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- [00:00]
Podcast Host/Announcer
This is an I Heart Podcast.
- [00:02]
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- [00:33]
Public Investing Advertiser
That's innerbalance.com support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures there's a difference
- [01:37]
Redfin Advertiser
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- [02:07]
Podcast Host/Announcer
ad is sponsored by Pets Best Insurance Services. You knew right away he's perfect. The one for you. Those puppy dog eyes, that cute little button nose. You don't even mind the drool. When you find your perfect match in a dog or cat, the love is unconditional. Your budget on the other hand has realistic limits. Help protect your heart and your wallet with pet insurance from Pets Best with plans starting from less than a dollar a day, you can get up to 90% cash back on eligible vet bills. Pets Best makes it easy to pick a plan that works for you and your bank account. Find the perfect match for your Perfect match@petsbest.com Pet insurance products offered and administered by PetsBest Insurance Services, LLC or underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company or Independence American Insurance Company for terms and conditions, visit www.petsbest.com. policy products are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company, Independence American Insurance Company or Ms. Transverse Insur and administered by Pets Best Insurance Services, LLC. $1.00 a day premium based on 2024 average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans. Pets age 0 to 10.
- [03:11]
Amanda Knox
In Britain, the name Lucy Letby became synonymous with evil. A nurse accused of murdering babies in her care. Her trial transfixed Britain, the kind of story that feels impossible to look away from. But what if I told you that 20 years earlier something almost identical happened in another country to another nurse? The same pattern of deaths, the same shocking headlines, the same rush to judgment. Her name was Lucia de Bourke. In 2003, she was sentenced to life in a Dutch prison after hospital data suggested she'd been present at an unusual number of deaths on her ward. But the case against her, as it turned out, rested on deeply flawed statistics. Lucia spent six years behind bars before her name was cleared in 2010. In August 2025, Lucia died. She was 63. Her story about how easily numbers can be misread and how fragile justice can be feels current. I wanted to know why she was convicted and what went wrong. So I spoke to Professor Richard Gill, a Dutch British mathematical statistian who played a pivotal role in overturning Lucia's conviction. Do you think that nurses in particular are vulnerable to these kinds of wrongful convictions where statistics is misused?
- [04:53]
Professor Richard Gill
They certainly seem to be. And of course they are at the bottom of the pile in the medical hierarchy. And so hospitals mistakes are being made all the time and unexpected things happening all the time.
- [05:07]
Amanda Knox
I'm Amanda Knox and from Vespucci and iheart podcasts, this is Doubt the Case of Lucy letby. Bonus Episode 1 the Story of Lucia de Bourke. How did you first come across the Lucia de Burke case?
- [05:33]
Professor Richard Gill
Well, my area of expertise is mathematics and statistics and probability. I grew up in England. I went to Cambridge University, got a degree, came to the Netherlands, got married, did a PhD, had an academic career and now I'm 74 and been retired for about eight years. And all that time I've been working in statistics. I'm in the Netherlands. And it was. I don't know about front page news, but it was a big thing in the news media for a number of years. I mean, it started off at the end of 2000. We saw news reports about a mysterious spike in deaths at a children's hospital in the Hague. And I think we probably quite soon heard that a nurse was helping police with inquiries or something like that. And later there were all kinds of rumors about the nursing question. I think we even read in the newspaper she was a prostitute and she was being treated for depression at the time. And so there was a murder investigation going on. And this took a while before it led to a trial. And the main evidence at the first trial was statistical evidence, namely the fact that this particular nurse was present again and again when deaths and collapses occurred in the hospital where she'd been working, which was a children's hospital in the Hague, the Juliana Children's Hospital in the Hague. And there was no direct evidence at all. It seemed the main evidence against her was actually a statistical probability calculation, which actually was done by a colleague of mine at the time. I trusted him to have been doing something sensible. I was not involved at all. But he came up with a probability of 1 in 342 million. I mean, the happening together of her shifts with deaths or collapses, the chance that that would happen by chance was 1 in 342 million. And this convinced lots and lots of people that she must be guilty, that she must have been the person who was harming those children.
