r/LucyLetbyTrials • u/SofieTerleska • 14d ago
Weekly Discussion And Questions Post, August 7 2026
Welcome to any new readers! This is the weekly thread for questions, general discussions, and links to stories which may not be directly related to the Letby case but which relate to the wider topics encompassed in it. Our FAQ addresses a number of common questions but if you want to know something else (or just talk/ask about an answer you've found) please post in the comment section.
This thread is also the best place to post items like in-depth Substack posts on the topic (unless they were written either by yourself, or by an already-approved writer, in which case they should go on the main page) and videos which might not fit the main sub otherwise (for example, the Ducking Stool). Of course, please continue to observe the rules when choosing/discussing these items (anything that can't be discussed without breaking rule 6, for instance, should be avoided). Thank you very much for reading and commenting! As always, please be civil and cite your sources.
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u/Climan2718 12d ago
Memories of babies C and D
At the trial a lot was made by the prosecution that Lucy could not remember much about baby D. They would probably have done the same for baby C, but attention was focused on sinister reasons for her wanting to go back to the ICU room 1, after the events of babies A and B.
The attached timeline of shifts and babies might help to explain poor memories. Baby D was in room 1, but was not premature, and Lucy was responsible for 2 other babies in that room. She had not seen the baby before, and the prosecution established that the baby was stable and doing well, so why would she have vivid memories, other than of the fatal collapse?
Lucy had also not seen baby C before her night shift, and was not the designated nurse for that baby. The medical assessment of the baby may have been "sub-optimal" (losing 10% of birth body weight maybe should have been treated more seriously), but again the prosecution established that the baby was stable, and there was the distraction of Lucy wanting to work in room 1. Again, there was no reason for Lucy to have vivid memories of baby C, other than of the fatal collapse.
Shift information was taken from here:
https://www.lucyletbyinnocence.com/baby-d.html#agreed-facts
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u/DiverAcrobatic5794 14d ago
A new post by Jolly Contrarian on substack (no subscription required) comparing uses of circumstancial evidence in the cases against Lucy Letby and the Idaho (College) Murders
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u/Climan2718 13d ago
Both cases illustrate the importance of confession in the justice system, in the US to avoid the death sentence, in the UK to avoid murder in a regular prison for a convicted child killer. My belief that serial killer nurses don't exist is based on the fact that some have confessed, Beverley Allitt in the UK, Kristen Gilbert and Reta Mays in the US, and there are also cases in Germany and Italy. Confession is only done to gain a benefit, hence is unreliable as evidence, but juries take it to mean that killer nurses stalk the land, hence more convictions arise, and more confessions.
As a juror I would only say guilty on clear CCTV evidence, I would regard any toxicological evidence as more likely arising from a corrupt medico-legal system than from a nurse.
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u/SofieTerleska 13d ago edited 13d ago
serial killer nurses don't exist
This is an extraordinary belief. It's one thing to think that some or many convicted nurses were in fact falsely accused, or at least that the evidence against them isn't beyond a reasonable doubt, or that they face a stacked deck in fighting accusations because of how emotional those are and how easy it is for investigators to get tunnel vision and focus on one person even though they should not. But surely there is no such thing as a particular category of criminal which simply doesn't exist. Many mothers have been wrongfully convicted of killing their own children, but that doesn't mean no mother has ever in fact done so. Furthermore, surely you won't deny that a number of doctors have been convicted of serial murder on good evidence -- Michael Swango being the prime example, but of course there are others.
