count seeking the doctors attention but I reckon that’s a long shot) not saying she is innocent, it’s clear she isn’t. Doesn’t make it any less confusing or strange.
The upsetting part is she could have done it just a few times and most likely not been caught. However, she went a little crazy with the killing and THAT is why she is in prison.
I think it equated to around 1-2 attacks per month and a killing approximately every 2 months over the 13 month spree. She probably thought that was being conservative.
Maybe if she thought of these like trophies, getting rid of or hiding them would’ve been too painful for her - even if on some level she realized they’d be used against her if arrested. Just a thought assuming she did anticipate the possibility.
A separate idea is that because she sprinkled in non-victim materiel snd less overtly confessional self-reflections, she didn’t realize how incriminating what she had was. Just a second idea again, assuming she did anticipate being arrested, which is of course not given at all.
Interesting that you all are diagnosing her with psychiatric or personality disorders when she was never diagnosed with any of it. She had no traits of narcissism either. I don’t know why you’re trying to fit your reasonings into something that just isnt
I don’t think personality disorders would be the sort of thing she’d be screened for in the psychiatric evaluation to stand fit for trial. If you examine the case closely (as many of us have) there’s A LOT that points to LL being a covert narcissist.
Yet nobody mentions her having issues with her personality. She had no mental health issues before she was taken off the unit. She didn’t even take a sick day
Exactly this. She had a carefully curated small circle of friends consisting of naive, slightly geeky, gullible girls who’d buy into her bullshit - no questions asked. At work she went great lengths to appear perfect to her colleagues but a lot of people did see through her ruse here. Melanie Taylor and half the consultants spring to mind.
Yeah, I suppose when you’re a psychopath your options are a bit limited in that sense. Not like you can just post in the group WhatsApp chat “Full disclosure guys, I can’t feel empathy and I feed off suffering. Hey, anyone for salsa tonight??”.
We’re discussing some seriously bleak subject matter in this group and I think we could all use a bit of light comedic relief ... therefore I kind of DO appreciate the Letby supporters?
The influx of people coming on here declaring her innocent because they’ve read one ill-informed article. They’re a good laugh 😄.
In all seriousness though I can kind of understand why a casual observer might think she’s innocent .. I used to be one of those people. There might not be any actual CCTV footage of her killing a baby but there is mounds and mounds of other evidence that won her those 15 or so life orders. It obviously takes a while to plough through it all!
by nature of our enforcement of rule 3, that sentiment is somewhat limited in this subreddit. There are a few out across reddit at large arguing this though, and more than a few do say they found about the case through that godforsaken article. It's really unproductive to engage with them, since they are entering conversations determined to change people's minds, not have their mind changed.
FWIW, given the particular focus of this sub, we choose to keep and enforce that rule so that we can fully discuss the legal reality of what has been proven to have taken place. Playing detective on social media isn't going to change that legal reality, and is deeply offensive to the victims. Should anyone exist who could actually prove something has gone very, very wrong here other than a broken women murdering humanities' most vulnerable while in a position of power and trust, this is not the forum where it would happen.
The journey to acceptance is an individual one, and if there are those who need to complete their journey outside this subreddit, that's how it is. If they never complete their journey, that's also how it is.
I had a glimmer of hope they were open to learning about the case and the reasons behind the convictions but I think you’re right about everything here, sadly ...
I have literally zero idea at this stage. She’s a mass of contradictions. As the other poster said the first thing you would do is burn the lot but she hung onto it all … she’s bizarre. Nothing about her makes any sense.
Truly!
Nothing about a mass murderer of newborns could make sense though (personally, I would be afraid, if anything Lucy Letby thought or did was understandable).
I think, like most serial murderers. She assumed she was one step ahead, that yeah they might question her but arrest her? No. I think she thought she could hide behind how poorly those babies were. She went as far as bringing her dad to a meeting with her employers, that doesn’t sound like someone who envisioned being arrested. Although, like everything with LL, we can only guess. I doubt she will ever confess or “remember” anything.
Thats a really odd part of this case, how much her dad was involved in the situation, it was like LL was still in high school!
Her relationship with her parents is odd to say the least.
I’m a barrister - civil child abuse not criminal, but there are very often criminal investigations in the background. IME there is an arrogance that they’ll never be arrested, which leads to much evidence being able to be gathered.
