Dutch nurse denies killing 13 patients in 'angel of death' case

A nurse charged with the murder of 13 people, including four babies and a United Nations judge, proclaimed her innocence yesterday and accused doctors of ignoring warnings that her patients were dangerously ill.

Lucy Isabella Quirina de Berk has been described by Dutch prosecutors as a psychopath "obsessed with death", and is accused of five attempted murders in addition to the 13 killings spread over four years.

The 40-year-old nurse denied allegations that she injected each of the victims with a lethal cocktail of drugs, including morphine, at three hospitals in The Hague, where she worked until last year. She blamed other medical staff or the quality of medical equipment at the Juliana Children's Hospital, the Leyenburg Hospital and the Penitentiary Hospital.

Although the murders are said to have begun in 1997, suspicions were not aroused until September last year when a five-month-old child in her care died unexpectedly just after Ms De Berk finished duty.

According to the prosecution, the nurse decided to kill not only babies, but toddlers and older patients, including a 91-year-old Chinese judge. Haopei Li, an appeals court judge at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, died in hospital in November 1997, allegedly at the hands of Ms De Berk. Several of her alleged victims had serious physical abnormalities or were terminally ill.

Ms De Berk's obsession with death is said to have driven her to no fewer than seven suicide attempts in the past 10 years

The "angel of death" case has provoked massive interest in the Netherlands, with yesterday's hearing taking place in a packed courtroom in front of three judges.

The prosecution of Ms De Berk has also touched something of a raw nerve in a country that became the first in the world to legalise euthanasia under strictly controlled conditions. In April of last year, the Dutch Senate voted by 46 to 28 to enact a law to allow euthanasia and assisted suicides for patients suffering unbearably with no hope of relief.

Breaking her silence over the death of her patients for the first time, Ms De Berk gave her account of the case of a six-year-old Afghan boy, Ahmad Noory, who was mentally and physically disabled and could not speak. He died of a lethal dose of a sleeping medication during her shift at the Juliana Children's Hospital.

"I have a clear conscience. I didn't do a thing," the accused nurse told Judge Jeanne Kalk. "Of course it's strange, but I don't know how it happened.I warned the doctor that the child was very ill and nothing was done," she said. "Nobody did anything when I told them Ahmad had stopped responding and couldn't be woken up."

Prosecutors will outline their case before calling a toxicologist, an FBI profiler and a statistician to testify on the probability that so many patients of one nurse could die in suspicious circumstances.

Ms De Berk spent her teenage years in Canada after moving to Winnipeg, Manitoba, from the Netherlands with her parents, prosecutors say. After working as a prostitute in Vancouver, British Columbia, she was admitted to medical training courses using a fake high school diploma, the indictment. alleges. The nurse is charged with forging school certificates to qualify her for medical training and stealing books from a hospital library, including a book with the title Inside the Skin of the Serial Killer, prosecutors said.

A verdict is expected next month.