THE NETHERLANDS: The Dutch nurse dubbed "Sister Death", who allegedly murdered 13 of her patients and attempted to kill a further five, could go into the history books as the worst serial murderess in centuries in The Netherlands, if convicted.
Ms Lucy de Berk (40) looked like an unlikely psychotic killer as she demurely took her place in the dock of the Criminal Court in The Hague yesterday, dressed in a smart beige suit, her shoulder-length golden hair neatly arranged.
But appearances were misleading, Dutch prosecutors told the three-judge court. Ms De Berk was a compulsive liar, it was claimed, who got into nursing college in Holland by falsifying school records. She had moved to Canada with her family and began working there as a prostitute while still in her teens.
Back in Holland, she managed to dupe the nurse training authorities with faked school diplomas.
A picture of "a dangerous, compulsive liar, an exhibitionist with psychotic tendencies who had a macabre obsession with death" has been projected by chief prosecutor, Ms Ingrid Degeling.
Over the five-day trial it would be proven, she said, that Lucy de Berk murdered 13 patients entrusted to her care in a killing spree between February 1997 and September 2001. She might have succeeded in killing a further five had they not been re-animated in time. The patients were given lethal doses of morphine and potassium and cocktails of other drugs which proved fatal as they were given in such large quantities, it is claimed.
One of Ms de Berk's alleged victims was a six-year-old mentally handicapped boy from Afghanistan. Ahmad Noory was found dead after the nurse had left his bedside. His parents had just been told by the doctor that they could take him home the next day. A huge concentration of a calming medication, fed through a drip, was found in his blood. The accused allegedly told a colleague she wanted to stop nursing the boy because he upset her with his screams. A month earlier he was discovered in a coma shortly after she went off duty but was re-animated by emergency procedures.
Another alleged victim was a pensioner, Ms Anna Maria Steenblick, who died after being nursed by Ms de Berk who started work at the hospital the same day. In a diary found by police, Ms de Berk noted the death of the terminally ill woman, writing: "Today I have given into my compulsion again: all the same, I make a lot of people very happy - weird isn't it?"
Her diaries also talked of her secret "that I will take to the grave with me".
Questioned by judges, Ms de Berk said her compulsion referred to tarot cards, claiming she was addicted to giving tarot readings to her patients.
Another of her alleged victims was a judge with the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Mr Haopei Li, from China, who was a founding member of the tribunal.
Ms de Berk's lawyer, Mr Anthony Visser, said all the evidence against his client was circumstantial. "An unexplained death is not necessarily an unnatural death, and that goes for all cases," he said.