Yes - if you have what could loosely be called a God complex, then that arrogance and sense of power and control isn’t going to stop with the treatment of your victims. It will extend into your day-to-day life and all your actions.
You only need to read the messages sent between the baby killer and her colleagues that were published on the BBC website earlier today to realise that she thought she was untouchable. She loved having the sympathy of her fellow nurses and the support of the doctor she had some kind of relationship with (by the way, I hope he's been given a serious talking to/been struck off) She absolutely loved playing the hero and pretending 'its just what we nurses do'. She was lapping up sympathy from colleagues for having to deal with the death of a baby after actually, literally killing the baby. There are likely thousands more babies killed by her. She is the most prolific serial murderer in recent times. It takes a particular type of evil to murder a defenceless, helpless baby and then pretend to comfort the parents and expect sympathy and comfort from others. Lucy Letby should never be released from prison. I hope she lives for a hundred years and each single day is more torturous and miserable than the last. I hope she never gets a full night's sleep for as long as she lives. May she be plagued with chronic insomnia and nightmares if she finally does get to sleep.
> There are likely thousands more babies killed by her Well, no - fortunately her murder count is very limited. Deaths on a neonatal unit are tracked, and in the most exceptional year of her career - her last - there were only\* 13 deaths (all of which she was present for, but not all of which were unexpected). Previous years had what, 2-3 deaths a year? So as far as actual murders, she can't have more than two dozen victims. It's quite likely she harmed far more babies than that. The number of babies she harmed could be into the hundreds, or worse - they are looking at 4,000 babies \*"only" in the context of the comment I'm responding to. 13 deaths is a massively exceptional amount of deaths in a one year period for a neonatal unit.
Correct. She harmed many more.
Agree. All that kiss kiss stuff in messages struck me as odd. And that doctor is reprehensible.
There are not thousands of babies she killed
Watched a YouTube video this morning about the possible latest baby after baby k, there's a photo of her holding a baby that's supposed to be on oxygen 24/7 and I thought what arrogance! She was just caught red handed apparently 45 mins earlier with baby k.
Good question! I’ve often wondered about this and firmly believe that she didn’t think she would actually be arrested and only questioned. My reasoning is the fact she went on holiday with her parents to Torquay and only returned the evening before her first arrest.Perhaps her parents urged her to take a break from all the stress at home and holiday with them as she usually did each year.She could not have known she would be arrested the very next day and judging by the look on her face in the arrest video, I don’t think she saw that coming. I imagine also that her parents spoke to her about being questioned by the police but like her, they thought she would handle this as she “hadn’t done anything wrong” and following the grievance procedure at work she may have had a false sense of confidence.On top of this, some of her friends and colleagues she confided in may have given her lots of reassurance and told her not to worry.The fact she didn’t dispose of any paperwork in her home, makes me feel that she didn’t anticipate the worst case scenario, and if she did she thought she was smart enough to fool the police. The only thing I am confused about is the timeline. Lucy was due to be reinstated in work following the grievance procedure and this is apparently when the consultants were able to persuade management to take it to the police and it finally became a criminal investigation. At what stage was Lucy informed of this and in what manner?.Did she stay off work on a long term suspension and what explanation was given to her by management? If she knew she was under the police radar then, this could completely alter how I’ve answered this question!.She certainly behaved like someone who was unprepared!.
That’s what I think. I think this woman has astronomical levels of cognitive dissonance. She’s living in an alternative reality to the rest of us. I don’t think she appreciates what she’s done, didn’t think she’d ever get caught out much less punished.
I have a couple of people in my life who have personality disorders and I call this ‘pick your own reality’. They really just roll along, changing their reality on a dime and expecting the whole world to fall in with whatever reality they choose for that day. They do not cope well when they come up against a person or institution that they can’t manipulate.
Same. They can be confronted with the most robust, compelling evidence for X and the mental gymnastics they can do, to justify their mindset of Y, is both terrifying and bewildering.