- [07:43]
Amanda Knox
The statistic that defined Lucia's case came from a man named Hank Elfers, a psychologist who testified for the prosecution. He told the court that the odds of so many deaths on her shifts happening by chance were 1 in 342 million. Enough to persuade judges she must be guilty. What began as statistics became a story, one that ended with Lucia being convicted. But it was this number that would eventually unravel the entire case. Were you impressed by that statistic or did you that immediately did it, did that?
- [08:24]
Professor Richard Gill
No, I didn't immediately start thinking about it at all. In fact, I did trust it. We never actually got to see what calculation had been done or what data was used. So we just had the number was reported in the court. I knew that a colleague of mine who was working for the prosecution, I knew him as a very conscientious and serious guy who would be Definitely doing his best to do something sensible. And so I trusted him. And there was also another colleague of mine advising the defense. And he was also a very decent, capable guy. And so I felt that I didn't need to have anything to do with it at all. But by the way, at that time my wife said to me, richard, have you heard about the nurse in the Hague? They're using statistics. And she said, you should get involved to do something useful.
- [09:13]
Amanda Knox
When did you realize that something was wrong with that evidence?
- [09:17]
Professor Richard Gill
Well, that took two more years. And at each year there was a step towards it. The first thing was that both the defence and the prosecution appealed against the verdict because Lucy de Bert got a life sentence for murders and attempted murders. And actually, of course, everybody believed she'd harmed many more of her patients, but not enough evidence for the further cases. But anyway, 2004 there was an appeal. Now the amazing thing about the appeal was that it appeared that the prosecution completely discarded the statistical evidence. And what had happened in the meantime was that some toxicological evidence had been found that it was interpreted as saying that certain child had died of digoxin poisoning and that Lucia had been there with the baby. The baby was six months old, that she was the last person who'd been with the baby. And moreover, various monitors had been switched off at a certain critical moment and the baby had died of digoxin. So she had opportunity. She was claimed to have had motive because she wrote some really weird things in her diary. Given that there seemed to be really hard proof that she'd murdered baby Amber. But she claimed to be innocent. The court, the judges in the Netherlands, we have, it's an inquisitorial system. There's a board of three wise judges and there's no jury. There are three judges holding and inquiring. Because the first case had been now proven that Lucia had murdered this baby. But she denied it. Well, now you knew. No, she's a murderer and a liar. From then on it becomes pretty easy to convict her of more suspicious deaths and collapses and so on. And really the question what the court was busy with, how many was it going to be five or 10 or 15 or 20 or something. And they finally settled on 10, I think seven murders and three attempted murders. And the port's argument was a so called chain argument. You've got one murder nailed down, she definitely did it, even though she denies. Now you have less evidence necessary to convict her of another one. And again and again, and this went down a train, the words of the court. Actually there was a locomotive. And then there were nine wagons, a train of 10 units. And okay, so that was in 2004. Okay. The judges, they wrote, we are not using any probability or statistics here. We are only using irrefutable scientific medical evidence. So people like me basically could forget about it at that stage. Now, one year later, then things started happening, because then her defence went to the Supreme Court and tried to get the case reopened because of some evidence which had got lost. But still this did not get the case reopened. So in 2005, it was absolutely definitive. She was in jail for life. For these 10 murders and attempted murders.
- [12:14]
Amanda Knox
Prosecutors pointed to hard medical evidence. Traces of the heart drug digoxin in one child and an overdose of the sedative chloral hydrate in another, with what seemed like proof of poisoning. The Appeal Court ruled that the other deaths could safely be linked to Lucia with far weaker evidence, the supposed pattern of incidents and her diary, which spoke of a very great secret and compulsion. It might have ended there. In 2005, another nurse condemned, but one woman refused to let it rest.
