Jabe

"The case of Baby E is also particularly difficult for sceptics or defenders of Letby." Coffey & Moritz "Unmasking Lucy Letby", page 310 Nope, it's not difficult at all. Let's look at the events described in their book, which uses the same suggested timeline described by Nick Johnson KC in his closing speech. Page 41: "Just before 11 p.m., one of the midwives told the boy’s mother to come down to the unit. Through the window of the intensive care room she could see a crowd around her baby’s incubator." But from the midwife's agreed statement to the trial, it wasn't until 11.30pm that she received that call from the neonatal unit informing her that Baby E had taken a turn for the worse, and asking her to bring the mother down to the unit. In making this statement the midwife referred to the log of that phone call that she made when it happened, and her statement wasn't disputed in the trial. So in his closing speech, why did Nick Johnson KC suggest this happened "just before 11 pm" when it had been logged by the midwife at 11.30pm ? The answer to this lies in the mother's phone call log, showing that she called her husband at 10.52pm, which she said was soon after the midwife asked her to go to the NNU. Both she and the midwife spoke to her husband on this call. But this phone call to the husband could not have been made at 10.52pm if the midwife wasn't called by the NNU until 11.30pm. So why does this matter? It's actually crucial to the case because the mother testified that earlier in the evening she had visited her baby at just before 9pm to find him crying loudly ("more like screaming") and with blood around his mouth. Letby told her that the Registrar had been called and was on his way. The mother's "proof" of the time she visited was the 9.11pm log of a phone call she made to her husband just after this event, which was produced and shown in court. However, Letby's notes recorded her visit as happening an hour later at around 10pm, and Dr Harkness was shown to be there afterwards from the note he recorded at 10.10pm. The allegation was that Letby had attacked Baby E before 9pm, done nothing for an hour while Baby E suffered, and then that she had falsified clinical notes to account for the extra hour. This must have been a horrendous thought for Baby E's mother. But if the 2nd phone call was actually an hour later than the call log apparently showed then the earlier call time would also likely be incorrect. It would place the first call at 10.11pm rather than 9.11pm which would then be consistent with Letby's own notes and testimony, and would invalidate this serious allegation against her. @TimMJoslin and I looked into this and came to the conclusion that the mother's phone call logs had to be in GMT rather than in British Summertime which was current at the time: mobile phone providers always store logs in GMT regardless of the time of year. Cheshire Police may not have been able to verify the call log times as they only have to be retained by providers for 12 months and it would have been well after this by the time the police started their investigation. So how did the Prosecutor get around this? This is what he said in his closing speech: "Just park that time in your head if you would, 22.52, and go to tile 128. Click on that, please, and scroll down. Just before 23:00 hours, here is doctor Harkness' note. He times it at 23:00 hours. Obviously, he's not using a stopwatch. This is the beginning of the final dramatic collapse of Child E, and it coincides, doesn't it, with that telephone call made by the midwife to the father of Child E and F." He says. "Just before 23:00 hours", but how much before 11pm would it have to be for there to be time for the midwife to be contacted, then to speak to the mother, and afterwards to make the call at 10.52pm? Even his own postulated timeline doesn't make logical sense. In the book they write that the mother went down to the NNU after being notified by the midwife "just before 11pm" and "Through the window of the intensive care room she could see a crowd around her baby’s incubator." But the collapse didn't happen until 11.40pm, and the midwife's statement in the trial said she and the mother were both down there at around midnight, she for around 10 minutes. The discrepancies I've highlighted above are real but the actual phone call logs need to be double-checked as confirmation. If proven, the mother may have some relief that her baby did not endure that extra period of suffering and that the doctor did arrive soon after Letby spoke to her. For more details of this timeline with source references see my earlier post below. #LucyLetby