Yes, as an example - this is a conversation I had with one person, as I was standing by her bedside. Her - "I can't get up. I'm dying of stomach cancer." Me - "You're not dying of stomach cancer; you're withdrawing from alcohol. You're an alcoholic." Her - "That's ridiculous - I don't drink!" Me - "From where I'm standing, I can see at least 4 empty brandy bottles on the floor around your bed. I can't stop you saying what you're saying, but I know what reality is." Her - (shouting) "I am NOT an alcoholic. I just drink a normal amount to help me sleep!" etc etc She died a few months later from alcoholism - in denial the whole time.
I have an alcoholic friend like this. Every time I see him he claims he hasn’t drank in “months” until the day before I see him when he meets me with a hangover….sorry about your friend that’s terrible
I know 2 people exactly like this. And when you start challenging their reality, those people become vengeful and aggressive. However we do all to an extent live in our “own reality” in which the contrasting realities are especially striking between the neurodivergent vs neurotypical communities. I’m intrigued as to why Letby isn’t more emotional. I think I read somewhere that they put her on drugs / anti-depressants which could explain it.
That’s a great way to put it- couldn’t have said it any better!
It was shown in court by the prosecution that she operates on cognitive dissonance. One of her friends was interviewed in September for a podcast and he said that it took him time to accept what she had done, but that Letby was in a state of denial. She may never fully grasp in her mind what she has. No matter how clear cut psychologists like to believe a diagnosis of someone's psychopathy is, Letby might be the aberration that none has ever dealt with before.
I think that’s what scares me though. Letby isn’t an outlier. I’ve known many, many people who are able to cognitively dissonate themselves from their actions. None of them have official diagnoses that I’m aware of. Some of these actions have been horrendous. Stealing children’s inheritance, physically abusing children, stealing money from a friend. I remember a guy went viral on Reddit a few years back. He was a phone snatcher in London, but justified his actions in that people who were careless with their phones deserved to have them stolen, and he was probably doing them a favour by helping them realise how at risk they were. Ruby Franke is an influencer who abused her children (probably because she never truly wanted them but was conditioned to believe she did because of her Mormonism). On her blogs, the cognitive dissonance is visibly at play. She wasn’t being cruel for depriving her kids of Christmas presents, she was *teaching them a lesson in gratitude*. She wasn’t being a bad mother sending her son to a wilderness camp, she was *helping* him. the specifics of Letby’s circumstances are unique to her - she was a pretty blonde, disarming nurse tending to vulnerable babies. But lots of people abuse or kill kids and can distance themselves from what they’ve done, or delude themselves into thinking it wasn’t that bad, or they had no choice. Lots of people make shitty choices, and shrug it off and do a little mental gymnastics to justify it. On a daily basis. That’s what is so harrowing about it. It’s a totally normal human thing to do. We each live in our own little reality. For a big portion of us, it’s relatively aligned with other people’s perceptions. But for some people, they don’t sing form the same hymn sheet and construct their own realities that are palatable to them.
Oh yeah, this is so true. I know someone who bullies others and truly believes they deserve it because her targets are the type of people who get bullied and anyway if they were that bothered about being abused, they should’ve stopped her from bullying them in the first place, so ‘any’ harm caused is their fault!! Right.
Yea. I know a couple of these. I had to distance them in my lives. I also think that the public were so convinced of Lucy’s guilt precisely because most people know one or two people who are capable of serious lies. It’s a bad problem in todays society. People are lacking integrity and it feels like it’s becoming more normal.
Did any psychologist diagnose her as a psychopath though? I thought that the big controversy about this case is that professionals DO NOT think she’s a clinically diagnosable psychopath. She’s not on anti-psychotics either but anti-depressants
If she has been diagnosed, it's not public information. It was not claimed as a mitigating factor by her defence even today at sentencing, but then, her defence is a claim of total innocence so claiming psychopathy as a mitigating factor would not help that. She was evaluated and deemed fit to stand trial. In evidence, it was mentioned that she had been prescribed antidepressants and sleep aids, though it is unclear if she is still on those medications (seems likely, given the circumstances). She was diagnosed with PTSD while in police custody.
She was assessed for mental fitness to take the stand and found she had ptsd and anxiety/depression. You can't force a psychological assessment on someone. The prosecution didn't need to prove a motive, and Letby denied she did anything wrong, meaning defence wouldn't use psychopathy to explain the crimes because there were none as far as they were concerned. Many psychologists have weighed into the fray; covert narcissism seems to be something they agree on, but they all deny she's a psychopath. If anything, the common consensus is that she's an abberation because she blends in and operates what appears to be a normal life.