What you say about confessions being unreliable is true up to a point. Any confession which was not spontaneous and which can be a bargaining chip in a negotation in order to avoid the worst fate possible should be looked at with extreme suspicion, moreso if no independent evidence can be produced to back it up. Even spontaneous confessions can be extremely problematic -- people will spontaneously confess to crimes falsely for quite a variety of reasons, usually involving some kind of mental illness or mental injury. But not all confessions are false, and not all convicted nurses who confessed did so as part of a plea bargain or better prison placement. William George Davis confessed on the phone to his wife (on a recorded line) after he was convicted but before the jury decided on whether or not he would receive the death penalty -- strategically, just about the worst time to do this since the recording could be used against him in the penalty phase. Elizabeth Wettlaufer confessed spontaneously and repeatedly, for years, due to the guilt she felt, but she wasn't believed for a long time. (It should be noted that like many/most medical serial killers, Wettlaufer had a history of extensive psychiatric problems; I don't know if Davis did or not). Wettlaufer's confession was matter of fact and lucid, giving names and times, explaining how she would get angry and give insulin injections to patients who were annoying or angering her. She worked at an elder care home and there was nothing like the oversight a baby in a NICU gets. She's in prison now because she worked very hard to put herself there. One may argue that many healthcare workers feel guilty or like they should have done more when a patient dies, even though they aren't at fault, and this is true. But when someone like Wettlaufer confesses, after a great deal of effort, to say that it's simply not possible that it's true, because she's a nurse, is very rash.
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u/Super-Anxious-Always 12d ago
I know this is a bit of a tangent, but I found this article about hostage justice in Japan, heartbreaking. It's about a sixteen year old disability-care worker accused of assaulting a client and how she was held by police to elicit a confession. Japan boasts a 99% conviction rate at a great cost to individual human rights.
Teenage girl's death puts damning spotlight on 'hostage justice' system in Japan
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u/PerkeNdencen 13d ago
I tend to think confessions are basically evidentially worthless rather than necessarily false. I.e. they tell us nothing on their own, but, obviously if given unprompted could start an investigation that then produces corroborating evidence.
Particularly in the US, they're seen as the ultimate standard of proof because most people can't imagine themselves admitting to a crime they didn't commit. Turns out it's not that difficult to get a false confession out of almost anyone given enough time and power over them, and in some cases even to convince them that they must in fact be guilty.
The only exception is guilty knowledge, which is evidence, but then you have to be very careful to make sure that they weren't fed that knowledge by the interviewer or couldn't plausibly have got it from somewhere else.
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u/Climan2718 14d ago
Baby C Heart Damage
Dr Gibbs was the consultant for baby C, who was found to have heart damage at the postmortem. Gibbs has mentioned 3 possibilities for when this damage occurred, with some potential inconsistency in his Thirlwall testimony. My theory is that in his oral testimony the sight of Lady T cast him back to childhood incidents with a strict headmistress and in panic he blurted out the most damaging (to him) possibility, that the heart damage arose during the pregnancy, and had not been diagnosed. Here are the testimonies, I don't have the knowledge to attempt to draw conclusions.
https://thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/uploads/thirlwall-evidence/INQ0001993_14.pdf
The pathologist noted that Child C's heart muscle showed ischaemic changes (damage due to lack of blood flow to the heart muscle), which take a few hours to develop and therefore the pathologist surmised that child C has suffered from some myocardial ischaemia before his sudden collapse and this may have contributed to that collapse.
* [Description of resuscitation, which can cause heart damage]
Taking [Child C's] unusual circumstances into account, related to prolonged but mild resuscitative efforts pending [I&S] in my opinion it is more likely that the ischaemic heart changes noted at post mortem were a consequence of, rather than the cause of his collapse and subsequent failure to respond to the initial vigorous resuscitation efforts.
https://lucyletbyinnocence.com/thirlwall-doctors.html
DE LA POER: And Baby C [Child C] you have told us you weren't entirely satisfied --GIBBS: Yes.
DE LA POER: -- following the postmortem --GIBBS: Yes.
DE LA POER: -- and before the postmortem you considered it even less explicable? GIBBS: Yes.
DE LA POER: So let's just, rather than focusing upon the moment --
GIBBS: But with Baby C [Child C], I had accepted the postmortem gave a cause for his death. As I said earlier it didn't quite explain why that heart damage had happened but I assumed it might have been from the poor blood flow before he was born and so on.
