Nurse gets life for murder of patients

A DUTCH nurse was sentenced to life in prison yesterday for murdering three children and an elderly woman in her care by giving them lethal doses of drugs in The Netherlands’ biggest murder trial in recent history.

Lucy de Berk, 41, was also found guilty of attempting to murder two more children and another elderly woman. But she was cleared of killing or trying to kill 11 more patients, including a 91-year-old UN war crimes judge.

De Berk, who wrote in her diary of giving in to her "compulsions" and whom prosecutors had described as a psychopath, denied the charges. Her lawyer said she would appeal.

The case has touched a raw nerve in The Netherlands the first country in the world to legalise euthanasia sparking fears that medical staff could get away with murder.

"Given the facts and circumstances, the court has concluded after substantial consideration that only life imprisonment is appropriate," judge Jeanne Kalk told the packed courtroom.

The nurse had been charged with killing 13 patients and attempting to murder five between February 1997 and September 2001 by giving them lethal doses of substances like potassium and morphine while working in several hospitals in The Hague.

De Berk, clad in a pale brown skirt suit, showed little emotion during the ruling, which took an hour and a quarter to read. She was calm when the sentence was announced. Kalk described how De Berk had been on duty when young patients like Ahmad Noory, a six-year-old physically and mentally handicapped boy, died of a lethal drug overdose.

"The court concludes that the accused ... administered substances and/or conducted treatments that caused the victim to stop breathing suddenly and to die," Kalk said, adding that De Berk's action had been deliberate and premeditated.

"The accused had told a social worker she had trouble nursing this young patient, because he was so sick and screamed so much," said the judge.

De Berk was cleared of killing alleged victims such as UN war crimes judge Haopei Li, who had worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. A verdict was expected last October, but the court reopened the case and ordered De Berk to undergo psychiatric tests.

The suspected murders came to light in September 2001, when a co-worker of De Berk raised the alarm after an infant in her care died.

Prosecutors had used excerpts from De Berk's diary from her time as a nurse to seek to prove her guilt.

"I gave in to my compulsions ... I don't even know why I am doing it ... I will take this secret with me into the grave ... Still I hope I am helping people by this!" she was quoted as saying in diary extracts read out in court.

De Berk told the court she was referring in her diary to her compulsive interest in Tarot cards, commonly used in fortune-telling. She told the court she had laid out Tarot cards for some of her critically ill patients but had been concerned this would land her in trouble with hospital authorities.