As far as I remember she had been seconded to an admin tole in the Risk&Safety Office (you could not make this up) so I THINK up until her first arrest she was still working? And I do believe the search for the surname of Child K must have been related to either a tip off or something she herself found out at work in that case otherwise it is just too hard to understand it (none of the paperwork in her home featured Child K or her parent's surname)
Was she still in the risk and safety office up until her arrest though?.Im unclear about that part. Her managers must have known she was going to be arrested as the police would require her work and holiday schedule prior to arresting her.
I highly doubt the police would have informed hospital management about their plans to arrest her. They will have wanted to make sure she would be at home when they went to arrest her, but they'll have various discrete/covert means of finding out things like that
I'm not exactly sure what happened in terms of her working between her grievance being upheld and her first arrest - I'm not sure if it has ever been explicitly stated?
It’s ok, Fyrestar omega has answered this question in a later comment. Thank you!
I wonder if it has sunk in that’s she’ll never be released. In the UK less than 1% of convictions ger overturned. Her convictions are solid, she’s banged up for life.
I doubt she realizes it, fully.
She declared she is innocent in court. It seems she does not.
I doubt it. I’m sure in her mind an exception will be made for her convictions to be overturned, because she’s ‘special’.
It might take 10 to 20 years before she realizes it.
Yep, I think she thought she'd get called in for a voluntary interview. She didn't realize they would arrest her or she'd have gotten rid of everything she had related to those cases. She had plenty of time to do it but she was arrogant.
You’re giving her too much credit. Psychopathic serial killers don’t think logically like normal people. She will have struggled to get rid of things she treasured most and she will have had a big enough ego from getting away with so much to bolster her belted she wouldn’t actually be caught.
I know what you mean, but then again she was so cunning and crafty on the ward hiding her actions and covering her tracks you would think she would realise she should probably do the same with anything incriminating at home knowing the police were investigating....but who really knows what goes on in her head!
She wasn’t really though, she was doing lots of risky things. She was physically caught. She said odd things, she made it quite obvious it was her when you look at the evidence.
She had to know it was coming, imo. I think she just always thought she had more time.
It's so curious to me, the FIRST thing I would have done at the mere mention of a police investigation is get rid of anything potentially incriminating - guilty or not..!
Yes, why not get rid of the handover notes when she was first removed from shift?
If she was using them to remind herself of what she did, she would have believed she needed them for as long as possible. They arrested her fresh upon her return from vacation. Caught her relaxed and unaware.
But wasn't she under suspicion and moved to an admin role before her arrest?
Oh yes, for about two years total, with a full year+ after police investigation began. Probably got nice and comfortable. July 2016 removed from care September 2016 files grievance, which she wins Spring 2017 hospital is prepared to reinstate her with career advancement May 2017 police investigation begins June 2017 - writes note about triplets, searches their surname April 2018 - searches K's surname July 2018 - first arrest (Edit: formatting)
This is what is so confusing with me, she was being so risky leaving it SO long...did she think it would just not happen after a while? ie 'they've got nothing on me it seems...'
I think if you've been harming babies your whole career without consequence, you might get lulled into a sense of invincibility, or at least be convinced you could rebut anything you were faced with - like you'd always done.
I think not getting rid of incriminating things speaks to her guilt actually. Serial killers keep trophies and get off on looking at them, using them to remember the crimes and get a thrill from going over it again in their head while looking at the trophies for reminders. Like an addict kind of. I think she probably took so long getting rid of evidence because it did something for her that she needed, some kind of dopamine hit she was addicted to and she couldn’t bring herself to get rid of it even in the face of police investigation. An innocent person would get rid of it right away, knowing how it looks. The only reason you’d hang on to stuff like that in that situation when it could incriminate you is if you have a weirdly strong emotional connection to it/need for it.
Great.This answers my question about the time line Thanks!
Was it confirmed WHEN she wrote the draft sympathy note about the triplets? I had always assumed it was written while they were still on the unit and while she was still working on unit. Thats the only way it would make sense to me.
