Has Gill or anyone else actually suggested a plausible illness that might have killed these babies? Let’s take Child D. It would have to be something which:
- causes a baby to collapse *and then also recover* incredibly rapidly, in ways which the on duty doctor said he’d never seen before and “couldn’t make sense of”, 3 times in the space of about 4 hours, the 3rd time leading to its death
- produce a distinctive reddish rash on its torso which a doctor and nurse with decades of experience each said they’d never seen before; a rash which then went quickly as the baby recovered
- produce an x-ray showing a column of air in the baby’s large vessel near its spine which another experienced neonatal doctor said he’d never seen in any other baby outside of a car crash
- somehow this mysterious disease only ever caused these sudden collapses when Letby was alone with the baby, not when anyone else was present (never in front of the assigned nurse, which wasn’t Letby)
The only thing this all fits with is air embolism, administered by Letby. There’s literally an x-ray showing it ffs!
So again, what is this mysterious illness? You can’t just fudge it, it has to fit all the above criteria.
And that’s for *one baby*. There’s similarly compelling evidence for all the others.
Until I see Gill, or anyone else for that matter, accounting for facts like these, on a baby-by-baby basis, in any way which isn’t completely laughable, I’ll continue to treat these truthers with the contempt they deserve.
I mean... the pathologists that originally investigated the causes of death (people actually qualified to do so - unlike Dewi) did, yes, very much "suggested a plausible illness[ess]" in all but one case. Give your Stetson a wobble.
For Letbyists there is only one individual in this story who is infallible: the person who put the cause of death on the death certificates. Everyone else - multiple experts, the doctors, the hospital, the police, the appeals court, the media, Letby's defence, and Letby herself when she agrees with the prosecution - were hopeless. But whoever put down a cause of death, despite having incomplete information and usually not doing an autopsy and not knowing an air embolus from a hole in the ground - nailed it every time (except when they put 'unascertained' or later retracted).
There were three different pathologists involved from Alder Hey Children's Hospital. Maybe it was in all cases the same coroner.
But yes, I am leaning to giving more credibility to pathologists from a renowned children's hospital who saw the real bodies, the real organs, than to a number of experts hired to prove Lucy Letby guilty (no conspiracy, just they testified for the prosecution). Owen Arthurs stated he had done a lot of research/work as a pediatric radiologist. He forgot to mention most of those images were acquired by tomography, not X-rays.
Dr. Evans, in an interview with Liz Hull, "admitted that injecting air in a nasogastric tube is 'utterly bizarre' and something he'd never heard of before. But he added: 'That doesn't mean it can't exist." Nota Bene: On that type of evidence is a woman for fifteen lifetimes in prison.
Again, he could have studied baby Noah - who got a significant amount of air inserted in his stomach, but apparently did not show any sign of air embolisms when his autopsy was done ?
Sort of. But it's Evans that is arguing that there were no possible plausible explanations other than "intentional harm". And clearly people whose job it is to make judgement on causes of death DID think there were other plausible explanations. Spreadsheets aside, pretty much the entire case rests on Evans, so we do need him to be near infallible, or - at the very least - probably mostly right.
Evans had lots of experts backing him up in court and the evidence to prove it. Letby's lawyers could have called the original pathologists but didn't because they would have admitted they got it wrong. Baby A's death was never established at the time. As Tim says in these comments, Baby D's death never really looked like being caused by pneumonia. X-rays showed that Baby E's death wasn't caused by NEC and the doctor who said it was at the time apologised to the parents in court. The underlying cause of Baby P's death was never established at the time. Baby O's death certificate correctly identified liver trauma. Hopefully the Thirlwall enquiry will ask questions about what went wrong with some of the original pathology but I doubt the answers will help Letby's case.
There was no autopsy on baby E, so no one knows whether it would have shown NEC or not. The CoCH doctor apologized during the trial to the parents for not having asked for an autopsy.
I assume that Dr. Evans carefully chose the other experts.
I just found the following, leave it to others with more knowledge about the UK legal system to contemplate it. "In a big trial there is a lot of jostling between parties over what evidence is. The prosecution would try to exclude as much as possible that would be harmful of their case. E.g. by arguing that the RCPCH review and the pathology reports weren't looking for a killer and therefore not relevant."
Hmmm. There's a wonderful experiment in which people if people are show to how someone else has answered a question, they tend to publicly agree with that answer, despite their own private misgivings. But that's one for psychologists, not statisticians, staying in their lane.
This is just complete nonsense. The case doesn’t “rest on Evans”. The crucial information for Child D came from the doctors and nurses on the ground. There’s no reading of that sequence of events which isn’t highly suspicious.
So again, what causes the sequence of events above? I’d be absolutely delighted to see a sensible suggestion, then this massive disinformation campaign might actually make some sense.
So far we’ve had: “sepsis”. KLAXON!! Fail. Doesn’t cause sudden collapses out of nowhere to a baby with a normal temperature, followed by an equally rapid recovery, *three times* in 4 hours.
(How exactly is the baby recovering? And recovering from *sepsis*? Do you even know what sepsis is? How is it recovering from that, back to a completely well state again in a matter of minutes? Is it being cured of sepsis in insanely record time then catching it again?)
Sepsis also produces a distinctive rash which both a doctor and nurse with decades of experience between them would have spotted immediately. Not a rash so odd neither of them had seen in their entire decades-long careers.
Oh you want to go with the original postmortem for Child D? Sure, well then we’ve got pneumonia.
But the weird thing is, all the “Letby is innocent” posters below are telling me it was sepsis. So they’re all wrong I guess, as these original postmortems are completely infallible, yes?
The problem is, none of the events fit with pneumonia either. But that’s another story.
Even Owen Arthurs had to admit that "the amount of gas present in Child D's X-rays was consistent with babies that died of sepsis". After this probably correct observation he continued, because he was brought in to strengthen Dr. Dewi Evans theories.
It seems you don't realise that the probably inevitable death of a horribly premature baby has a simple explanation. It is: the baby shouldn't have been born yet, it was going to die anyway. It tries to keep alive, but one thing after another goes wrong, it gets weaker, and opportunistic viruses or bacteria get their chance. Doctors call it "stable" to reassure parents, what that means is that the heart is mostly beating more or less regularly. That's all. Deaths (and non-fatal collapses and crashes) occur at unpredicted moments, especially if there is not one-on-one nursing. Please tell us your medical qualifications.
I don’t need medical qualifications. I am simply referencing the doctor and nurse on duty that night. The baby was not “getting weaker”, as is carefully recorded in the readings, quite the reverse; and Oakley and Brunton *both* say they had never seen anything like that sequence of events, had never seen anything like that rash, and absolutely could not explain what happened with that baby.
But to you it’s all perfectly normal and a straightforward case of pneumonia.
So I repeat, are a doctor and nurse with decades of relevant experience between them, and who are referencing notes they made at the time which fully back up what they’re saying, both completely incompetent, or lying? Because otherwise what you’re saying simply can’t be true.
The CoCH LNU had apparently a habit of overestimating how well a baby was doing. (Ex-CoCH LNU nurses commented about this on Facebook and Reddit.) Lucy sometimes try to warn parents that things were in reality not going that well. It even caused her a complaint from some parents. ("She should have shown more compassion, she knew very well this was my 9th pregnancy after I had eight miscarriages.") And now it is seen as part of her evil, vile mind.