- [12:53]
Professor Richard Gill
But that's when two whistleblowers crept out of the woodwork, suddenly started getting attention of journalists and the media. And these were a medical doctor called Meta de no lady, and she was actually a specialist in geriatrics. And by the way, some of the murders were down at the Juliana Children's Hospital, but other murders were added at a hospital where Lucia had worked previously, which was where there were many elderly people. So there was this whistleblower, Dr. Duneau, a geriatric doctor, doctor of geriatrics, and her brother, whose name is Tom Derickson. He was basically philosophy professor, and they were a brother and sister. And they had a connection to a certain person at the hospital, at the Juliana Children's Hospital. They had inside information about what was going on in the Children's Hospital. And they started working for the defense and preparing an application to what is called in Netherlands the ceas, the Committee for Evaluation of Closed Cases, specially set up to correct miscarriages of justice.
- [14:08]
Amanda Knox
Mette Duneau is a geriatrician. She had family inside the same hospital where Lucia worked. When she reviewed the medical files, she found serious flaws. The baby, said to have been poisoned with digoxin, had been declining for days after heart surgery. And another child had been prescribed high doses of chloral, hydrated by the hospital itself. When Deneau raised her concerns, she was dismissed and ridiculed. So she turned to her brother, Thanh Dirksen, a philosopher of science. Together they began dismantling the case.
- [14:49]
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- [15:22]
Public Investing Advertiser
from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures let's talk about modern home shopping.
- [16:24]
Redfin Advertiser
It's sort of become a fun side hobby, right? Scrolling listings at night, dreaming about kitchens you've never seen or backyards you haven't even stepped foot in. All from the comfort of pretty much anywhere. Redfin knows a lot of people like you want to own but are stuck in this browsing mode loop. That's where Redfin flips the script with listings that update within minutes and tours you can book right from the Redfin app you can see your dream home the moment it appears. Now liking a listing is easy, but actually landing it? That's where Redfin comes in. Redfin has over 2200 agents with local expertise and Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents. That means they want to help you win, not just window shop. Redfin is built to help you go from Just looking to wait. This could actually be home. So become the newest neighbor on the block. Visit redfin.com to start finding and start owning. That's redfin.com the following ad is sponsored
- [17:24]
Podcast Host/Announcer
by Pets Best Insurance Services. You knew right away he's perfect. The one for you. Those puppy dog eyes, that cute little button nose. You don't even mind the drool. When you find your perfect match in a dog or cat, the love is unconditional. Your budget, on the other hand, has realistic limits. Help protect your heart and your wallet with pet insurance from Pets Best. With plans starting from less than a dollar a day, you can get up to 90% cash back on eligible vet bills. Pets Best makes it easy to pick a plan that works for you and your bank account. Find the perfect match for your Perfect match@petsbest.com Pet insurance products offered and administered by PetsBest Insurance Services LLC are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company or Independence American Insurance Company for terms and conditions, visit www.petsbest.com. policy products are underwritten by American Pet Insurance company, Independence American Insurance Company or Ms. Transverse Insurance Company and administered by Pets Best Insurance Services LLC. $1.00 a day premium based on 2024 average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans.
- [18:21]
Amanda Knox
Pets age 0 to 10 In 2006, Dirksen published a book that laid the case out. It exposed faulty math, the weak medical evidence, and the bias that had tainted the investigation.
- [18:37]
Professor Richard Gill
At the time it came out, I was in Denmark on a sabbatical working quantum statistics. But a friend of mine in statistics in the Netherlands read the book and became completely convinced that it was an incredible miscarriage of justice. So my friend was going to write a letter to the Committee for the Evaluation of Closed Cases supporting the arguments written by the philosopher in his book. And he thought his letter would have more impact if I wrote it too, if we wrote it together. So like from first few pages it already became completely clear that this really was an appalling miscarriage of justice, because the book just sort of shatters the arguments for every single case of the 10 cases, one by one, starting with the first one and goes through from beginning to end.
