This is a guest post written by Ms Lucy Turnbull. Her case is complex and cannot be explained better than in her own words. We at Science 4 Justice (NL) have verified the recounted facts as far as is possible. The opinions are Lucy’s. This post follows a post on the general aspects of her case. It is the first of a series of four or five posts, recounting events roughly in reverse chronological order.
This version is posted Saturday, 11 July, by Richard Gill. It is a copy of a post of her own, on her own website https://www.lucyinbetween.com/
(That website was itself financially supported by Science 4 Justice-nl.)
Working backwards – 2026 to 2005
I (Lucy Turnbull) will work backwards in my account of what has happened to me since my son was murdered in 2005, aged only sixteen years old. This is to give you an idea of how I got to the place I am currently in, because without this background you will not understand anything and you will probably think I am crazy or making stuff up. I am not.
My son’s name is (was) Dixie Daniel (Danny) Turnbull and I would post a picture of my wonderful son but the mementos I have of my children are in storage in Edinburgh. I had a hard drive which I carried everywhere with me since 2013. In 2025, it was stolen by a Russian in an asylum camp in Croatia (during my third forced request for asylum refugee status). The hard drive had everything on it and kept me close to my children and my life as a loving mother. Now I only have the storage. Danny was very smart; very, very talented and funny. He could mimic any accent, and he was a comic genius. in my humble, biased opinion, of course. He was very popular at school, and he could be a bit of a rogue, deliberately causing mischief if he felt he or someone else was being treated badly. Good teachers (Sheila Mayberry) could channel that energy into positive things; bad teachers punished Danny for speaking up. He was far more intelligent than many of his teachers.
I believe I instilled this moral attitude in him (fighting injustice) due to the moral battles I had with my disgusting family as a new and young mother (22). Due to my decision to limit their contact with my children, to protect my boys (Around 1991, but I made the mistake of thinking I could control my narcissistic mother, giving her limited and conditional access A mistake that cost Danny his life!). I will try my best not to give these Turnbull narcissists the time of day here and hopefully you will see why when I am finished.
Don’t let that introduction distract you. I am writing this story from multiple perspectives.
From the current situation.
I am living in extreme poverty (living on the generosity of friends who have provided accommodation; food often; but on roughly two to three Euros a day), in Asia, and only manage to feed myself and have a roof due to the kindness of Science for Justice, Netherlands and Professor Gill. This poverty is as a result of persecution and being denied asylum in Switzerland, Croatia and Bosnia (a two-year journey – Oct 2023 to Aug 2025). It is not as a result of being mentally incapable or incapacitated. On leaving Switzerland (Dec 2024) I translated a book and left with one thousand Euros, which would have set me up somewhere else, if I had had my passport. So, my current poverty is also as the result of having my passport kidnapped by Switzerland who kept it even, after I left Switzerland, for an additional eight months, after repeated lies and illegal demands from them, saying:
You can have your passport if you agree to leave and give us tickets. We did; they still refused.
After they refused to follow that rule, they then said, to a very expensive Swiss lawyer:
You can only have your passport if you supply us with tickets PLUS show us that you have a one-year residency visa (an impossibility without your passport).
You can read about this on my website, kindly paid for by Science for Justice: www.lucyinbetween.com Here is the letter in French.
I left Switzerland on foot as a result. Crossed European borders, all the way to Serbia, on my own, without a passport. One of their stipulations was that I was to leave the Schengen area – again I complied and again they denied my passport in Sarajevo. The Swiss government only agreed to return it after Professor Gill asked them for it.
So, after claiming they would only return it to me after I submitted tickets and a residency visa, they then sent it to Professor Gill, in another country to me, without any explanation at all. They sent it because they were afraid of Richard Gill, not because I was not making valid arguments, or that my Swiss friends were not making valid arguments, or because I was not complying with their illegal demands, but because Richard has status, connections, influence and is not afraid to challenge those in power.
The (correct) perception of Professor Richard Gill, to be able to ‘see things more clearly and objectively’ is, in my opinion not just down to his above average intelligence, but also mainly down to his status, record of success and his morality. However, a society built on status is one which looks to status for answers and forgets about being humane sometimes. My status was removed from me. My knowledge, wisdom and personal experience, even my qualifications were questioned. I was treated, without evidence as a liar. It was/is persecution.