P.S. "Doctor on duty" mostly meant he could be called if there were problems developing. There was no one-on-one nursing. Nurses often looked after two babies, sometimes even three, who could be located in different rooms. Lucy complained about this.
I wonder about the decades of experience, as CoCH had more expensive nurses let go in previous years in its efforts to economize. Another effect was less cleaning (as stated by cleaning personnel).
“ Asked to expand on that, she says: "I haven't seen that rash before on a baby I have looked after. To the best of my knowledge, in my years of neonates (over 20), no."
So she’s either lying or she does indeed have decades of experience.
It's hard for me to express, Tim, how uninterested I am in you take on Baby Epsilon-Theta; Star Date 3021.7; who only became of interest because of galactically stupid leap of logic in the first place.
Just because you’ve decided the crux of the case is statistical doesn’t make it so.
I am equally uninterested in your illiterate claim that the Letby case is a sharpshooter fallacy, and have asked everyone on here to simply account for a single baby’s death. None of them have done so.
The "car crash" comparison was made for the baby with liver damage.
Interesting how the pathologists who did the original autopsies, did not see this "never seen before" damage. Interesting too how they did not see the air-embolisms on the X-rays, made during said autopsies.
And who was the doctor who "had never seen it before" ? The doctor who did not realize he should not go back and forth from a clinic with CF-patients to the neonatal ward ? The doctor who waited too long to give a baby a needed blood transfusion ? The doctor who could not get a navel line in ? The doctor who did not send a nurse with a nose full of snot home ? The doctor who googled a procedure he had to do in full view of the parents ? The doctor who needed three tries to get a tube in ? Or was it the doctor who was clueless when a breathing tube did not work and thought it was the equipment malfunctioning ? Or was it the doctor who examined a baby and then forgot to put the monitoring equipment back on ?
And if it all fits so nicely with air embolisms, why did Dr. Evans see a need to also bring "insulin poisonings" into the mix as well as "overfeeding" ? (Just asking.)
As usual you just don’t know the case well enough. The car crash comparison was also made for Child D, by Owen Arthurs. Actually I’ve checked and he also said he’d seen it with babies with sepsis, and for another baby in the Letby case, but in no other cases, and clearly this baby did not die of sepsis.
Otherwise this is all whataboutery. Put up or shut up: what is this mysterious disease that causes this specific patterns of collapses, recoveries, rash and air in the large vessels on x-ray?
Your last comment is hilariously useless. Child *D* fits with air embolism, the insulin cases fit with insulin. Just like with Beverley Allitt by the way, who also attacked with insulin, air embolism and other methods.
Thank you for the correction. Yes, Dr. Owen Arthurs also said that the amount of gas present in Child D's X-rays was consistent with babies that died of sepsis. Why sepsis is so quickly ruled out a a cause of death, I fail to understand.
As I also do not understand why the findings of the original pathologists were overridden so easily. Those doctors saw the dead babies for real during the autopsies. The pathologists who testified during the trial saw X-rays, reports and medical notes. Re-assessing for one or two babies, yes. But for all of them ?
The insulin poisonings was "proven" with a test that had the disclaimer "Not Suitable for Forensic Purposes". Additional testing was advised, but did not happen. Also, samples that go for forensic testing should be transported under certain conditions regarding time, temperature, etc. - which these vials were not.
My comment is not "hilariously useless". Most serial killers keep to one proven method that works for them, but nurse Letby apparently experimented all over the place.
(As you are unable to respond without reverting to insults, I will not react again.)
"If you have an infection, your body’s temperature usually rises as it tries to fight off the bug causing the infection. Interestingly, some people see their body temperature go down (hypothermia) instead of up. This is why any change, high or low, can be a sign of sepsis."
"Until I see Gill, or anyone else for that matter, accounting for facts like these, on a baby-by-baby basis, in any way which isn’t completely laughable, I’ll continue to treat these truthers with the contempt they deserve." Sorry but to me this sounds - insulting.
Yes, sepsis doesn’t always show a high temperature. As in my daughter her tempature showed as 36.1..I queried this and was told septic shock is when the temperature can drop.
Of course they may have been at this Welsh Paediatric conference too I suppose…alternatively they’re just reporting what they witnessed on the ground. And none of it fits with sepsis.
Yes, Michael McConville has done exactly what you want: accounted for facts like these, on a baby-by-baby basis, in a way which is utterly plausible, and confirmed by many neonatologists too. Are you a medic? Are you a neonatologist? You seem to be deliberately ignorant. Are you interested in truth, or only interested in suppressing intelligent debate? Truth will out!
If you’re talking about the same Michael McConville from the Letby podcast, I listened to the first episode and found it made a number of the same mistakes Christopher has frequently pointed out. However if there’s a particular podcast from that series that accounts for child D I’ll be happy to listen, quite sincerely.
If you also have detailed responses from other neonatologists confirming they support whatever analysis he gives then, again, by all means link to them. (I don’t mean any of this as a gotcha. You all seem very convinced so presumably you have answers to all this, and I’m genuinely mystified why they’re not forthcoming from anyone on these threads).
I’m not a medic myself but come from a medical family and I know enough to know what sepsis and pneumonia look like. I also know enough to know that, unless there’s good reason to think they’d lie, a doctor and nurse on duty on the same night both giving accounts which match, and which are backed up by their contemporary notes, should probably be trusted.
I also note you’ve simply attacked me and my credentials, instead of actually answering a perfectly simple question. What happened to Child D?
Ok, I accept that for that single point (the x-ray), sepsis fits. However I’m looking for something that fits with the complete clinical picture. I’ve already mentioned the many reasons it couldn’t possibly be sepsis (temperature, O2 sats, pattern of collapses/recovery, rash). So if your theory is sepsis, you need to explain all those things and (once again) why a doctor and nurse with decades of experience between them didn’t realise that’s what it was, and instead say things like “I’ve never seen a baby like that in my life - I couldn’t understand what I was seeing” and “I’ve never seen a rash like that in 20 years of practice”.
Kinda odd things for them to say if it’s something incredibly well known like sepsis, right? Given sepsis has a pretty distinctive rash that presumably they’d identify immediately.
Also, how does a baby *recover from a collapse from sepsis* so quickly that they’re satisfied leaving it alone again?
There’s also the awkward fact the postmortem doesn’t say it’s sepsis either. Awkward for you I mean, given you seem to think the original postmortems are sacrosanct.
Again, sepsis mimics many other conditions, can come up quickly, is often lethal. Maybe, hopefully, this was the first baby with full-blown sepsis they had on their hands. It does not have to show a rash, it can.
Apparently it is hard to find in autopsies unless specifically looked for it. And why would the pathologists ? They found NEC and/or pneumonia already - enough to conclude a cause of death. They had no idea in a future criminal proceedings would take place. Had they had an inkling, maybe they would have looked further.
I have no idea how quickly the autopsies were done after death, whether sepsis disappears when a body is cooled, etc.
Anyway, I can see your theory is a highly experienced nurse and doctor missed the sepsis diagnosis, even though on every hospital you go into in the country there are posters plastered all over the walls warning people not to overlook it, and the chances she in particular had never seen it *in 20+ years*, is insanely small. Let alone that she wouldn’t even have considered it given what a well known threat it is, as you say.
