Lucia de Berk: the Dutch nurse who was wrongfully imprisoned for six years

Lucia de Berk, better known to the media as Lucia de B., is a licensed pediatric nurse from The Hague. In 2003, she was sentenced to life in prison for four murders and three attempted murders.

As it turned out later, it was all a big mistake. 

Her case has become one of the most famous miscarriages of justice in the history of the Netherlands.

But… how could something like this happen?

Deliberate incidents or a tragic coincidence?

Let’s set the scene. At the end of 2001, Lucia worked at the Juliana Kinderziekenhuis, a children’s hospital in The Hague.

Her co-workers became suspicious after a baby unexpectedly died of “possible unnatural circumstances” under her supervision.

Tragically, similar incidents had occurred during Lucia’s shifts before. Between September 2000 and 2001, she was present for nine instances of infant death or resuscitation. 

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Though there was no direct evidence against Lucia, the chances of these incidents occurring so frequently were said to be medically and statistically very unlikely. 

How unlikely, you ask? Experts claimed there was just a 1 in 342 million chance. 

Based on this claim, the Juliana Kinderziekenhuis Children’s Hospital decided to press charges against Lucia, and other hospitals in which she had been working over the years supported the decision.

The trial

During her trial at the court of The Hague, the evidence seemed to pile up against De Berk. Besides the statistical unlikelihood of what had happened, her diary became the most important piece of evidence against her.

On the night of one of the incidents where a patient had died, Lucia wrote that she had “given in to her compulsion.” 

However, the final conviction was based on an expert’s statement. The expert claimed that the first victim had died due to a non-therapeutic administration of digoxin. 

He believed that at least one of the victims had died as a result of a crime. 

Based on this evidence, De Berk was eventually sentenced to life in prison for the murders of four patients and the attempted murders of three others on March 24, 2003. She was imprisoned at Scheveningen prison. 

In her appeal in 2004, De Berk also received detention with ‘TBS’ (coerced psychiatric treatment), but the psychological observation unit found no evidence of mental illness.  

De Berk continued to plead her innocence while at Scheveningen prison. She spent five years behind bars before her case was reopened in 2008. 

Wrongfully imprisoned

Over the years, the evidence against Lucia made way for more and more doubt over her guilt. Scientists, professors, and journalists, including Peter de Vries, publicly expressed their support for De Berk. 

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De Berk’s case fell back into the spotlight after new research surrounding the case was published. 

And what did it say? The research doubted the medical and statistical evidence used in the conviction. This was followed by further research and investigations, which substantially undermined the earlier evidence.

Time to reopen the case 

Finally, on October 7, 2008, the Dutch Supreme Court decided to reopen Lucia de B.’s case.

As it turned out, the police investigation was marked by tunnel vision and multiple misunderstandings of scientific evidence:

The statistical evidence presented in court was miscalculated due to biased reporting. The true likelihood of a nurse experiencing what Lucia had gone through in the workplace was actually only 1 in 25.
De Berk’s diary entrance, which had been deemed a “confession”, turned out to be fictional — they were notes intended to use in writing a thriller, De Berk’s daughter explained. 
Although the reports found digoxin in one of the victims, they didn’t rule out the chance that it could be linked to a substance the body produces naturally.

Further investigations finally concluded that all the unfortunate incidents Lucia de Berk had been involved in had occurred naturally.

As a result, during a formal ruling on April 14, 2010, Lucia de Berk was finally acquitted of her life sentence — six and a half years after her initial conviction.

Free at last

Since her release, Lucia de Berk has given many interviews about what happened to her. “I want to warn people, especially nurses: what happened to me can happen to you too,” she says. 

De Berk is no longer a nurse. While she misses the job, she says she can’t do it anymore, mentally or physically. Instead, she gives talks and guest lectures across the country.

Lucia also claims that she holds no grudge over what happened to her. 

Six and a half years after being sued by her employer, she was given a laughable €45,000 compensation from the Juliana Kinderziekenhuis. However, on top of that, she was given an undisclosed amount from the Ministry of Justice — it better have been good.

In April 2014, a movie about the de Berk case came out in Dutch cinemas. It was the Dutch entry for the Oscars in 2014 for Best Foreign Language Film but was shortlisted.

That said, it won the Milan International Film Festival awards for Best Direction, Best Protagonist and Best Editing.

As the end credits of the movie state: “Not a single hospital employee or justice officer has been held accountable for their involvement in the case.”

What do you think of Lucia de Berk’s story? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!

This article was originally published in January 2023 and was fully updated in August 2023 for your reading pleasure.