- [19:27]
Amanda Knox
By now, Lucia had already spent two years in prison. But the small network of scientists, doctors and journalists was forming, determined to prove the numbers didn't add up. Can you explain what the prosecution argued in terms of statistics and what their statistical mistake was?
- [19:47]
Professor Richard Gill
There were like three incredible, stupid mistakes. One thing was that the data turned out to be selected. The data was classifying shifts, like three shifts A day at that children's hospital for a year long. That's about a thousand shifts. For each shift you look to see, was Nurse Lucia present, yes or no. And was there a suspicious event? Yes or no? Now, it turned out that the definition of suspicious was basically, if Lucia was there when something bad happened which people couldn't quite understand at the time, then it was suspicious. If the same event happened, for instance, to the same child, one of the children had a sequence of collapses, and Lucia was there one time, but not there two other times. Well, the two other times were not suspicious, but the time she was there was suspicious. Events were being called suspicious because Lucia was there, she was suspicious, and her presence made the event suspicious. And then you see a correlation between suspicious events and her presence. It's just been engineered.
- [20:54]
Amanda Knox
Were you surprised by that, considering that this was a colleague that you respected, that he had made such a glaring mistake? Mistake?
- [21:01]
Professor Richard Gill
Yeah. He just trusted the numbers given to him by the police. By the time he got to the court, the numbers given to him by the public prosecution, you imagine they've done really serious, careful work for a really high profile, really shocking, serious murder case, you would tend not to expect them to have badly screwed up.
- [21:23]
Amanda Knox
That's like asking, what are the odds? All the red cards in the deck are red. By baking her presence into the definition of suspicious, they ensured that the chances of her being present during a suspicious event were 100%. If you recall, this is exactly the same thing that the prosecution argued against Lucy Letby. If, however, you look at all potentially suspicious events, regardless of who was present, then the odds of a suspicious event occurring on Lucia's shift become much smaller.
- [22:03]
Professor Richard Gill
The data was badly wrong. That was one thing. Another very bad thing was his analysis did not take any account of. Well, this is called confounding factors. And he just looked at shifts. But suppose Lucia got more difficult shifts than other nurses. Suppose she did more night shifts and maybe there are more deaths at night, or one thing or another. Any decent statistical analysis would take account of all the factors which, you know, could influence the chance of unfortunate events happening.
- [22:33]
Amanda Knox
Right?
- [22:34]
Professor Richard Gill
And that would involve getting a lot more data and doing some serious statistical modeling. And it would be very hard work. It wasn't done.
- [22:42]
Amanda Knox
The problem here is that the original expert treated each shift like a fair coin toss, with the same risk for every nurse. But shifts aren't interchangeable. Some shifts and nurses are more likely to see crises and deaths. Night duty, the icu, holiday staffing, sicker patients and frequent responder nurses all Change baseline risk. When you take that into account, the incredible odds shrink to ordinary bad luck territory.
- [23:17]
Professor Richard Gill
There was a third thing. My colleague, who I so respected, actually made an absolutely stupid beginner's mistake. He was combining data from three different hospital wards from three different periods. And I don't know if you know anything about P values, but he got a P value for each of them, and then he multiplied them together and got a very, very small number. He just made an utter beginner's mistake. And so basically, there were three main flaws in his calculation. And each of them made a difference of factor 100 to a thousand or something. So I published one in 50 or something like that.
- [23:54]
Amanda Knox
Basically, the analyst treated the cases in each ward as independent lotteries. If they were, his math would have been correct. Multiplying probabilities together is how you determine the odds of unrelated events occurring together. If I roll one die, you roll another, and a third person rolls another. The odds of us all rolling a 6 are 1 in 6 times 1 in 6 times 1 in 6, which is 1 in 216. The problem was the events in each ward are not independent. If anything about her work pattern increases the odds of being present during critical incidents like her experience, her shift type, and even the kinds of patients she handled, Then that same factor affects all wards she worked in. Meaning the events in each ward are correlated, not independent. Multiplying the probabilities in each ward overcounts rarity because it treats the same nurse as if she were three completely unrelated people. So that key number was wrong. In court, the judges heard that the odds of so many deaths on Lucia's shifts happening by chance were 1 in 342 million. Richard recalculated, and the number was 1 in 50.