And it was a highly unusual form of sepsis which didn’t affect body temperature, and from which the baby miraculously recovered twice, to a state in which no disease was detectable at all. Including the rash (you really think a septic rash would come *and go* in a matter of minutes? Twice? Also the description of the rash from both parties doesn’t fit with sepsis, etc)
However I’m delighted you admit the people doing the postmortems might have been wrong. You might want to let Richard know about that.
I don’t think it’s a parlour game, and I’m not questioning your sincerity. I just find it incredible that the most basic questions appear to have no sensible answers. Over and out from me.
Dr. Gill is a statistician, not a neonatologist. Dr. Hall is the one with the needed medical knowledge, but he was, for some reason unknown, no asked to testify. Despite him being in the court for most of the trial. The original pathologists, who saw the babies bodies for real, saw no signs of foul play, or mistakes made.
So your answer to the above is “pneumonia” then? Because that’s what the original postmortem said.
Can you find any source anywhere online that links pneumonia with any of the clinical features I’ve described? Thought not.
As for Dr Hall…the only possible reason he wouldn’t be called is because the defense felt his testimony wouldn’t help Letby’s case. That tells you everything you need to know.
You don’t think a doctor and nurse with decades of experience between them might be able to identify pneumonia?
Pneumonia doesn’t cause a rash like that described, and if it did it’s completely implausible highly experienced doctors and nurses would say it was a rash they’d never seen in decades of treating neonates.
Pneumonia doesn’t cause large lines of air in major blood vessels.
A baby with a normal temperature and blood sats at 12.30pm does not die of pneumonia four hours later.
Pneumonia does not cause sudden collapses followed by sudden recoveries, to a point the O2 sats are completely normal again.
All these features were noted as extremely strange *at the time*.
Your suggestion these clinical features fit with pneumonia is far more absurd than Evans’ suggestion.
These are not a parlor games, sorry. As already stated, scientists, neonatal doctors, nurses, etc. should research and evaluate what happened in that ward - unbiased. During the trial only witnesses agreeing with Dr. Evans testified.
I have no idea why Dr. Hall was not called. I also do not understand why other exonerating witnesses were called. I can only surmise that the (local) Solicitor as well as the Barrister (underestimating the complexity of the case) were in over their head.
Dr. Hall is a conscientious scientist so he would have said 'we do not know for sure" and "it could be" because nothing is ever 100% certain. Dr. Evans did not have doubts.
He used a test disclaimed "Not Suitable for Forensic Purposes" just to that end.
Evan’s never said “100%”. In the case of child d (seeing as that’s who we’re talking about) he worded it carefully as, “all the clinical features are consistent with air embolus”. Which they were.
Bohin went even further - she accepted, in front of the jury, that there was “no single distinguishing feature of air embolus”.
So in fact this *was* aired in front of the jury, and they were able to make their own minds up.
In terms of Hall not being called, again I’m open to plausible suggestions that aren’t “because he’d have been detrimental to the defense case”. I’ve yet to hear any. And if in fact he wouldn’t have been, and wasn’t called anyway, then I guess that’s yet another bit of insanely bad luck for Letby.
Funny how she just keeps on getting incredibly unlucky, in completely different ways - this time, an eminent KC suddenly being completely terrible at his job (incidentally his cross examination seemed very thorough to me, so he’s only terrible at things like selecting defense witnesses apparently).
I meant the way Dr. Evans testified in general. (You keep talking about child D.)
He based his ideas about air-embolus on a 4-page talking paper (!) and the last living author of said paper stated that Evan c.s. had interpreted the findings incorrectly.
"The jury was able to make their own minds up". Oh please. None of them had the education, the experience, to be able to give an opinion about the evidence presented.
Her "eminent KC" had never defended in a case as this, he should not have accepted it. He thought he could undermine Dr. Evans by bringing to attention the decision of another Judge, who threw out a report Dr. Evans had prepared and used some very strong language when he did that. It did not work. Myers KC apparently also thought he could imply "another killer" on the ward and make Lucy say something in that regard.
Yes some people have that, a real string of bad luck. The man who stated he would help with Lucy's defense - with knowledge and money - drowned unexpectedly. And no doubt some people proper expertise, were unwilling to speak in Lucy's defense as they feared that would be a bad career move. Or get their car keyed. Or would cause their children being spit on.
I'm a statistician and a lot of the statistical reasoning here sounds sketchy. I'd need to know more to weigh in properly (I deleted my first response to this post, which was too reflexive) but at first blush it sounds like they're making some big errors in their thinking.
The doctors made the first spreadsheet in 2015 or 2016, showed it to colleagues and management and to RCPCH. Brearey brought it to his first meeting with the police. Brearey also selected 30 odd cases for the police: all the deaths and all the cases he and his colleagues had worries about. If you recall, Evans said he easily discarded half a dozen congenital malformations etc. What was left? A stack of about 24 cases with Lucy all over the place.
He might actually be telling the truth that he wasn’t looking at names of nurses. But he saw one name all over the place.
"The doctors made the first spreadsheet in 2015 or 2016, showed it to colleagues and management and to RCPCH. Brearey brought it to his first meeting with the police. Brearey also selected 30 odd cases for the police'.
I'd like to see some evidence for all these claims please.
I'm not going to look for it because I don't need to prove anything. She's got 15 life sentences and is never getting out of prison. If you want to persuade people, you're going to have to provide evidence. You have a track record of making assertions that are not true, as the article above shows, so my heuristic is to assume that anything you claim which doesn't have a source is a lie.
What you ask for has been reported repeatedly. Since you have for this Substack copied and pasted parts of a newspaper article that appeared a few weeks ago, I assume you follow the media, read the newspapers.
Please google this yourself. Dr. Evans changed the story on this a few times, I do not want to provide you with the wrong edition. It is now also known that he used another doctor to help him with the selection.
But if the doctors didn't supply the list, then how do you imaging Dewi choose which cases to look into?
I'm sure you're not suggesting he had a subscription to the Chester Herald that he'd been reading closely for years in anticipation of potentially, one day, being asked to review the deaths of any neonates mentioned in it.
By the way, he lies again and again in his testimony and his TV interviews, but maybe this time he told the truth. But not the whole truth. He has had frequent contacts over many years with members of the gang of four. It’s close to impossible he didn’t know about the RCPCH investigation and its findings. He will of course always deny it so we’ll never know for sure.
Dr. Evans was well acquainted with Dr. John Gibbs, pediatrician at CoCH, since retired. You really believe they did not talk about problems when they met ? Especially in a time when both had no idea this would ever lead to criminal proceedings.
When Dr. Evans heard about the investigation he inserted himself, he has a business after all, enjoys giving testimony in court and "is not afraid of Barristers". (Source: an interview with Liz Hull). Later on he said he was asked by Chester PD. He probably saw it like that, it is just a matter of how you look at it. Perception continues to be an important factor in this case.
I can't speak for Tim but I see no point in discussing something that cannot be proven or disproven with evidence because it is a fantasy of their own making.
I know very online people often think they have 'won' when someone stops replying to them, but in reality it is because that someone has rolled his eyes and sees no point continuing.
Pretty much. Also it’s simply implausible that both men would risk their careers and reputations by lying about it repeatedly to the media, and indeed the court.
The circumstantial evidence of contact is that Evans, Gibbs and Jayaram were all members of the Welsh Paediatric Society, which held its Spring Conference in Chester on 12th May 2017 hosted by Dr Holt from CoCH with presentations from Gibbs and Jayaram. Retired members such as Evans had a special £20 rate.
