Nurse accused of 13 murders goes on trial
A Dutch nurse accused of murdering 13 patients, including a two-month-old baby and a UN war crimes judge, went on trial today for allegedly injecting her victims with lethal drugs.
Prosecutors will outline their case before calling a toxicologist, an FBI profiler and a statistician to testify in the first round hearings in the trial of Lucy Isabella Quirina de Berk.
“We called in the FBI because they have more experience with this sort of case,” said prosecution spokesman Evert Boerstra. “A case about multiple killings in the health care sector.”
A court clerk read out the case after the defendant and three judges entered the packed public gallery.
The most serious crimes alleged in her indictment were committed after 1997, but she also faces lesser charges for allegedly forging documents that date back to 1992.
De Berk was arrested in December and charged with 13 counts of murder and five attempted murders. She denies the allegations.
A statistician will today evaluate the mathematical probability that de Berk’s involvement in 13 fatal cases could have been a coincidence.
A toxicologist will explain how de Berk, over a period of more than four years, allegedly gave her victims small but deadly doses of morphine, potassium or medication.
In March, investigators exhumed the bodies of three infants initially believed to have died of terminal illnesses. They found traces of poisonous toxins in their blood.
A criminal case was opened shortly after a colleague accused de Berk of involvement in the death of a two-month-old baby.
Shortly afterwards, the autopsy of a five-month-old infant, also in de Berk’s care, indicated foul play.
De Berk, aged 40, was indicted in May for the series of alleged murders at three hospitals between February 1997 and September 2001.
At the time, prosecutors described her as a classic psychopath “obsessed with death”.
The suspect’s lawyer says there is little evidence and not a single witness, but prosecutors argue that their case is complete. Among the proof: A book on serial killers found during a search of her home.
De Berk spent her troubled teenage years in Canada after moving from the Netherlands with her alcoholic parents, prosecutors said.
After working as a prostitute in Vancouver she was admitted to medical training courses using a fake school diploma, according to her indictment.
A number of her alleged victims were children born with serious physical abnormalities and several terminally ill patients, initially believed to have died naturally.
One of them was a 91-year-old Chinese judge at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal who died in November 1997 after a short illness. He was due to retire later that month.
“If she says it’s not true, then I believe her,” said De Berk’s daughter, speaking with her image blurred to protect her privacy.
“It’s like they are trying to blame her for every mistake the hospital has ever made.”