She said in cross exam that she believed she had written it on the anniversary of their death: >Becoming emotional, the nurse said she wrote it on the anniversary of their death because she was “thinking of them”. [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/02/lucy-letby-trial-nurse-devastated-to-hear-she-was-accused-of-murdering-babies](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/02/lucy-letby-trial-nurse-devastated-to-hear-she-was-accused-of-murdering-babies) Letby searched the surname of Babies O and P on 23 June 2017 - that likely puts the note written at the same time.
How would the note make any sense if she wrote it AFTER the surviving baby left the ward? It was addressed to all three triplets as if they were all dead. I have always interpreted this as she must have written the note while they were on the unit in anticipation of what she would want to say on their anniversary after she killed all three. How does it make sense otherwise?
That she was fantasizing about having killed all three, which was her apparent goal alleged by the prosecution given the charge for attempted murder of Child Q on the day after Child P died and O &P's brother was transferred out of CoCH
All that information could have been transcribed onto a separate non-internet device or a micro-usb card or something and then swallowed when police showed up. Either she never thought she'd get caught, or the compulsion to keep those sheets was greater than the fear of what would happen if anyone else ever found those sheets.
When the doctors previously had her removed she brought a grievance and won an apology - in her mind this was vindication she was doing no wrong. I think she was so caught up in the attention and drama she caused that the babies were only objects to achieve this. Since she had been vindicated before and murder wasn’t her primary intent (attention for herself was, she was focused on the drama she would be the centre of and harming babies provided that) she (potentially) thought the police investigation wasn’t for her. And if it was she would be vindicated again like last time. Lucy Letby does not think like the rest of us. My view - she is an only child to elderly parents who had her after a difficult birth. She was coddled, smothered with love and everything she did got large amounts of attention from her parents. As an adult others didn’t give her the attention she received from her parents for just existing. She discovered after a baby dies on her ward she would get attention and check ins from concerned people and bam, a child killer is formed.
Yes, I wonder if 2015 was a tipping point for LL when she began to seriously come up against the fact that as an adult in the real world, the universe didn't revolve around her. There is still something quite childlike about her to me. And her over-involvement with certain babies and their families in some ways seems to mirror her own parent’s over-involvement in her life. As well as defending her to hospital staff, I’ve seen press photos of her Mum accompanying her to report to a police station between her arrests and her Dad drove her in a car with blacked out windows. It really wouldn’t surprise me if LL still believes her parents can somehow help her get out of her whole life orders.
Sounds like the most plausible explanation for a motive I’ve read so far
She was so narcissistic that she thought she could talk her way out of it. I don’t think she ever thought she’d be arrested.
I agree that she believed everyone would believe they were natural deaths and believe whatever she said.
Probably not when she did specifically but would have had moments of worrying id imagine
Yet she (seemingly) made no attempt to get her ducks in a row so to speak. Or maybe she DID get rid of lots of other things, we will never know.
Good point. Imagine a whole diary that looked like those post-it notes.
For all we know she did destroy mass amounts of evidence.
I think her narcissism goes a long way to explain why she didn’t burn the notes and hand-over sheets. She genuinely thought she’d be able to outsmart everyone.
I don’t think she did. Her face when being led out of her home in handcuffs, said it all. She was caught off guard and stunned.
They called it an 'operation' because there was a high level of planning in their tasks and the police's main goal is to gather evidence and do whatever it takes so that the suspect doesn't get rid of evidence. They have strategies to make the suspect feel comfortable so that she doesn't think of ways to get rid of evidence and doesn't change her behaviour. Also I believe LL thought the evidence would be documentation on clinical interventions, not her cellphone or other private matters. Also she thought about 'potentialities' like being part of a team, the prematurity of the babies, some senior staff on her side, she thought there were many 'contributing factors' that would in the end diffuse guilt.
The notes were her trophy. She couldn't get rid. She needed the physical evidence of what she had done to her own detriment
She had a compulsion for keeping handover sheets right from her student days which in itself is so strange too.
I think the more relevant inquiry is how many deaths are there without related handover sheets?
Yes I’m sure I read she kept the first handover sheet she ever handled as a neo natal nurse in a special box with a flowery lid under her bed with a few other choice items…so weird and creepy…
There isn’t much to suggest this is true. She has so many notes of handover. The majority have no correlation to deaths.
She’s seen thousands of patients. She selected *only 257 handover sheets to take home with her. Contained in these 257 sheets are ALL BUT ONE of the babies she is accused of harming.