On 15/5/17 Holt, Jayaram and Brearey met with Cheshire Police and convinced them to launch a criminal investigation. A week later Evans contacted Cheshire Police as it was his kind of case! As circumstantial as the evidence against Lucy Letby!!
Pneumonia, acute lung damage, failure to provide the mother with adequate care for 3 entire days after her waters broke and failure to provide antibiotics killed Child D.
It's an entertaining hypothesis let down only by the total lack of evidence that Evans was at the conference, let alone discussed the Letby case with them. I quickly googled "Welsh Paediatric Society Jayaram" to see where this theory came from and found a YouTube video by a crazy person from Feb 24.
Such is the way disinformation spreads in the internet age. It's telling that people who demand such a high burden of proof of Letby's guilt believe any old rumour when it supports their own position.
In term of this elaborate conspiracy followed by all these doctors lying under oath and to the press and risking their careers for absolutely no obvious reason…desperate stuff frankly. And if you’re going to compare your “evidence” to the Letby evidence…sure, but give us some credit. At least we can prove Letby was in the room. You don’t even know Evans was there.
Your question was "Any evidence that he’d had contact with the “gang of four” prior to his first meeting with the police?"
Membership of the Society is evidence that prior contact is possible in the 2 years after June 2015 - it does not require attendance at the Chester event. Do you think there wasn't any discussion about the CoCH deaths between its members? No elaborate conspiracy is required
So child D died of pneumonia (a perfectly common type of problem in neonates), yet both the on duty doctor and nurse couldn’t explain the suddenness of both collapses and recovery, nor the rash.
Were they both wrong? Incompetent? Imagining the rash? Unable to identify something as basic as pneumonia?
Was the baby miraculously recovering from pneumonia each time in a matter of minutes, and somehow producing then getting rid of a unique rash that nobody on duty had seen before in the process?
Also, *the baby didn’t have a temperature and had O2 Sats of 100% at 12.30am, on the night of its death*!!! And your theory is *death from pneumonia*, 4 hours later? Do you have any clue at all about basic medical facts??
Also, Letby was uniquely unlucky to be the only person in the room each time the collapse happened, even though she wasn’t the assigned nurse?
And for the first time in Owen Arthurs’ paediatric career, pneumonia (as opposed to sepsis) produced a large line of air in a major vessel near the spine?
Not for the first time, we’re talking bad luck (for Letby) of Biblical, cursed proportions. And that’s just for one baby.
So yep, keep coming up with laughable theories and you’ll be laughed it. Like I say, until your suggested disease produces these specific symptoms, and it makes sense that nurses and doctors with decades of experience would miss it (unlike air embolism which is *exactly* the sort of thing they wouldn’t be familiar with and wouldn’t be able to explain), then nobody is going to take this seriously.
Lucy Letby worked more shifts than any of the nurses, because she lived near the hospital and was saving to buy a house. (Looking out over a cemetery, also mentioned as a strike against her by some.)
Because she was one of only three nurses - more experienced nurses had been laid off in years before, when the hospital economized - with additional education re. neonates she was often assigned the most vulnerable babies and called when there was a situation developing.
I don’t put any weight at all on the stuff like “confession notes”, house near a cemetery, Facebook searches etc. incidentally. It’s the testimony of the doctors and nurses on the ground that persuaded me.
I’m actually genuinely open to counter theories that actually engage with that evidence, I’ve just yet to hear any that are remotely plausible. As we’ve seen here, nobody has done so for a single baby.
The cases reviewed were determined by Evans, not by the Police.
Evans: “And I think what was crucial, I think, in our investigation was that I told the police: ‘Send me the notes of every baby who has died. Send me the notes of every baby that has collapsed or deteriorated, between early 2015 and July 2016, emphasising not just the suspicious ones or the ones that could not be explained. I wanted to see all of them.”
If that is because they involve Letby, it would be confirming that her involvement is the only real basis for suspicion, confirming what statisticians are saying. If not, then they should have been explored before a trial sent her to prison.
It is obvious to me that the hospital wanted to put the blame for all the baby’s deaths on someone. Not going thro the process of seeking out all the flaws in this hospital. Whether Lucy is responsible, who knows.
This is so funny: Chris talks about "a small gathering of statisticians". Well, there were about 50 persons at the meeting, and the majority were not statisticians. There were many medics, many lawyers, and many investigative journalists present.
You are perhaps my favourite public intellectual and right about almost everything (except snooker). But you're still not getting it. We don't have to doubt his integrity or his word here, to still raise a quizzical eyebrow.
We need only to note that the Doctors came to police with concerns about Letby, and that police asked him to review cases... selected according to criteria not in the public domain... but presumably involving spectacular sharpshooting.
We know that nine of the deaths in the relevant period were not suspicious and that at least some of these did not involve Letby. Since Evans asked for all the case notes involving deaths to be sent to him, we can rule out the idea that all 32 of the incidents Evans reviewed involved her.
If the pro-Letby case becomes an outright conspiracy theory involving a frame up by doctors, I'm not too bothered as that will have limited appeal to the general public. I have shown that Evans did not cherry-pick the instances involving Letby and that the police went out of their way to ensure that the investigation proceeded without bias or preconceived notions.
Persuasive as ever, Chris. A question I’m interested by - and this isn’t a criticism; I’m genuinely interested by the process - is how you recall reaching the conclusion yourself that Letby was indeed guilty. For my own part, I saw some of the “oh no she wasn’t” posts and found them intriguing; but then your posts here put the case for guilt far better, and I changed my mind. So in my case, you’re the source.
It was just a matter of learning about the case. The more you learn, the more guilty she looks. Unfortunately, a detailed case like this does not lend itself to an easy summary for people who ask stupid questions like "what's the one piece of evidence that proves she's guilty?" as if it were a Miss Marple story.
Has Gill or anyone else actually suggested a plausible illness that might have killed these babies? Let’s take Child D. It would have to be something which:
- causes a baby to collapse *and then also recover* incredibly rapidly, in ways which the on duty doctor said he’d never seen before and “couldn’t make sense of”, 3 times in the space of about 4 hours, the 3rd time leading to its death
- produce a distinctive reddish rash on its torso which a doctor and nurse with decades of experience each said they’d never seen before; a rash which then went quickly as the baby recovered
- produce an x-ray showing a column of air in the baby’s large vessel near its spine which another experienced neonatal doctor said he’d never seen in any other baby outside of a car crash
- somehow this mysterious disease only ever caused these sudden collapses when Letby was alone with the baby, not when anyone else was present (never in front of the assigned nurse, which wasn’t Letby)
The only thing this all fits with is air embolism, administered by Letby. There’s literally an x-ray showing it ffs!
So again, what is this mysterious illness? You can’t just fudge it, it has to fit all the above criteria.
And that’s for *one baby*. There’s similarly compelling evidence for all the others.
Until I see Gill, or anyone else for that matter, accounting for facts like these, on a baby-by-baby basis, in any way which isn’t completely laughable, I’ll continue to treat these truthers with the contempt they deserve.
I mean... the pathologists that originally investigated the causes of death (people actually qualified to do so - unlike Dewi) did, yes, very much "suggested a plausible illness[ess]" in all but one case. Give your Stetson a wobble.