Perception has come into sharp focus for me since 2020 and I have gained insights into the fallibility of human perception due to these sudden and dramatic changes in my status. These changes were not due to changes in my personality but due to my status and personal history, being denied and twisted (misrepresented) and a character assassination by the British State (FCDO; Police Scotland; IPT Court in London and Edinburgh), who have used every means possible to try and silence me!
Professor Gill
I asked Professor Richard Gill (a one in a million person whom I managed to get the attention of, miraculously) because his Netherlands Not for Profit and his history demonstrated to me that he has excellent tenacity (stubbornness – a value and character I also hold), unusual compassion and objectivity of the highest scientific kind (though he has made some serious errors in his public assertions, which he has apologized for and I forgave him). I knew all of this because of his past achievements, which are multiple and correctly documented. A lot of my story, I believe, is down to people with similar status, influence and reach to Richard Gill but with less integrity; and my story is mainly about corruption of many kinds.
Switzerland is as corrupt as the UK.
As I write about my recent experiences, from 2020 to today, I want you to be aware as I write that my child was murdered, that no state actor (police, Judge Colin Boyd, the Crown and Prosecution Service of Scotland (COPFS)) gave the slightest bit of concern concerning the murder of my child or for the rights of my other, ten-year-old son, to be treated with dignity and respect. Losing a most cherished and loved brother, his idol, at ten years old, devastated my sensitive and gentle son. It also ruined our relationship when his father decided, at 17 years old, that he wanted to be a ‘family man’ and persuaded a naïve and kind child to live with him and his new wife, to prove to her he was a ‘responsible parent’. A largely sudden change of character!
We had had an argument, a very rare thing between myself and my youngest son. And then he left. He was 17. I have seen him twice since then. I went searching for him and found him twice. HE refused to speak to me, walking away from me, saying nothing. He is 32 years old this year. His teenage years and his time growing into a man, was also taken from me, by his nasty father. I was denied the very basic right to watch both my precious boys from growing up. Danny from aged 16 and my other son from aged 17. I sacrificed everything for my children and gave them everything. That relationship is now irreparable.
What was my life as a mother about? To support murderers? To support abusive fathers who only turned up when it was convenient for them? To support an abusive, sadistic, and incompetent justice system? To support bent judges? To simply shut up or be what – locked up, silenced? All of these.
But, as I said, don’t let the story of my murdered child let you think this is all this series of blog posts is about. That would be wrong. My story is about corruption, devastation caused by corrupt, immoral and sadistic people in power and sadism from the same people. It is also about how these people stalked me around the world, looking for reasons and ways to silence and destroy me. People who are supposed to do the opposite of that – restore justice!
Danny’s murder was deliberately covered up, and I knew this from the moment I was told he was dead by the youngest police officers they could find (deliberately chosen I believe to demonstrate a lack of respect to me as his mother). This is a pattern I have seen towards me from Police Scotland and Colin Boyd for 21 years – in Edinburgh and in his now new post as Vice President of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. The lengths they have gone to try to shut me up will be unbelievable to you.
It wasn’t through a lack of effort on my part to try to hold these people to account after my son was murdered. His murder was covered up. I was refused an investigation. I was denied absolutely any reason from Judge Colin Boyd, who felt no moral compulsion to explain why no Fatal Accident Inquiry would take place into the sudden death (an insulting term – MURDER) of my sixteen-year-old boy. We were deliberately brutalized by the system. Me. The mother and only parent of my first child. The only parent who was there from birth to death. The only one. Alone. The only parent who was there for his devastated little brother. His brother was deeply hurt, and I am confident it shaped his personality as a man. My youngest son’s mostly absent father, went on holiday on the day of Danny’s funeral and told him: Not to cry! So, he abandoned his only son when his son needed him the most.
