3 ms·
Most depressed people don't have strings of deaths following them wherever they go. It is not unexpected of depressed people to blame themselves for bad things
by Intralexical 3y ago
Most depressed people don't have strings of deaths following them wherever they go.
It is not unexpected of depressed people to blame themselves for bad things that happen around them, I think. …For multiple reasons, (1.) because you really do hate yourself that much, and might view those tragic events as also personal failures, and (2.) because for the suicidally depressed, it can be a way to manufacture a reason to believe why you deserve to be hated or physically injured.
IIRC the insulin levels or something were rather suspicious, but in general I sorta can't and shouldn't comment on the validity of rest of the case as a bystander. But when I read about that note in particular, my read on it was that somebody who actually did kill them versus somebody who just feels really bad about the situation and wants to vent in their own private space would write down the exact same thing in the exact same way with equivalent plausibility. She was a nurse, and babies died in her care; it is entirely plausible that, especially if she was already depressed, she would view that as being her fault and find some way to internalize the tragedy even if she didn't actually do anything to cause it.
And, IIRC, Letby did basically say that that was what she meant by the note— So, in sum, an innocent person who had been blaming themselves and a murderer trying to lie their way out of justice IMO would have written down the exact same thing with equal plausibility, and then tried to explain it the exact same way, which means that IMO that datapoint is basically useless for determining her guilt.
There was other evidence presented too, of course. I'm glad to hear that the conviction didn't rest on just that note, because given the situation, we don't actually know in isolation why she wrote that or what she meant by it— Most murderers try to avoid leaving confessions lying around to be used as evidence too.