For Letbyists there is only one individual in this story who is infallible: the person who put the cause of death on the death certificates. Everyone else - multiple experts, the doctors, the hospital, the police, the appeals court, the media, Letby's defence, and Letby herself when she agrees with the prosecution - were hopeless. But whoever put down a cause of death, despite having incomplete information and usually not doing an autopsy and not knowing an air embolus from a hole in the ground - nailed it every time (except when they put 'unascertained' or later retracted).
There were three different pathologists involved from Alder Hey Children's Hospital. Maybe it was in all cases the same coroner.
But yes, I am leaning to giving more credibility to pathologists from a renowned children's hospital who saw the real bodies, the real organs, than to a number of experts hired to prove Lucy Letby guilty (no conspiracy, just they testified for the prosecution). Owen Arthurs stated he had done a lot of research/work as a pediatric radiologist. He forgot to mention most of those images were acquired by tomography, not X-rays.
Dr. Evans, in an interview with Liz Hull, "admitted that injecting air in a nasogastric tube is 'utterly bizarre' and something he'd never heard of before. But he added: 'That doesn't mean it can't exist." Nota Bene: On that type of evidence is a woman for fifteen lifetimes in prison.
Again, he could have studied baby Noah - who got a significant amount of air inserted in his stomach, but apparently did not show any sign of air embolisms when his autopsy was done ?
Sort of. But it's Evans that is arguing that there were no possible plausible explanations other than "intentional harm". And clearly people whose job it is to make judgement on causes of death DID think there were other plausible explanations. Spreadsheets aside, pretty much the entire case rests on Evans, so we do need him to be near infallible, or - at the very least - probably mostly right.
Evans had lots of experts backing him up in court and the evidence to prove it. Letby's lawyers could have called the original pathologists but didn't because they would have admitted they got it wrong. Baby A's death was never established at the time. As Tim says in these comments, Baby D's death never really looked like being caused by pneumonia. X-rays showed that Baby E's death wasn't caused by NEC and the doctor who said it was at the time apologised to the parents in court. The underlying cause of Baby P's death was never established at the time. Baby O's death certificate correctly identified liver trauma. Hopefully the Thirlwall enquiry will ask questions about what went wrong with some of the original pathology but I doubt the answers will help Letby's case.
There was no autopsy on baby E, so no one knows whether it would have shown NEC or not. The CoCH doctor apologized during the trial to the parents for not having asked for an autopsy.
I assume that Dr. Evans carefully chose the other experts.
I just found the following, leave it to others with more knowledge about the UK legal system to contemplate it. "In a big trial there is a lot of jostling between parties over what evidence is. The prosecution would try to exclude as much as possible that would be harmful of their case. E.g. by arguing that the RCPCH review and the pathology reports weren't looking for a killer and therefore not relevant."
Hmmm. There's a wonderful experiment in which people if people are show to how someone else has answered a question, they tend to publicly agree with that answer, despite their own private misgivings. But that's one for psychologists, not statisticians, staying in their lane.
Yes, especially if the one making the statement has the senior position, is the more powerful.
This is just complete nonsense. The case doesn’t “rest on Evans”. The crucial information for Child D came from the doctors and nurses on the ground. There’s no reading of that sequence of events which isn’t highly suspicious.
So again, what causes the sequence of events above? I’d be absolutely delighted to see a sensible suggestion, then this massive disinformation campaign might actually make some sense.
So far we’ve had: “sepsis”. KLAXON!! Fail. Doesn’t cause sudden collapses out of nowhere to a baby with a normal temperature, followed by an equally rapid recovery, *three times* in 4 hours.
(How exactly is the baby recovering? And recovering from *sepsis*? Do you even know what sepsis is? How is it recovering from that, back to a completely well state again in a matter of minutes? Is it being cured of sepsis in insanely record time then catching it again?)
Sepsis also produces a distinctive rash which both a doctor and nurse with decades of experience between them would have spotted immediately. Not a rash so odd neither of them had seen in their entire decades-long careers.
Next suggestion?
Tim, with respect, all of this is an irrelevance to the concentric onion rings of sharpshooting confirmation bias.
Whether child D was killed by Letby or not is irrelevant to whether or not Letby is a murderer? Ok I guess.
Oh you want to go with the original postmortem for Child D? Sure, well then we’ve got pneumonia.
But the weird thing is, all the “Letby is innocent” posters below are telling me it was sepsis. So they’re all wrong I guess, as these original postmortems are completely infallible, yes?
The problem is, none of the events fit with pneumonia either. But that’s another story.
Even Owen Arthurs had to admit that "the amount of gas present in Child D's X-rays was consistent with babies that died of sepsis". After this probably correct observation he continued, because he was brought in to strengthen Dr. Dewi Evans theories.
It seems you don't realise that the probably inevitable death of a horribly premature baby has a simple explanation. It is: the baby shouldn't have been born yet, it was going to die anyway. It tries to keep alive, but one thing after another goes wrong, it gets weaker, and opportunistic viruses or bacteria get their chance. Doctors call it "stable" to reassure parents, what that means is that the heart is mostly beating more or less regularly. That's all. Deaths (and non-fatal collapses and crashes) occur at unpredicted moments, especially if there is not one-on-one nursing. Please tell us your medical qualifications.
I don’t need medical qualifications. I am simply referencing the doctor and nurse on duty that night. The baby was not “getting weaker”, as is carefully recorded in the readings, quite the reverse; and Oakley and Brunton *both* say they had never seen anything like that sequence of events, had never seen anything like that rash, and absolutely could not explain what happened with that baby.
But to you it’s all perfectly normal and a straightforward case of pneumonia.
So I repeat, are a doctor and nurse with decades of relevant experience between them, and who are referencing notes they made at the time which fully back up what they’re saying, both completely incompetent, or lying? Because otherwise what you’re saying simply can’t be true.
The CoCH LNU had apparently a habit of overestimating how well a baby was doing. (Ex-CoCH LNU nurses commented about this on Facebook and Reddit.) Lucy sometimes try to warn parents that things were in reality not going that well. It even caused her a complaint from some parents. ("She should have shown more compassion, she knew very well this was my 9th pregnancy after I had eight miscarriages.") And now it is seen as part of her evil, vile mind.
P.S. "Doctor on duty" mostly meant he could be called if there were problems developing. There was no one-on-one nursing. Nurses often looked after two babies, sometimes even three, who could be located in different rooms. Lucy complained about this.
I wonder about the decades of experience, as CoCH had more expensive nurses let go in previous years in its efforts to economize. Another effect was less cleaning (as stated by cleaning personnel).
From Oakley’s testimony:
“ Asked to expand on that, she says: "I haven't seen that rash before on a baby I have looked after. To the best of my knowledge, in my years of neonates (over 20), no."
So she’s either lying or she does indeed have decades of experience.
It's hard for me to express, Tim, how uninterested I am in you take on Baby Epsilon-Theta; Star Date 3021.7; who only became of interest because of galactically stupid leap of logic in the first place.
Just because you’ve decided the crux of the case is statistical doesn’t make it so.
I am equally uninterested in your illiterate claim that the Letby case is a sharpshooter fallacy, and have asked everyone on here to simply account for a single baby’s death. None of them have done so.
OK. Once more. Owen Arthurs: "the amount of gas present in Child D's X-rays was consistent with babies that died of sepsis".
It would be "innumerate", not "illiterate", Tim.
No Neal, I’m pretty sure you making the claim at all is because you’re unable to read and/or comprehend what the Letby case is actually about.
The "car crash" comparison was made for the baby with liver damage.