As a single parent, for the most part, from 1989 to 2005 (until 2011 – 22 years), I bought my house, got a Masters’ Degree in Sociology, did a CELTA, worked all the time around my children’s school times, worked for the Scottish Government whilst studying at Edinburgh University. For my boys. Three months after I did my first CELTA, in 2005, someone murdered my son. I believe they did it out of jealousy, and I believe they did it because I was trying my best to leave Scotland with both my children.
To be happy.
As a result of this brutal and callous cover up, I decided to wait! Wait for the right moment, when I thought i would safe, where I could start to write. That place was China, in 2022, seventeen years after my son was murdered. I waited seventeen years.
But this isn’t a story just about the most devastating thing a parent can experience. The death, or even worse, the murder of their child. This is about much more than that. This is also about Judge Colin Boyd, who was the Procurator Fiscal of Scotland in 2005. It is also about the Investigative Powers Tribunal (IPT) who used my son’s murder to try to silence me in 2022 and 2023 (I was the plaintiff).
It is ‘known lies‘ that have been written about me by those in the justice system which are intended to cause harm, and that is one of the reasons I got in touch with Professor Richard Gill. His campaign for Lucy Letby, a completely innocent person, and the lies told to parents that their children were murdered, share parallels with my own life story about how a corrupt system intentionally destroys the lives of innocent people because they challenge authority and the status quo (the preferred narrative). What is happening to Lucy Letby is a story of brutality. In my opinion, deliberate, sadistic persecution for the benefit of those in positions of power, including and especially, JUDGES and POLICE. I escaped; Lucy did not.
This is about my exposure to widespread corruption involving the IPT Court, the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) and multiple embassies around the world (I left the UK in 2013) circulating disgusting, baseless, dangerous lies which I believe started with Judge Colin Boyd in 2005 and continued with Boyd in the IPT court in 2022. Lies he used, and I am absolutely confident, intended to use, to silence me whenever or if ever I became a ‘problem’. It is also about the complicity of the City of Edinburgh Council and ‘experts’ employed by the FCDO.
To give you some idea about how long and how bad this got, I requested political asylum in Switzerland (the biggest mistake I ever made), in October 2023, just after my attempted IPT Appeal in the Scottish Inner House of the High Court (which was refused). I asked for asylum on the solid basis that I was being persecuted for exposing corruption in the justice system, global corruption involving the Barzanis of Kurdistan, Iraq and in the US courts. The lies which became far more visible to me when I was in China, when I began to be asked questions about these lies, openly, by HR in the Chinese University I worked for in Beijing.
I requested asylum on the basis many asylum seekers do, except I had legal evidence and I provided it:
I was being persecuted, silenced and denied my right to legal defence and told I had no more human rights (officially – in the IPT court’s official refusal to grant me an appeal against the IPT Decision that ‘Nothing illegal took place’ regarding the surveillance I was put under by Police Scotland after I returned from Iraq in 2020) and that I could not appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. My ‘right to appeal ends here (Judge Colin Tyre)’, in Scotland, in 2023.
Tortured in Switzerland on behalf of Starmer and the FCDO
I was deliberately tortured in Switzerland, on behalf of the British FCDO, Sir Keir Starmer and Police Scotland and in complicity with every single foreign minister from October 2023 to this very day. Every single foreign minister is aware of what has happened to me, is complicit in not stopping it and is now complicit in supporting the lies the FCDO have circulated about me and are still circulating about me. The FCDO, along with Foreign Ministers and Prime Ministers, are the only people who have far enough reach (through embassies) to ruin someone’s life like that, globally. I will provide the evidence as I retell my story, some of which is already available on my website: www.lucyinbetween.com.
Foreign Ministers in the UK – Oct 2023 to August 2025.
Switzerland refused me asylum, on the basis that, ‘the UK has a functioning justice system where I can challenge false assertions made about me’. This assertion was concretely disproven to me in asylum interviews in Switzerland and when the nice immigration officer first interviewed me for three hours, around November 2023.
Instead of asking me why I was seeking asylum, she interviewed me as if I was guilty of something, on behalf of Police Scotland, who never interviewed me when my son was murdered. Police Scotland asked them to follow a line of questioning to try to traumatize me and to let me know they could harass me wherever I went. This is their MO. They got Swiss immigration to ask questions they should have asked when my son died but the questions were along the lines of:
You are guilty of neglect or abuse.