That’s not correct. 21 notes on 13 children she was convicted of harming. She was accused of harming 17 children. She has 99 from her training including her very first hand over sheet so she had a history of keeping them for reasons other than harm. Less than 10% of the handover sheets relate to charges.
I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. It’s not that “less than 10%” of the sheets related to the charges, its that she had sheets for “~ 90%” of the victims on the indictment. That is the significance.
ding ding ding
I recognise that. Already. Although it’s 76%. She kept 1.6 handover sheets per child for 76% of the children she was taken to trial for harming. What is your point you are inferring from that?
That for over three quarters of the babies she was charged with harming, she had handover sheets and there was enough evidence of harm to proceed to trial. Given that she was not acquitted of all charges for a single baby for which she was brought to trial, that high correlation of retained records is significant, regardless of what those records represent to Lucy Letby. If she has a sheet for a baby, the investigation into that baby's care should be at the front of the line among the 4,000 they are considering. It's a massive task with limited funds. They have an easy way to suggest where to start with cases that would be most likely to lead to conviction.
I agree it’s a sensible place to start with those they have a handover sheet for. No correlation has been proven currently.
Unless Letby comes clean, it will never be "proven." Given the prevalence of this evidence among her convictions, it will remain a strong indicator of likely malfeasance
You have 257 possible sheets….. 1.6 sheets roughly per child based on 21 collected for 13 victims, which gives a guesstimated total of 160 babies. If there was a correlation based on the hypothesis that she collected handover sheets for children she harmed, based on a Gaussian distribution, at the moment with all available evidence to ourselves, the most likely explanation would not be that they were trophies, all children she harmed or collected from babies she harmed as memories. For this to be correct it would an extreme statistical anomaly in either direction. Edit// 0.5 is statistically significant, 0 or 1 which is roughly what would be the result of this dataset is therefore not statistically significant.
You keep inserting trophies into this conversation. That's not what either myself or u/physicalwheat are saying. Given the high rate of convictions among those 13 victims for whom 21 sheets were retained, regardless of what the sheets were to Lucy Letby, the guesstimated\* 160 babies would be a good initial focus to be included among the 4,000 possible. They deserve looking at closely. \*your guesstimate, whatever the actual number is
That’s because that’s I was responding to a response regarding trophies, because I don’t think there is anything to suggest they are trophies. I then stated the majority have no correlation to deaths which is also true currently. However I agree it makes sense to look at those first. I already said that “Yes it is a sensible place to start to see if there is a correlation” so I already agreed. However I also stated early on. that I believe the police will already have done that. As I will repeat, it’s a good place to look but the stats don’t show anything will definitely be found. You stated they had relevance which the stats just don’t show currently. If I’m wrong in the future I’m wrong but right now the stats do not say anything other than they are coincidental. However yes it makes sense to look there again. Although again I am sure they have looked already in the many years since they had doubt on her conduct as that’s part of any investigation.
> That’s because that’s I was responding to a response regarding trophies, You brought up trophies [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/lucyletby/comments/1dvcx71/comment/lbqjkkn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), in response to a comment of mine that did not mention them. Yes, the top comment in this chain calls them trophies, but I did not, and have deferred from that suggestion at every point in this conversation. >Although again I am sure they have looked already in the many years since they had doubt on her conduct as that’s part of any investigation. This part I disagree with. Their initial investigation concentrated on March 2015-July 2016. As I'm sure we will agree, that represents only a fraction of the 257 sheets, and a smaller number that led to charges. While we know that Dewi Evans did not know about the handover sheets until after trial, we also know that he recommends the babies represented in them should be investigated. And that (plus the limited number of cases that he investigated, plus a limited further few that he was asked to look at) suggests that he did not already look at all babies represented in the sheets.
On that point, I am curious what your reason for her keeping them are and ignoring the stats that there is no correlation? The prosecution themselves stated the suspicious incidents began in 2015, hence they would have had to investigate her career prior to that to understand when a change occurred in the outcome of babies under her care. Whilst Dewi Evans was tasked with investigating only 2015 and 2016 incidents, the police also had their own specialists on the case as well who would have had to have analysed prior events to determine the start date of the circumstances otherwise that date has just been plucked out of thin air.
