Lucy Letby, The Angel of Death

Even now, deeply affected as I struggle to comprehend and write about what Lucy Letby was accused, prosecuted for, and convicted of doing, I ask myself two questions, How could she do it? and How could she get away with it?

Let me make one thing clear from the start, Lucy Letby was no Angel, she just pretended to be one. And what she did was nothing less than fully conscious, pre-meditated, deliberate, out-and-out, malicious evil. However, that was not the image that she portrayed.

Lucy was a qualified nurse who was apparently dedicated to her job in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital. What’s more, she had impressed people with her quiet demeanor and polite manners. She came across as the last person you would ever suspect of the crimes that she committed. Even one of the doctors who raised the alarm as to what was going on exclaimed in disbelief “Oh no, not nice Lucy.”

The more I think about it, I realize that the main reason she got away with murdering seven newborn babies and attempting to kill ten more, was that nobody in senior management wanted to believe what she was suspected of doing. This was a classic case of people preferring to accept a lie, rather than believe that anybody could be capable of such a horrendous series of crimes.

The truth of the matter was so unpalatable to those senior managers that they chose to admonish those doctors who tried to alert them as to what was going on. The Director of Medical Care at the hospital, Ian Harvey, along with the hospital CEO, Tony Chambers, even demanded an apology from the doctors making accusations about Lucy for besmirching her character. Even worse, Harvey was seriously contemplating reporting the doctors to the General Medical Council (GMC) for their treatment of Lucy Letby.

Ian Harvey has a previous history of not doing his job properly in 2018. According to the BBC, Home “misled the public in media statements”, encouraged “an atmosphere of secrecy and fear” and failed to act “appropriately or in a timely manner” when consultants raised concerns.

Harvey has recently denied suggesting reporting doctors to the GMC in the Lucy Letby case. Furthermore, in a somewhat bizarre act of irony, Harvey is now accusing the very doctors he silenced, of not pressing him harder for an investigation into the extraordinary rise in infant deaths at the hospital. This, quite frankly, beggars belief.

All that being said, one has to ask what the root cause of a lack of appropriate action at the time was. Personally, I believe that there were three very fundamental factors at play here. Cognitivism, confirmation bias, and a lack of critical thinking

Cognitivism is a mental process whereby the human brain reacts to any information it receives. It is a process in which things are categorized according to their characteristics. So music goes into a music file, and a good restaurant goes into a good restaurant file.

A nurse goes into a file for caring, medical, professional people. It would be highly unlikely that a nurse would go into a serial killer file. For this reason, Lucy Letby would have been seen as a caring, nurturing type of person, an angel even. And it would be very difficult for anybody to accept and believe anything other than Lucy Letby was a good person.

The other root cause of inaction was what is called confirmation bias. This is a process whereby we look for information that confirms our biased narrative, ignoring anything that suggests the contrary. So for example, if we believe that the musical legend Elvis was an honest person, which we may only believe because we liked his music, we will fight against anything that dares to suggest that he was dishonest.

In the case of Ian Harvey and CEO Tony Chambers, they allowed themselves to be led astray by their cognitive processes and by their desire to look for confirmation bias in favor of Lucy Letby. She was a young, attractive female, well-mannered, apparently dedicated to caring for her patients, and a highly professional, almost angelic, nurse. The very idea that such a person could be a serial killer of vulnerable newborn babies would have been abhorrent to Harvey and Tony Chambers. Indeed, so abhorrent that Harvey sought to protect Lucy Letby from those doctors who had become suspicious about her.

What Harvey and Chambers ought to have done was to ignore their cognitive processes and confirmation bias, and instead, they should have applied impartial, critical thinking to the information being given to them in good faith by the doctors under them.

What had raised the doctors’ suspicions was that there had been an extraordinary rise in newborn deaths. And it was noted that Lucy Letby was present at each and every death! At the time, Harvey put Lucy’s constant presence down to coincidence. And, the infant deaths were attributed to other, medical possibilities. This is a classic case of confirmation bias.

Eventually, doctors went to the police, against senior management orders, of their own volition, and an investigation was launched. During the medical investigation, it was noted that the baby deaths had been due to the introduction of substances, such as insulin, into the babies’ bodies.

Insulin is a naturally and pharmaceutically produced substance. The important difference between them is that naturally produced insulin contains something called Peptide C, but the injected, pharmaceutical variant does not. A simple blood test revealed that at least one baby had unusually high levels of insulin without Peptide C, meaning that it was injected!

Upon further investigation, at Lucy Letby’s home, amongst a pile of medical records, police found incriminating handwritten notes where Lucy had expressed her feelings in a way that suggested a sense of guilt in the babies’ deaths. So Lucy Letby’s guilt is provably certain.

As for Ian Harvey and Tony Chambers, they will have to live with the fact that their cognitivism, confirmation bias, and lack of critical thinking, all allowed Lucy Letby to return to work, after a period of suspension, and kill more babies.

As for why Lucy Letby did what she did, I’m afraid only she can explain that. Who knows what goes on in a twisted mind? However, since Lucy is buried in deep denial, up to the crown of her misguided pretty little head, and is insistent that she is not guilty, we may never get to the bottom of why she felt compelled to kill those innocent babies. She has the rest of her life to ponder upon that taxing conundrum.