You did not raise your own children.
Your ‘family’ raised your children.
What kind people they are!
Both your children are dead!
(This was the same line of questioning I had from an HR woman in China, in 2022, a year after I left Scotland (in the middle of the pandemic and at a cost of over 3000 pounds to me) and started a new job, and after Jeremy Balfour told me I had been secretly (and therefore illegally) put on a VPD (Vulnerable Persons Database) after trying to report Barzani crimes. The police officer committed malfeasance by committing fraud. I made a Subject Access Request as soon I Jeremy Balfour told me this and Police Scotland refused it, on the basis: it was part of an ongoing investigation.
This turned out to be the weaponisation of mental health legislation by Police Scotland. This document was used to torture me in Switzerland and was circulated to every country I have been to, since 2023. Making assertions about the mental health of a woman who has complained about a police officer(s) being misogynistic and abusive, was done secretly; he lied about me giving him consent; and they then circulated this ‘widely’ claiming I consented.
Because a lot of mental health theory is pseudoscientific and therefore difficult to disprove, and because he claimed I ‘knew about what he had done and gave consent’ everyone who read it thought I was a liar! They thought I knew what they knew because he claimed I gave consent! It is/was impossible to challenge. It becomes ‘He who has power controls the narrative’. His intention was to slander me in order to make me look less reliable, credible and to undermine me. He ruined my career which was built on being a very honest, caring, professional woman, internationally with deep integrity.
The lies they (Police Scotland; the FCDO; Starmer) would have told Swiss immigration to follow that line of questioning are very obvious. They followed the lies the IPT made about me; Colin Boyd made about me (in 2005) and Police Scotland, more recently in 2020 (when I returned to make an official record of Barzani’s crimes) made about me.
‘Your son died this morning!’ October 2005
Police Scotland, in 2005, when my eldest child died, did not interview me or even speak to me except to tell me – your son died this morning (I asked them not to say anything and to write it down because I could not hear the words I knew they were about to tell me. Police do not come to your door in that manner except to tell you of a death. It was the third death I was informed of in five years. By two stupid police officers.) What police Scotland did after this, in 2021 was so brutal and the horrendous lies they told, which they then circulated to China, destroyed my happiness. The deliberate sadism destroyed my happiness, and it still takes my happiness, which I worked hard to gain. It was not easy. I had to leave the UK to do so in 2013.
Only once, when I tried for a third time to make a missing person report about my son in 2021 (which they eventually accepted) did Police Scotland apologise for the way they handled that request. Are Police Scotland competent at anything but messing people around, lying, being misogynistic, obtuse and subverting legal processes to protect citizens’ rights? A police officer deliberately left a recorded message on my phone saying:
Who the fuck does she think we are?
If her son left her when he was a kid, she has no right to know where he is. What the fuck are we supposed to do! Eh! (along those lines)
(Why did he think I did not raise my own children? Who told him that?)
His abusive message was recorded in my voice messages, which they tried to deny. Only because of this did they ‘apologise’. They did not even acknowledge my other complaints and tried to remove the word ‘misogyny’ from the one they did (partly) reply to.
Allied relationship – supporting each other.
So, when the British state (FCDO, prime minister, Boyd, Police Scotland) realized I was in an allied country asking for asylum on the basis of persecution, they asked Switzerland to ask me questions the Scottish Police had not asked in 2005, in order to claim: We asked these questions. Look, we have the facts correct (gained illegally from the Swiss). (Swiss immigration have refused to release all of my asylum file – this is illegal under Swiss law. They have refused to send the transcripts of the interviews – two interviews.)
No doubt Police Scotland have destroyed everything that contradicts their true behaviour, since 2005, when they denied me an interview and denied me an investigation, as the mother of a murdered child! They will have replaced it with some of the facts, which they obtained illegally, and did so in a very insensitive way, in an interview where I am asking for protection from their persecution.