But I do wonder if the link between handover notes and harm will change given that investigations into 4000 admissions of babies LL has been involved with since 2012 are still ongoing. As others in this sub have said, I find it hard to believe LL suddenly started attempting murder and killing in 2015. I wouldn’t be surprised if more of those handover sheets or all of them have a sinister significance. Same for her many Facebook searches and that so far detectives just haven’t been able to join the dots.
Yes, given the sheer scale of numbers and the impracticality of charging, AND the fact that the content/context of handover sheets not connected to charged events or existing convictions can't be presented as evidence, there will always be a counter argument that she possessed far more sheets than babies she was charged with harming. What we can say, is that for MOST of the babies she was convicted of murdering or attempting to murder, she had retained a handover sheet and/or made a facebook search. It then follows that the existence of a handover sheet in her possession or a facebook search made are a good indication that a baby's care should be investigated for a possible harm event. That doesn't mean it will lead to a charge, much less a conviction. **But minimizing the relevance of the handover sheets and facebook searches because of their sheer number in relation to the charges/convictions is a logical fallacy.** 4,000 babies. Only 17 were brought to trial over 8 years, and probably fewer still will be brought to trial in future. Maybe, maybe at the end of this we will be able to say she had handover sheets for 20 or 30 babies she was **convicted** of harming - that still only 10% of what she possessed. And it could well be simply due to the scale of the numbers and impracticality of bringing them all to trial.
4000 babies she treated. Not 4000 possible cases. They are investigating every baby she treated for completeness but that doesn’t mean that she has harmed or attempted to harm or even considered harming them. The Handover sheets and Facebook searches (Is there anything to say these were the only babies she searched for?) will have already been investigated to some extent. Not every case that was brought to court was due to suspicion from a colleague. Some would have been found to be suspicious due to other evidence. They will have acquired medical records for each baby there was a handover sheet for (as shown in the reports after the original trial where parents came forward to state they were told that their child’s treatment was under investigation for malpractice.) They will have already gone thru each one, checked the baby and checked the circumstances around LL’s involvement with them. There is nothing to show that they were trophies nor that she specifically kept handover sheets from babies she harmed. It’s not minimising it in relation to charges, it’s at the moment there is no evidence to suggest they are trophies of her acts. If in the future there is evidence to suggest that then I would change my view but at this point in time, you have to assume she harmed further children for that theory to work without having any evidence of that. That isn’t very scientific and certainly not based in law.
>4000 babies she treated. Not 4000 possible cases. 4,000 babies she treated IS 4,000 possible cases. That's literally the definition of possible. Doesn't mean likely, doesn't mean guaranteed. There are approximately 4,000 babies in this world she had the opportunity to harm. As to the rest, you have missed my point and are falling into the logical fallacy I mentioned. Now that we know - unequivocally - that there is a very high correlation between babies she harmed and handover sheets and fb searches, the act of having searched or having kept a handover sheet is a strong indicator that a baby is among those out of the 4,000 that deserve increased attention. That's not saying what they were for, to her. But they have a VERY high presence among her confirmed crimes. Ergo, looking at the care around babies for whom that behavior is repeated is a good focus.
A case is only a case if there is something to suggest there was malpractice. Not just anyone that’s ever been in contact with someone. Potential case has a meaning in law. Otherwise that is like saying, Ted Bundy had a potential case with every young woman he ever met. It’s extrapolating the small percentage of cases to a rather extreme degree. As we don’t know the number of babies the handover sheets represent, nor the number of baby’s she treated that she searched for (we only have the number of Facebook searches but that doesn’t mean they are all baby related and that number is around 2300). This is guessestimates, but the pure maths of it means it’s a dreadful correlation currently. Correlation has to be symmetrical in its definition, it’s not just one way. There has to be a matching strength in correlation in both directions but there isn’t. The math just doesn’t show that right now. The math only shows a connection in one direction not both, so thus it’s not a correlation. The amount of current anomalies in that data set is the majority currently. That’s not to say in the future that they couldn’t find more but it’s not at all to say they will. Yes it is a sensible place to start to see if there is a correlation. 100%. Does that mean there is? No. Not until there is actual evidence that suggests it.
[I refer you to this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/lucyletby/comments/1dvcx71/comment/lbqtte6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), and repeat my previous assertions.
