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Case of nurse wrongly jailed as serial killer to be made into film

The story of Lucia de Berk, the nurse who spent six years in prison after being wrongly convicted as a serial killer, is to be made into a film.

Paula van der Oest, best known to date for the Oscar-nominated Zus & Zo and Black Butterflies, a biopic of the South African poet Ingrid Jonker, will direct the movie, distributor Independent Films confirmed at the Cannes Film Festival.

De Berk, 50, was acquitted in 2010 and wholly exonerated of the murder of seven hospital patients and three charges of attempted murder.

Her conviction and life sentence in 2003 were based on the high death rate of patients in her care. The chances of such a sequence of deaths occurring naturally were reckoned at one in 342 million.  At the time it made her the worst serial killer in Dutch history.

However, a re-examination of the case files found that all the deaths could be attributed to other causes and there was no evidence De Berk had committed any criminal act.

The attorney-general, Harm Brouwer, subsequently apologised to De Berk and said she should receive compensation as soon as possible. In November 2010 she was given an undisclosed settlement.

While in prison De Berk suffered a brain haemorrhage that left her partly incapacitated. She was freed in April 2008 pending her appeal hearing.

Metta de Noo, a member of a committee that fought to clear De Berk’s name, said police, prosecutors and doctors involved in the investigation had succumbed to a ‘mass psychosis’ in which they were guided by an irrational conviction that De Berk was guilty.

She called for a public inquiry to be set up to investigate the miscarriage of justice in full.

Source: De Volkskrant: Paula van der Oest maakt Lucia de B-film

Photo by zepe