It is global corruption. Asking one state to interview someone who has never been accused of a crime, when that person is asking for protection, goes against all asylum rules. Switzerland was in constant contact with the UK, and I was told this repeatedly, by multiple Swiss state actors. The UK (Police Scotland, the IPT court, Boyd and Tyre, and the FCDO) was being deliberately embarrassed and exposed by me and the response was to try and silence me, again. I went to Switzerland to ask for protection and to deliberately expose their corruption. Their communications, lies, stupidity (I believe this is their biggest shame to them – not their obtuseness or incompetency – idiocy) and my evidence, were exposing their barbarity. They were desperately trying to ‘recover their reputation’, manipulating the Swiss government by claiming it was ‘for my own good’, whilst deliberately traumatizing me by forcing the Swiss to interview me about the most devastating event of my life, eighteen years after denying me justice, when I was asking for asylum on the basis of the current sadistic treatment and denial of my human rights. I had no opportunity to defend myself because I was not being openly accused of anything because they were subverting the rule of law and getting an innocent immigration officer, in another country, to interview me about a murder!
How more illegal can it be?
I answered the questions in the first Swiss interview on the basis that this was a private immigration interview and I described my feelings and how it affected me. I did not describe what actually happened because I was not told the interview was part of a ‘police investigation’, which it was! I was being set up!
No doubt they claimed, which is a generous idea on my part, that this was to get to the bottom of things, for ‘my own good’. It was not. At the end of the first interview, I asked the Swiss immigration officer why they had not asked me why I was asking for asylum and only then was I granted a real asylum interview! The Swiss were complicit from the moment I entered Switzerland.
In the second interview, the British sent a British spy, and she tried to change my statement! Right in front of the immigration officer – this will be recorded in the official record, which as I said, has been refused to me by Swiss Immigration!
This refusal has resulted in the ECHR denying me the opportunity to submit an ECHR submission on the basis: You must exhaust all avenues in the originating country.
This is not possible if the institutions in originating countries refuse to respond, refuse to give the information and you have nothing to represent to the ECHR to comply!
The ECHR is just another level of corruption it seems.
Swiss judge: The UK has a functioning justice system.
The claim that the UK has a functioning justice system is farcical for anyone with half a brain.
The UK does not have a functioning justice system. I used all available means available to me, without the right to legal counsel in the IPT case and appeal; because Colin Boyd (who had moved from the Scottish courts to the IPT Court) did not even invite me to the court (again, he silenced me)’ and because I did not have hundreds of thousands for the privilege of a legal expert on the Appeal and could not find one willing to represent me. By the time I got to the IPT Appeal request I was financially ruined (the only way I could actually pursue an appeal in fact) – I believe this was the intention; I had had to return from China (I was stalked all the way by anonymous Scottish police officers on social media) and had to request temporary accommodation from the City of Edinburgh Council. I had to live in the most vomit covered (literally), tobacco-stenching, dope-smelling, drug-addict, alcohol-addict filled council accommodation maintained by aggressive and abusive, highly paid landlords for three months, while I wrote and submitted my appeal. Without social assistance. Almost impossible conditions. Deliberate, as intended by Alastair Jack, the Conservative Secretary of State, who knew who I was and would absolutely have known I was returning to Scotland. As I said, I worked in the Scottish Government and Parliament. I know what communications are passed and I know how! I also worked and campaigned for the Scottish National Party, before it became so depraved and corrupted.
But I did it. I submitted a detailed and coherent appeal – it is on my website (www.lucyinbetween.com).As I said, I was denied any kind of social financial support, even though I paid tax all my life in the UK. I went on hunger strike as a temporary protest and was told by the council social fund: We will not give you money for food because it is your choice not to eat.
I was told I had no official right to any financial support on the basis: You do not normally reside in the UK.
My life was deliberately being made hell, and I was forced also to start another court case against the Secretary of State who responded after two months in the UK: It was a mistake. You are entitled to support as a British citizen!
Did they offer compensation for this deliberate ‘mistake’?
They were trying to break me and destroy me. The system is designed to de-incentivize and break your will.
So, during this time (July 2023 to October 2023), under this duress, I still learned, by myself, how to submit an appeal. This demonstrates my strength of mind, under extreme duress, which the FCDO had repeatedly questioned, and still do, since I started to write about corruption in Iraq, in 2018. The extremes this inevitably took, whilst in Switzerland, will be detailed in another blog. This was their intention. This is what persecution is: character assassination.