Interesting how the pathologists who did the original autopsies, did not see this "never seen before" damage. Interesting too how they did not see the air-embolisms on the X-rays, made during said autopsies.
And who was the doctor who "had never seen it before" ? The doctor who did not realize he should not go back and forth from a clinic with CF-patients to the neonatal ward ? The doctor who waited too long to give a baby a needed blood transfusion ? The doctor who could not get a navel line in ? The doctor who did not send a nurse with a nose full of snot home ? The doctor who googled a procedure he had to do in full view of the parents ? The doctor who needed three tries to get a tube in ? Or was it the doctor who was clueless when a breathing tube did not work and thought it was the equipment malfunctioning ? Or was it the doctor who examined a baby and then forgot to put the monitoring equipment back on ?
And if it all fits so nicely with air embolisms, why did Dr. Evans see a need to also bring "insulin poisonings" into the mix as well as "overfeeding" ? (Just asking.)
If you're referring to Baby O, his original post-mortem identified liver damage which caused intra-abdominal bleeding.
As usual you just don’t know the case well enough. The car crash comparison was also made for Child D, by Owen Arthurs. Actually I’ve checked and he also said he’d seen it with babies with sepsis, and for another baby in the Letby case, but in no other cases, and clearly this baby did not die of sepsis.
Otherwise this is all whataboutery. Put up or shut up: what is this mysterious disease that causes this specific patterns of collapses, recoveries, rash and air in the large vessels on x-ray?
Your last comment is hilariously useless. Child *D* fits with air embolism, the insulin cases fit with insulin. Just like with Beverley Allitt by the way, who also attacked with insulin, air embolism and other methods.
Thank you for the correction. Yes, Dr. Owen Arthurs also said that the amount of gas present in Child D's X-rays was consistent with babies that died of sepsis. Why sepsis is so quickly ruled out a a cause of death, I fail to understand.
As I also do not understand why the findings of the original pathologists were overridden so easily. Those doctors saw the dead babies for real during the autopsies. The pathologists who testified during the trial saw X-rays, reports and medical notes. Re-assessing for one or two babies, yes. But for all of them ?
The insulin poisonings was "proven" with a test that had the disclaimer "Not Suitable for Forensic Purposes". Additional testing was advised, but did not happen. Also, samples that go for forensic testing should be transported under certain conditions regarding time, temperature, etc. - which these vials were not.
My comment is not "hilariously useless". Most serial killers keep to one proven method that works for them, but nurse Letby apparently experimented all over the place.
(As you are unable to respond without reverting to insults, I will not react again.)
The baby didn’t even have a temperature. Sepsis without fever? Great theory!
Also, I didn’t insult you, just your theories. Which they deserve.
From Sepsis.Org:
"If you have an infection, your body’s temperature usually rises as it tries to fight off the bug causing the infection. Interestingly, some people see their body temperature go down (hypothermia) instead of up. This is why any change, high or low, can be a sign of sepsis."
"Until I see Gill, or anyone else for that matter, accounting for facts like these, on a baby-by-baby basis, in any way which isn’t completely laughable, I’ll continue to treat these truthers with the contempt they deserve." Sorry but to me this sounds - insulting.
Well the baby didn’t have a low temperature either. So we’ve ruled out sepsis, yes?
Yes, sepsis doesn’t always show a high temperature. As in my daughter her tempature showed as 36.1..I queried this and was told septic shock is when the temperature can drop.
Do you have access to the original medical/nursing notes ?
Oakley and Brunton are the key witnesses, for me anyway:
https://tattle.life/wiki/lucy-letby-case-4/
Of course they may have been at this Welsh Paediatric conference too I suppose…alternatively they’re just reporting what they witnessed on the ground. And none of it fits with sepsis.
Yes, Michael McConville has done exactly what you want: accounted for facts like these, on a baby-by-baby basis, in a way which is utterly plausible, and confirmed by many neonatologists too. Are you a medic? Are you a neonatologist? You seem to be deliberately ignorant. Are you interested in truth, or only interested in suppressing intelligent debate? Truth will out!
Deliberately ignorant why?
If you’re talking about the same Michael McConville from the Letby podcast, I listened to the first episode and found it made a number of the same mistakes Christopher has frequently pointed out. However if there’s a particular podcast from that series that accounts for child D I’ll be happy to listen, quite sincerely.
If you also have detailed responses from other neonatologists confirming they support whatever analysis he gives then, again, by all means link to them. (I don’t mean any of this as a gotcha. You all seem very convinced so presumably you have answers to all this, and I’m genuinely mystified why they’re not forthcoming from anyone on these threads).
I’m not a medic myself but come from a medical family and I know enough to know what sepsis and pneumonia look like. I also know enough to know that, unless there’s good reason to think they’d lie, a doctor and nurse on duty on the same night both giving accounts which match, and which are backed up by their contemporary notes, should probably be trusted.
I also note you’ve simply attacked me and my credentials, instead of actually answering a perfectly simple question. What happened to Child D?
OK. Another try. Owen Arthurs said "the amount of gas present in Child D's X-rays was consistent with babies that died of sepsis".
I already quoted that myself!
Ok, I accept that for that single point (the x-ray), sepsis fits. However I’m looking for something that fits with the complete clinical picture. I’ve already mentioned the many reasons it couldn’t possibly be sepsis (temperature, O2 sats, pattern of collapses/recovery, rash). So if your theory is sepsis, you need to explain all those things and (once again) why a doctor and nurse with decades of experience between them didn’t realise that’s what it was, and instead say things like “I’ve never seen a baby like that in my life - I couldn’t understand what I was seeing” and “I’ve never seen a rash like that in 20 years of practice”.
Kinda odd things for them to say if it’s something incredibly well known like sepsis, right? Given sepsis has a pretty distinctive rash that presumably they’d identify immediately.
Also, how does a baby *recover from a collapse from sepsis* so quickly that they’re satisfied leaving it alone again?
There’s also the awkward fact the postmortem doesn’t say it’s sepsis either. Awkward for you I mean, given you seem to think the original postmortems are sacrosanct.
Again, sepsis mimics many other conditions, can come up quickly, is often lethal. Maybe, hopefully, this was the first baby with full-blown sepsis they had on their hands. It does not have to show a rash, it can.
Apparently it is hard to find in autopsies unless specifically looked for it. And why would the pathologists ? They found NEC and/or pneumonia already - enough to conclude a cause of death. They had no idea in a future criminal proceedings would take place. Had they had an inkling, maybe they would have looked further.
I have no idea how quickly the autopsies were done after death, whether sepsis disappears when a body is cooled, etc.
You seem to think his is a parlor game.
NEC was Child E.
Anyway, I can see your theory is a highly experienced nurse and doctor missed the sepsis diagnosis, even though on every hospital you go into in the country there are posters plastered all over the walls warning people not to overlook it, and the chances she in particular had never seen it *in 20+ years*, is insanely small. Let alone that she wouldn’t even have considered it given what a well known threat it is, as you say.
And it was a highly unusual form of sepsis which didn’t affect body temperature, and from which the baby miraculously recovered twice, to a state in which no disease was detectable at all. Including the rash (you really think a septic rash would come *and go* in a matter of minutes? Twice? Also the description of the rash from both parties doesn’t fit with sepsis, etc)
However I’m delighted you admit the people doing the postmortems might have been wrong. You might want to let Richard know about that.