Absolutely. I think she kept the handover sheets so she could study who to target and how best to make her murders seem like natural causes, which then became trophies when she succeeded. If there are handover sheets missing for babies she’s been convicted of murdering then I think that’s because she wasn’t able to obtain them.
I can’t wrap my head around anything related to this. I listened to the Daily Mail trial on it which was interesting, but I’m baffled. So many children, so many complicated aspects and absolutely no motive (unless you count seeking the doctors attention but I reckon that’s a long shot) not saying she is innocent, it’s clear she isn’t. Doesn’t make it any less confusing or strange.
The upsetting part is she could have done it just a few times and most likely not been caught. However, she went a little crazy with the killing and THAT is why she is in prison.
I think it equated to around 1-2 attacks per month and a killing approximately every 2 months over the 13 month spree. She probably thought that was being conservative.
Maybe if she thought of these like trophies, getting rid of or hiding them would’ve been too painful for her - even if on some level she realized they’d be used against her if arrested. Just a thought assuming she did anticipate the possibility.
A separate idea is that because she sprinkled in non-victim materiel snd less overtly confessional self-reflections, she didn’t realize how incriminating what she had was. Just a second idea again, assuming she did anticipate being arrested, which is of course not given at all.
Was she hoarding the handover sheets because there was a sexual/thrill aspect to looking at them? Like teenage boys with girly magazine collections?
Interesting that you all are diagnosing her with psychiatric or personality disorders when she was never diagnosed with any of it. She had no traits of narcissism either. I don’t know why you’re trying to fit your reasonings into something that just isnt
I don’t think personality disorders would be the sort of thing she’d be screened for in the psychiatric evaluation to stand fit for trial. If you examine the case closely (as many of us have) there’s A LOT that points to LL being a covert narcissist.
Do you have the experience to diagnose?
Yet nobody mentions her having issues with her personality. She had no mental health issues before she was taken off the unit. She didn’t even take a sick day
First thing to ask would be what kind of people did she surround herself with. It seems she chose friends that were the naive type
Exactly this. She had a carefully curated small circle of friends consisting of naive, slightly geeky, gullible girls who’d buy into her bullshit - no questions asked. At work she went great lengths to appear perfect to her colleagues but a lot of people did see through her ruse here. Melanie Taylor and half the consultants spring to mind.
She also did say in one of her notes, “I am a problem to those who know me well” or something to that effect.
It’s called masking.
Ok she masked her whole life then. Makes perfect sense
Yeah, I suppose when you’re a psychopath your options are a bit limited in that sense. Not like you can just post in the group WhatsApp chat “Full disclosure guys, I can’t feel empathy and I feed off suffering. Hey, anyone for salsa tonight??”.
You are getting down voted for saying the truth. All these Armchair Psychiatrists and Detectives don't appreciate you!
We’re discussing some seriously bleak subject matter in this group and I think we could all use a bit of light comedic relief ... therefore I kind of DO appreciate the Letby supporters?
"Letby supporters?"
The influx of people coming on here declaring her innocent because they’ve read one ill-informed article. They’re a good laugh 😄. In all seriousness though I can kind of understand why a casual observer might think she’s innocent .. I used to be one of those people. There might not be any actual CCTV footage of her killing a baby but there is mounds and mounds of other evidence that won her those 15 or so life orders. It obviously takes a while to plough through it all!
by nature of our enforcement of rule 3, that sentiment is somewhat limited in this subreddit. There are a few out across reddit at large arguing this though, and more than a few do say they found about the case through that godforsaken article. It's really unproductive to engage with them, since they are entering conversations determined to change people's minds, not have their mind changed. FWIW, given the particular focus of this sub, we choose to keep and enforce that rule so that we can fully discuss the legal reality of what has been proven to have taken place. Playing detective on social media isn't going to change that legal reality, and is deeply offensive to the victims. Should anyone exist who could actually prove something has gone very, very wrong here other than a broken women murdering humanities' most vulnerable while in a position of power and trust, this is not the forum where it would happen. The journey to acceptance is an individual one, and if there are those who need to complete their journey outside this subreddit, that's how it is. If they never complete their journey, that's also how it is.
I had a glimmer of hope they were open to learning about the case and the reasons behind the convictions but I think you’re right about everything here, sadly ...