- [25:22]
Professor Richard Gill
There was some correlation, but it wasn't enough to send somebody to jail.
- [25:31]
Amanda Knox
But the prosecution used something else in their case against Lucia, something that has also become the private notes and diaries of the accused. You mentioned that her diaries were used at trial as well. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
- [25:49]
Professor Richard Gill
She loved writing. And she was actually thinking of becoming a crime writer or even a horror writer or some writer or something like that. And so when she wrote her diary, just reporting the events of her day, she used a lot of colorful and sometimes ludicrous, lurid language. And on a couple of occasions, she wrote in her diary about her strange compulsion, which she had given way to today. And it was a secret, which she would take with her to the grave, and nobody should know. Now, this writing that happened on the same day that some patient died was enough to convince the judges that her compulsion was a compulsion to kill. And that's what she had given way to, her compulsion to kill her patients. Now, in the court, she was actually asked what the diary meant, what these writings meant, and she said, yes, it was very unprofessional of me, but when I was working with the old people, she was the nurse who actually got a rapport with some of her patients. And she discovered that some of them appreciated that she read the tarot cards to them. She saw it as a kind of therapy, you know, I mean, you're waiting to die, and the kind nurse reads the tarot cards for you. And I'm sure he did it in a very kind and wonderful way to help the persons who wanted to hear it gain comfort from it. And in fact, she was investigated by a psychiatric institution before the trials, they wanted to find out if she was crazy. And they also heard about her compulsion. And I think a psychologist testified in the court that her story of the tarot cards was completely in character. You know, it was just like what her character was.
- [27:36]
Amanda Knox
The court apparently saw darkness where there was none. And then the tabloid media in the Netherlands amplified it, sketching Lucia as a witch like figure, an angel of death. Sound familiar? How did the media cover the story and represent Lucia during her trial and after her conviction?
- [27:58]
Professor Richard Gill
There were court drawings, for instance, in the newspapers. In Dutch courts you can't take photographs, but there is a court artist who draws pictures of the accused person and also the cross examination and so on. The pictures showed her looking very haggard and witch like. They were absolutely horrific. The general feeling in the public was that she wasn't clearly an absolutely evil person and people were glad she got sentenced and locked away.
- [28:31]
Amanda Knox
Lucia was sentenced to life in prison and for the next six years she lived behind bars, branded the most hated nurse in the Netherlands. But the fight to free her was only just beginning.
- [28:50]
Inner Balance Oestra Advertiser
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- [29:23]
Public Investing Advertiser
from public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously on public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures let's talk about modern home shopping.
- [30:25]
Redfin Advertiser
It's sort of become a fun side hobby, right? Scrolling listings at night, dreaming about kitchens you've never seen or backyards you haven't even stepped foot in. All from the comfort of pretty much anywhere. Redfin knows a lot of people like you want to own but are stuck in this browsing mode loop. That's where Redfin flips the script. With listings that update within minutes and tours you can book right from the Redfin app, you can see your dream home the moment it appears. Now, liking a listing is easy, but actually landing it? That's where Redfin comes in. Redfin has over 2,200 agents with local expertise, and Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents. That means they want to help you win, not just window shop. Redfin is built to help you go from just looking to wait. This could actually be home. So become the newest neighbor on the block. Visit redfin.com to start finding and start owning. That's redfin.com the following ad is sponsored
- [31:25]
Podcast Host/Announcer
by Pets Best Insurance Services. You knew right away. He's perfect. The one for you. Those puppy dog eyes, that cute little button nose. You don't even mind the drool. When you find your perfect match in a dog or cat, the love is unconditional. Your budget, on the other hand, has realistic limits. Help protect your heart and your wallet with pet insurance from Pets Best with plans starting from less than a dollar a day, you can get up to 90% cash back on eligible vet bills. Pets Best makes it easy to pick a plan that works for you and your bank account. Find the perfect match for your Perfect match@petsbest.com Pet insurance products offered and administered by Pets and Best Insurance Services, LLC are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company or Independence American Insurance Company for terms and conditions, visit www.petsbest.com. policy products are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company, Independence American Insurance Company or Ms. Transverse Insurance Company and administered by Pets Best Insurance Services, LLC. $1.00 a day premium based on 2024 average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans. Pets Age 0 to 10
- [32:25]
Amanda Knox
Lucia DeBurke was sentenced to life in prison, but to understand the damage done, we have to meet the person behind the caricature that the media portrayed. Did you know Lucia personally? Did you ever get to meet her?