I don’t think it’s a parlour game, and I’m not questioning your sincerity. I just find it incredible that the most basic questions appear to have no sensible answers. Over and out from me.
Dr. Gill is a statistician, not a neonatologist. Dr. Hall is the one with the needed medical knowledge, but he was, for some reason unknown, no asked to testify. Despite him being in the court for most of the trial. The original pathologists, who saw the babies bodies for real, saw no signs of foul play, or mistakes made.
So your answer to the above is “pneumonia” then? Because that’s what the original postmortem said.
Can you find any source anywhere online that links pneumonia with any of the clinical features I’ve described? Thought not.
As for Dr Hall…the only possible reason he wouldn’t be called is because the defense felt his testimony wouldn’t help Letby’s case. That tells you everything you need to know.
"Can you find any source anywhere online that links pneumonia with any of the clinical features I’ve described". Yes I can. Try Google...
You don’t think a doctor and nurse with decades of experience between them might be able to identify pneumonia?
Pneumonia doesn’t cause a rash like that described, and if it did it’s completely implausible highly experienced doctors and nurses would say it was a rash they’d never seen in decades of treating neonates.
Pneumonia doesn’t cause large lines of air in major blood vessels.
A baby with a normal temperature and blood sats at 12.30pm does not die of pneumonia four hours later.
Pneumonia does not cause sudden collapses followed by sudden recoveries, to a point the O2 sats are completely normal again.
All these features were noted as extremely strange *at the time*.
Your suggestion these clinical features fit with pneumonia is far more absurd than Evans’ suggestion.
These are not a parlor games, sorry. As already stated, scientists, neonatal doctors, nurses, etc. should research and evaluate what happened in that ward - unbiased. During the trial only witnesses agreeing with Dr. Evans testified.
I have no idea why Dr. Hall was not called. I also do not understand why other exonerating witnesses were called. I can only surmise that the (local) Solicitor as well as the Barrister (underestimating the complexity of the case) were in over their head.
Dr. Hall is a conscientious scientist so he would have said 'we do not know for sure" and "it could be" because nothing is ever 100% certain. Dr. Evans did not have doubts.
He used a test disclaimed "Not Suitable for Forensic Purposes" just to that end.
Evan’s never said “100%”. In the case of child d (seeing as that’s who we’re talking about) he worded it carefully as, “all the clinical features are consistent with air embolus”. Which they were.
Bohin went even further - she accepted, in front of the jury, that there was “no single distinguishing feature of air embolus”.
So in fact this *was* aired in front of the jury, and they were able to make their own minds up.
In terms of Hall not being called, again I’m open to plausible suggestions that aren’t “because he’d have been detrimental to the defense case”. I’ve yet to hear any. And if in fact he wouldn’t have been, and wasn’t called anyway, then I guess that’s yet another bit of insanely bad luck for Letby.
Funny how she just keeps on getting incredibly unlucky, in completely different ways - this time, an eminent KC suddenly being completely terrible at his job (incidentally his cross examination seemed very thorough to me, so he’s only terrible at things like selecting defense witnesses apparently).
I meant the way Dr. Evans testified in general. (You keep talking about child D.)
He based his ideas about air-embolus on a 4-page talking paper (!) and the last living author of said paper stated that Evan c.s. had interpreted the findings incorrectly.
"The jury was able to make their own minds up". Oh please. None of them had the education, the experience, to be able to give an opinion about the evidence presented.
Her "eminent KC" had never defended in a case as this, he should not have accepted it. He thought he could undermine Dr. Evans by bringing to attention the decision of another Judge, who threw out a report Dr. Evans had prepared and used some very strong language when he did that. It did not work. Myers KC apparently also thought he could imply "another killer" on the ward and make Lucy say something in that regard.
Yes some people have that, a real string of bad luck. The man who stated he would help with Lucy's defense - with knowledge and money - drowned unexpectedly. And no doubt some people proper expertise, were unwilling to speak in Lucy's defense as they feared that would be a bad career move. Or get their car keyed. Or would cause their children being spit on.
I'm a statistician and a lot of the statistical reasoning here sounds sketchy. I'd need to know more to weigh in properly (I deleted my first response to this post, which was too reflexive) but at first blush it sounds like they're making some big errors in their thinking.
What statistical errors would they be, James?
Is the shift data public?
The doctors made the first spreadsheet in 2015 or 2016, showed it to colleagues and management and to RCPCH. Brearey brought it to his first meeting with the police. Brearey also selected 30 odd cases for the police: all the deaths and all the cases he and his colleagues had worries about. If you recall, Evans said he easily discarded half a dozen congenital malformations etc. What was left? A stack of about 24 cases with Lucy all over the place.
He might actually be telling the truth that he wasn’t looking at names of nurses. But he saw one name all over the place.
"The doctors made the first spreadsheet in 2015 or 2016, showed it to colleagues and management and to RCPCH. Brearey brought it to his first meeting with the police. Brearey also selected 30 odd cases for the police'.
I'd like to see some evidence for all these claims please.
Try looking for it. You are suffering from severe confirmation bias. I am not going to do your Google searches for you.
I'm not going to look for it because I don't need to prove anything. She's got 15 life sentences and is never getting out of prison. If you want to persuade people, you're going to have to provide evidence. You have a track record of making assertions that are not true, as the article above shows, so my heuristic is to assume that anything you claim which doesn't have a source is a lie.
What you ask for has been reported repeatedly. Since you have for this Substack copied and pasted parts of a newspaper article that appeared a few weeks ago, I assume you follow the media, read the newspapers.
Just pop it in the replies then. You saw it and I didn't.
Please google this yourself. Dr. Evans changed the story on this a few times, I do not want to provide you with the wrong edition. It is now also known that he used another doctor to help him with the selection.
This is the crux of it.
But if the doctors didn't supply the list, then how do you imaging Dewi choose which cases to look into?
I'm sure you're not suggesting he had a subscription to the Chester Herald that he'd been reading closely for years in anticipation of potentially, one day, being asked to review the deaths of any neonates mentioned in it.
By the way, he lies again and again in his testimony and his TV interviews, but maybe this time he told the truth. But not the whole truth. He has had frequent contacts over many years with members of the gang of four. It’s close to impossible he didn’t know about the RCPCH investigation and its findings. He will of course always deny it so we’ll never know for sure.
Any evidence that he’d had contact with the “gang of four” prior to his first meeting with the police?
Even if he had seen the RCPCH report (and again, evidence?) so what, given it didn’t mention Letby or any concerns about anyone causing the deaths?
And why not answer my question below? Just as one example: what killed Child D?
Dr. Evans was well acquainted with Dr. John Gibbs, pediatrician at CoCH, since retired. You really believe they did not talk about problems when they met ? Especially in a time when both had no idea this would ever lead to criminal proceedings.
When Dr. Evans heard about the investigation he inserted himself, he has a business after all, enjoys giving testimony in court and "is not afraid of Barristers". (Source: an interview with Liz Hull). Later on he said he was asked by Chester PD. He probably saw it like that, it is just a matter of how you look at it. Perception continues to be an important factor in this case.
Does silence from Tim and Snowdon means they have finally understood the long term connection?
I can't speak for Tim but I see no point in discussing something that cannot be proven or disproven with evidence because it is a fantasy of their own making.
I know very online people often think they have 'won' when someone stops replying to them, but in reality it is because that someone has rolled his eyes and sees no point continuing.
