Dutch nurse accused of killing children and elderly patients

A former Dutch nurse was charged yesterday with the murder of 14 terminally ill patients – all of them either young children or elderly people.

Lucy Isabelle Quirina de Berk was also charged with the attempted murder of four other people in an alleged killing spree that took place between February 1997 and September 2001 in three hospitals in The Hague and one in Scheveningen.

Her alleged victims include children younger than a year old and nine people aged between 64 and 91.

Ms de Berk, who spent some of her childhood in Winnipeg, Canada has been accused of giving fatal doses of medication and falsifying her school qualifications to enrol as a nurse. She has been in custody since her arrest in December and a district court judge ruled two months ago that she remain behind bars until her trial, due to begin on 17 June.

Earlier this year, the bodies of three of her alleged child victims were exhumed.

Dutch investigators visited Winnipeg and Vancouver late last year to gather evidence.

Ms De Berk, 40, has denied the charges. At an earlier hearing she said: "In the first place, what the prosecutor has said about me is totally untrue. I have never taken, or attempted to take someone's life."

She refused to co-operate with a psychiatric examination saying: "I did not do anything that would justify such an examination and investigation. If I need psychological help, then I will seek it myself."

Her lawyer, Anthony Visser, said: "An unexplained death is not necessarily an unnatural death and that goes for all the cases. That my client was working those days is just a coincidence. There is no evidence of overdoses in those deaths."

The lead prosecutor, Ingrid Degeling, said: "We believe Lucy de Berk is a compulsive liar, that she is attracted and obsessed with death, that she exhibits psychotic behaviour and has narcissistic tendencies."

She also told an earlier hearing that Ms de Berk had attempted suicide several times and had previously worked as a prostitute in Canada and the Netherlands.

She accused Ms de Berk of faking her own death by putting her own obituary in a paper, of telling friends she was attacked by a priest who carved a cross on her chest, and of telling her family a few years ago that she was dying of leukaemia and only had a year to live.

Mr Visser added: "My client is a registered nurse and got her qualifications many years ago at a hospital in The Hague after she left Canada. She completed an internal hospital training schedule and then eventually specialised in children's health."