- [32:41]
Professor Richard Gill
Yes, I got to meet her a number of times. I actually visited her in prison twice while I was sort of working for her. So that was like in 2007 or 2008 or something like that. And I visited her together with her husband and her daughter took me to the prison and it was really moving just to see the, you know, the family reunited briefly and looking at each other and sort of crying and so on.
- [33:10]
Amanda Knox
How would you describe her?
- [33:11]
Professor Richard Gill
Well, she's a very strong character. She's wise. She's not terribly educated. I mean, she didn't get a high school diploma. Her parents had moved to Canada in her teenage years, and so she was living in Vancouver and she didn't actually finish high school for various reasons. But she's a very wise and strong woman is what I'd say. And she's an extremely kind person, too. She was a very, very normal and very grounded, wise, sensitive and gentle person.
- [33:45]
Amanda Knox
While the courts projected darkness onto her words, the reality of prison brought real harm to Lucia. She spent spent six years in prison before she was cleared. Do you know how those years impacted her and those who were close to
- [34:02]
Professor Richard Gill
her during those years? She was in prison actually in 2005 when the appeal to the Supreme Court didn't succeed. She suffered a stroke in the night and she was supposed to be on suicide watch. So somebody was supposed to look in her cell twice a month, hour or something like that. But she actually lay on the cold floor of the cell for 12 hours, I believe, after that stroke, and it left her paralyzed on the right side of her body. The prison authorities were not helpful in getting medical care and physiotherapy and so on. And she never got the use of her right hand and right arm, and she was right handed. She never got the use of. Of her right arm. Back after the trial, she spoke a lot to journalists, and actually she gave talks to the law students and things like that for three or four years after she'd been released, telling about her experiences and sort of giving tips. For instance, she told nurses, whatever you do every day, write down exactly what you were told to do the last day. Keep records of everything you do, because if it's your word against theirs, then they are going to win. So you really have to document what you're doing as a nurse. But she also told to one interviewer that she basically survived the ordeal by all the time saying to herself again and again, like a mantra, I'm innocent. I didn't do it. It's not true. I didn't do it. Just again and again, like as a mantra. That was one thing she did, and the other thing she. She did. And especially after she came out of jail, she did not harbor any resentment or anger at all.
- [35:46]
Amanda Knox
The campaign to free Lucia began with two unlikely allies, a doctor and her brother, a philosopher of science. They challenged the statistics, they challenged the medicine, and they brought Richard in. The courts had claimed to rely only on hard medical evidence, but that foundation began to shift.
- [36:10]
Professor Richard Gill
So the Committee for the Evaluation of Closed Cases deliberated. It took quite a long time to deliberate, and finally did publish a recommendation to the Supreme Court to have the case reopened.
- [36:25]
Amanda Knox
At the Supreme Court stage, everything came down to. To one child, Amber, the case that had driven Lucia's first conviction. New experts challenged the claim of digoxin poisoning, and even the original witness withdrew his certainty.
