Lucia de Berk - Rest in Peace

A Tribute from Nineteen Nurses

R.I.P. Lucia

It is with deep sadness that Nineteen Nurses mark the passing of Lucia de Berk, who has died at the age of 63 following a short illness. Her death brings to a close a life overshadowed by one of the Netherlands’ most infamous miscarriages of justice.

Lucia’s story stands as a stark reminder of how flawed investigations and misused statistics can devastate an innocent life. In 2003, while working as a paediatric nurse in The Hague, she was wrongfully convicted of murdering four babies and three other patients. Condemned as one of the country’s “worst serial killers”, she was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The prosecution’s case rested on a deeply flawed statistical argument—that the clustering of deaths during Lucia’s shifts could not have been coincidental. Toxicological findings, a criminal profiler’s opinions, and the discovery of crime-related books in her home were presented as supporting evidence. What was overlooked was a simple but crucial truth: correlation does not equal causation.

For six and a half years, Lucia endured imprisonment for crimes she had not committed. Her eventual release came through the determined efforts of those who refused to accept the injustice: philosopher Professor Ton Derksen, his partner Dr Metta de Noo, and statistician Professor Richard Gill. Through painstaking work, they demonstrated the serious flaws in the evidence and the catastrophic errors of interpretation.

In 2008, Lucia was fully acquitted. Judges concluded that the patients had most likely died of natural causes, and the Dutch Supreme Court confirmed the unreliability of the statistical case against her. Yet no judgement could restore the years she had lost—her freedom, her reputation, her career.

Lucia’s ordeal prompted meaningful reform in the Netherlands. Following her exoneration, authorities determined that investigations into unexplained hospital deaths should be led not by police officers but by medical specialists—those capable of understanding the complexities of clinical settings and natural mortality. This change recognised that what may seem suspicious to outsiders may have perfectly innocent medical explanations.

In later years, Lucia lived quietly, rebuilding her life in the long shadow of her wrongful conviction. She became an enduring symbol of how prosecutorial tunnel vision, media pressure, and the misuse of expert testimony can combine to destroy lives. Her case is now studied internationally as a cautionary example of justice undone.

As we remember her, we must commit to learning from what she endured. Lucia’s suffering warns us that even in modern legal systems, catastrophic errors remain possible when bias and flawed reasoning go unchecked.

Healthcare professionals devote their lives to saving and caring for others. When tragedy strikes and deaths occur, the first instinct must be to seek medical explanations, not leap to criminal suspicion. Lucia de Berk’s case reminds us that haste and prejudice can have devastating consequences.

Rest in peace, Lucia. Your struggle was not in vain. May your legacy safeguard others from the nightmare of wrongful conviction, and may your memory continue to guide us towards justice.