I could not find a lawyer to represent me for the appeal. The frequent response was: We have no expertise in this subject (the first IPT appeal request in Scotland). So, I successfully submitted an appeal request by myself. Went to meet Judge Colin Tyre, who immediately said to me: You cannot discuss anything that happened after your IPT Court secret case decision in Dec 2022 and denied me an Appeal against the decision (‘nothing illegal took place’). In other words, even though I had written a detailed report detailing what the FCDO and British Embassy in Beijing did to me in China (and Iraq), and my court case in China (again, I was plaintiff), in my appeal, he did not want me to discuss the incompetence of the IPT judges in front of witnesses in Scotland. He did not want a verbatim record of me stating what he knows I know, clearly and concisely in a court. Again, he wanted to cover up for his mate (Colin Boyd), the police and the FCDO. Both Boyd and Tyre, joined the Scottish High Court at the same time, so of course both know each other, intimately!
It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.
‘COPFS – We do not keep the records of the ‘sudden death’ of sixteen-year-old children from 18 years ago!’
When Danny died, I made requests to the COPFS to ask why they were not investigating the murder of my son. No reason was given. (Boyd’s flippant response is in one of my badly written books on KDP). A book written with the intention of reporting the facts of my childhood. It wasn’t written from the heart. It wasn’t written for therapeutic reasons – I got over the shitty childhood in Scotland like the majority of women in Scotland get over the misogynistic, shitty childhood we had. In fact, when Danny was 3-5 years, I was involved in a magazine which was specifically campaigning on behalf of children in Scotland – I had gotten over it so much I was a campaigner for those without a voice!
(This last point is very important when I tell you what happened to me in Switzerland and how the FCDO illegally obtained a document, from someone in Switzerland after I left. A document which was destroyed by a Swiss judge, in front of seven witnesses, which the FCDO then circulated globally to try to make me look like an unhinged, pathological liar and to stop me getting asylum protection anywhere.)
So, after leaving shitty Scotland in 2013 I was forced to return, in 2023, because of the stupidity and corruption of idiots in Scotland and the UK.
In 2023, when returning briefly to challenge the IPT decision, I, again, made requests for the documents related to the investigation into the decision by Judge Colin Boyd and was told by the COPFS: We do not keep the records of sudden deaths of sixteen-year-old boys in Scotland. Your criticism of us and your emails could be considered abusive!
The source of all of this grief, cover up, corruption, abuse of power and persecution is Judge Colin Boyd, which started in 2005, at the most devastating time of my life, and continues to this day. My poverty and situation are the result his moral degeneracy, incapacity and corruption. It is not as the result of a malfunction on my part. I am being persecuted for telling multiple, global truths.
Boyd abused his position of power to cover up the murder of my sixteen-year-old boy, and he knows that I know. That is enough motive for Boyd to stalk me, ruin me and try to have me permanently silenced. His whole career would be tarnished, again. In fact, multiple people in Scotland want me to ‘shut up’, because no doubt their careers were largely influenced by their behaviour and lies during the cover up of my child’s murder. And now! I have no doubt the murderer(s) and those who covered it up have not had their careers interrupted and would put money on the fact some of them are still in the City of Edinburgh Council and may now be at the very top of the money tree.
The City of Edinburgh Council, in their infantile, narcissistic and psychotic way, still stalk me around the world, claiming their behaviour is: routine, normal and not specifically for me. But they still refuse to answer FOI requests about their behaviour so I can compare it to the way they treat other people they retain inaccurate information about.
IF there was any justice in the UK and IF, the justice system actually worked.
IF he/they cared, which he/they do not.
I believe Boyd is a psychopath and an extremist, British Nationalist. If you look at the multiple, high-profile miscarriages of justice he has been involved in, which are cases like mine involving criticising the justice system and state police. I am absolutely sure is willingly involved in right now (as VP of the IPT), you can see his corruption and callousness is encouraged by a state which continues to employ him.
Just another example of a dysfunctional and morally corrupt justice system.
Next post coming soon…