Pretty much. Also it’s simply implausible that both men would risk their careers and reputations by lying about it repeatedly to the media, and indeed the court.
The circumstantial evidence of contact is that Evans, Gibbs and Jayaram were all members of the Welsh Paediatric Society, which held its Spring Conference in Chester on 12th May 2017 hosted by Dr Holt from CoCH with presentations from Gibbs and Jayaram. Retired members such as Evans had a special £20 rate.
On 15/5/17 Holt, Jayaram and Brearey met with Cheshire Police and convinced them to launch a criminal investigation. A week later Evans contacted Cheshire Police as it was his kind of case! As circumstantial as the evidence against Lucy Letby!!
Pneumonia, acute lung damage, failure to provide the mother with adequate care for 3 entire days after her waters broke and failure to provide antibiotics killed Child D.
It's an entertaining hypothesis let down only by the total lack of evidence that Evans was at the conference, let alone discussed the Letby case with them. I quickly googled "Welsh Paediatric Society Jayaram" to see where this theory came from and found a YouTube video by a crazy person from Feb 24.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbZwbw9-nlA
Then a tweet from a Letbyite in May 24 simply asserting that Evans was there...
https://x.com/Overlordmainst1/status/1787088042089468121
Such is the way disinformation spreads in the internet age. It's telling that people who demand such a high burden of proof of Letby's guilt believe any old rumour when it supports their own position.
In term of this elaborate conspiracy followed by all these doctors lying under oath and to the press and risking their careers for absolutely no obvious reason…desperate stuff frankly. And if you’re going to compare your “evidence” to the Letby evidence…sure, but give us some credit. At least we can prove Letby was in the room. You don’t even know Evans was there.
I didn't say he was there!!!!
Your question was "Any evidence that he’d had contact with the “gang of four” prior to his first meeting with the police?"
Membership of the Society is evidence that prior contact is possible in the 2 years after June 2015 - it does not require attendance at the Chester event. Do you think there wasn't any discussion about the CoCH deaths between its members? No elaborate conspiracy is required
How exactly did you prove Letby was in the room?
Letby herself said she was cotside for almost all the deaths and collapses.
Riiiight you didn’t say he was there. You just pointed out he could have attended that event at £20 a ticket…for what reason exactly then?
So child D died of pneumonia (a perfectly common type of problem in neonates), yet both the on duty doctor and nurse couldn’t explain the suddenness of both collapses and recovery, nor the rash.
Were they both wrong? Incompetent? Imagining the rash? Unable to identify something as basic as pneumonia?
Was the baby miraculously recovering from pneumonia each time in a matter of minutes, and somehow producing then getting rid of a unique rash that nobody on duty had seen before in the process?
Also, *the baby didn’t have a temperature and had O2 Sats of 100% at 12.30am, on the night of its death*!!! And your theory is *death from pneumonia*, 4 hours later? Do you have any clue at all about basic medical facts??
Also, Letby was uniquely unlucky to be the only person in the room each time the collapse happened, even though she wasn’t the assigned nurse?
And for the first time in Owen Arthurs’ paediatric career, pneumonia (as opposed to sepsis) produced a large line of air in a major vessel near the spine?
Not for the first time, we’re talking bad luck (for Letby) of Biblical, cursed proportions. And that’s just for one baby.
So yep, keep coming up with laughable theories and you’ll be laughed it. Like I say, until your suggested disease produces these specific symptoms, and it makes sense that nurses and doctors with decades of experience would miss it (unlike air embolism which is *exactly* the sort of thing they wouldn’t be familiar with and wouldn’t be able to explain), then nobody is going to take this seriously.
Lucy Letby worked more shifts than any of the nurses, because she lived near the hospital and was saving to buy a house. (Looking out over a cemetery, also mentioned as a strike against her by some.)
Because she was one of only three nurses - more experienced nurses had been laid off in years before, when the hospital economized - with additional education re. neonates she was often assigned the most vulnerable babies and called when there was a situation developing.
Except she wasn’t even assigned baby D, was she?
I don’t put any weight at all on the stuff like “confession notes”, house near a cemetery, Facebook searches etc. incidentally. It’s the testimony of the doctors and nurses on the ground that persuaded me.
I’m actually genuinely open to counter theories that actually engage with that evidence, I’ve just yet to hear any that are remotely plausible. As we’ve seen here, nobody has done so for a single baby.
How did the police decide which cases to show to Evans?
The cases reviewed were determined by Evans, not by the Police.
Evans: “And I think what was crucial, I think, in our investigation was that I told the police: ‘Send me the notes of every baby who has died. Send me the notes of every baby that has collapsed or deteriorated, between early 2015 and July 2016, emphasising not just the suspicious ones or the ones that could not be explained. I wanted to see all of them.”
"The cases reviewed were determined by Evans, not by the Police."
Who compiled the list of cases that Evans picked from, an how was it compiled, Tex?
In a 13 month span, there were only 32 babies that experienced a collapse or deterioration?
According to Dr. Evans in a more recent interview, there are more incidents from that period he would like to explore.
If that is because they involve Letby, it would be confirming that her involvement is the only real basis for suspicion, confirming what statisticians are saying. If not, then they should have been explored before a trial sent her to prison.
The basis of suspicion for the other investigation is that she is a convicted serial killer.
It is obvious to me that the hospital wanted to put the blame for all the baby’s deaths on someone. Not going thro the process of seeking out all the flaws in this hospital. Whether Lucy is responsible, who knows.
This is so funny: Chris talks about "a small gathering of statisticians". Well, there were about 50 persons at the meeting, and the majority were not statisticians. There were many medics, many lawyers, and many investigative journalists present.
So Lucy Letby was not interested in murdering babies that would die anyway, because of congenital defects etc. That is a new one for me.
You are perhaps my favourite public intellectual and right about almost everything (except snooker). But you're still not getting it. We don't have to doubt his integrity or his word here, to still raise a quizzical eyebrow.
We need only to note that the Doctors came to police with concerns about Letby, and that police asked him to review cases... selected according to criteria not in the public domain... but presumably involving spectacular sharpshooting.
We know that nine of the deaths in the relevant period were not suspicious and that at least some of these did not involve Letby. Since Evans asked for all the case notes involving deaths to be sent to him, we can rule out the idea that all 32 of the incidents Evans reviewed involved her.
If the pro-Letby case becomes an outright conspiracy theory involving a frame up by doctors, I'm not too bothered as that will have limited appeal to the general public. I have shown that Evans did not cherry-pick the instances involving Letby and that the police went out of their way to ensure that the investigation proceeded without bias or preconceived notions.
"Relevant period"
Maaate. C'mon.
Jan 15 to July 2016 if you need it spelling out.
You don't even realise you're doing it!
Persuasive as ever, Chris. A question I’m interested by - and this isn’t a criticism; I’m genuinely interested by the process - is how you recall reaching the conclusion yourself that Letby was indeed guilty. For my own part, I saw some of the “oh no she wasn’t” posts and found them intriguing; but then your posts here put the case for guilt far better, and I changed my mind. So in my case, you’re the source.
Do you recall how you decided?
It was just a matter of learning about the case. The more you learn, the more guilty she looks. Unfortunately, a detailed case like this does not lend itself to an easy summary for people who ask stupid questions like "what's the one piece of evidence that proves she's guilty?" as if it were a Miss Marple story.
For others the more they learn, the more innocent Ms. Letby looks.