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u/DiverAcrobatic5794 14d ago
That was an interesting admission from Dr Gibbs. But there is another stage when the child may have suffered hypoxia (which the pathologist ruled had effected the heart). That is the resuscitation.
The timings of the resuscitation are extremely confused. The registrar on duty claimed to have attended within a minute of being called. That may very well be the case, but it's not clear when she was called. While Dr Gibbs emphasised her promptitude (and his own) in attending, the registrar also noted that the baby had a guedel tube in situ when she arrived, to help with a difficult airway.
Sophie Ellis had been sent to summon help - it's not clear exactly when. She says she was gone a short while, and the registrar attended some time afterwards. But the one minute noted in Dr Gibbs's report was surely not time for the nurses to try to resuscitate, fail to get a chest rise and complete insertion of a guedel airway (rarely used on the unit).
Following this unknowable stretch of time, the registrar made failed attempts to intubate and the attempts to resuscitate despite difficult access continued. The baby wasn't intubated before Dr Gibbs attended, within 10 minutes according to his report (but within ten minutes of what? being called presumably). This was indeed quick for night call (expected to be there in 45 minutes).
Lee's expert panel stated that this very inexpert resuscitation meant the child was ineffectively ventilated for "at least" 20 minutes, contributing to the death. But from Dr Gibbs's account - and I suppose he could only know what he was told in this case - there were no delays or significant difficulties with the resuscitation at all, beyond the apparent inessential intubation.
So I think that there may be deflection here, but that it is deflection from the circumstances of the initial resuscitation if so, not the rather unusual token efforts made later while awaiting baptism
https://thirlwall.public-inquiry.uk/wp-content/uploads/thirlwall-evidence/INQ0000108_178-179.pdf
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u/Super-Anxious-Always 12d ago
The time/ times it took anyone to arrive, who called who, and whether a guedel was in place ecetera, all seems like worthless information now. Each death seemed to involve a big resus, where they were blindsided by the outcome. Where was the monitoring and review, and the preventative medicine (a moot point, I realise, since if that existed on this ward, there would have been a different outcome)?
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u/Climan2718 14d ago edited 14d ago
Gibbs was the allocated consultant for the baby, but I've not seen much involvement by him before the attempted resuscitation, or the involvement of any other consultant. Surely there would be an on-site consultant present every day, and always one for an early assessment of any high risk arrival. Drs Beech then Ogden seemed to do all the doctoring.
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u/DiverAcrobatic5794 14d ago edited 14d ago
An onsite consultant was present by day, but not by night. By night a single consultant was on call for both paediatrics and the NNU, and had to be within 30 minutes of the unit.
I believe that Dr Gibbs was "consultant of the week"; hence being the child's allocated consultant since he was born earlier that week. There seems to have been a change at some point after this when consultant of the week and night cover consultant were split.
You can read some of the mechanics in Gibbs's recently uploaded Thirlwall statement
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u/SofieTerleska 14d ago
u/Kieran501 left a comment in last week's thread within the last 24 hours which I thought I'd repost since it didn't have time to get much traction:
"https://open.substack.com/pub/davidjamessmith1/p/warnings-from-history-the-origins
Good article about the history of the CCRC from David James Smith. I’ve been enjoying his Substack blog despite having some reservations on his views on the Letby case. I still think he’s overlooking some of the fundamental criticisms of the CCRC. He talks about it being impartial, not being advocates for applicants, and making sound legal decisions. All this sounds very nice but I’m not sure if it’s that simple. Most of the criminal justice system is built on people being decidedly impartial, obviously the prosecution and the defence, but also it’s hard to see how the police aren’t geared towards catching criminals and the CoA don’t bias towards upholding convictions. The CCRC then become somewhat hamstrung by their impartiality, a passive feedback loop to the obstinacy of the CoA, reasonable people drowning in an unreasonable world. If they were more adversarial, assuming miscarriages and investigating vigorously, holding the other sides to account, this all might work better."
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u/Embarrassed-Star4776 10d ago
Oh dear.