- [36:44]
Professor Richard Gill
You had an expert off the prosecution who had said, this baby died of digoxin poisoning. The advocate to the Supreme Court found another expert, sort of equally expert, who said it wasn't. But now you just have experts disagreeing at some point. Actually, I paid a visit to the original expert, and by this time there was a campaign in full swing, right? So if this guy had been watching tv, he could realize that he had helped convict somebody who was perhaps innocent. And I went and had a chat with him in his office in the university. He offered me a really nice cup of coffee. And I think this probably helped because he later wrote, officially formally to the courts, that he actually agreed with the new toxicologist. And he could agree because the new toxicologist had been given more information than he'd had, so he didn't actually withdraw his earlier report. But he did agree with the new one. Now, this made it clear that basically the whole thing should collapse. So we were kind of surprised. Some people were surprised that the. That the prosecution still went ahead with actually having a retrial and actually charging her again. All the same charges all over again. And there was no way of knowing in advance how that was going to turn out. And that took about half a year.
- [38:06]
Amanda Knox
There were many problems with the digoxin poisoning theory. The blood sample from the baby wasn't a fresh, clean forensic sample. It was from the gauze left inside the body after multiple autopsy and disturbances and such conditions can artificially raise measured concentrations of substances like digoxin. The original tests also used methods that couldn't distinguish real digoxin from naturally occurring lookalikes in infants. The baby had also undergone heart surgery and had multiple congenital problems, making a natural death medically plausible. Undercutting this digoxin poisoning claim was critical because it was a linchpin for the prosecution. It was the locomotive that pulled the rest of the train. One supposed proven murder by poisoning made the other deaths seem more plausible as murders than natural causes. When that linchpin was weakened, the whole structure of the case crumbled.
- [39:20]
Professor Richard Gill
I was present in 2010 when there was the final sitting where the court announced its verdict. And we did not know what the verdict was going to be. And she was innocent. And it was one of the most beautiful events in my life, I can tell you. But we didn't know till then that this would happen happened. And it was really impressive and wonderful. And the judges gave a short summing up. They actually said that they didn't believe she'd done anything at all.
- [39:49]
Amanda Knox
Right.
- [39:50]
Professor Richard Gill
And they made some remarks about how patients in the hospital can suddenly die without anybody know when they're going to die. And this happens all the time, you know. And then calling an event suspicious because you'd. You don't know what day a terminally ill person is going to die.
- [40:07]
Amanda Knox
Yeah.
- [40:07]
Professor Richard Gill
And so calling the event unexpected. That's because you didn't expect it would happen on that day, is rubbish.
- [40:15]
Amanda Knox
Yeah.
- [40:15]
Professor Richard Gill
So they totally went with the defense all the way. And immediately Lucia got whisked away in a limousine to visit the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Minister of Justice got apologies from both of them.
- [40:31]
Amanda Knox
Really? Wow.
- [40:33]
Professor Richard Gill
Yes. It was fantastic. We were successful in convincing the public and the lawyers that she really was innocent. And there was absolutely no doubt about it. And the system had no option but to admit that they had screwed up.
- [40:48]
Amanda Knox
What was the media's reaction. What was the coverage?
- [40:51]
Professor Richard Gill
Oh, it was joyful. I mean, it was joyful. Lots of lovely photographs of people embracing it. But that stage, it was not controversial anymore. It was welcomed and expected from a
- [41:03]
Amanda Knox
number that seemed to prove guilt to a judgment that restored a life. Lucia walked out of prison exonerated. But the lesson her case holds for the rest of us was only beginning to emerge. Lucia de Bourke's acquittal wasn't just a personal victory. It exposed how fragile truth can be when it's filtered through statistics and suspicion. Her case forced a reckoning inside Dutch medicine and law. What does Lucia's story tell us about the dangers of using statistics badly in the justice system?
- [41:45]
Professor Richard Gill
Yeah, they tell us that those dangers are extremely big and that the legal world does not understand statistics and probability and that it's something which needs to be done by professionals. I'm afraid the original court, in 2003, they could have felt that there was a professional on each side working for them. But in retrospect, they didn't do professional work, and I think the Dutch system has definitely learned from that.
- [42:17]
Amanda Knox
Richard Gill says that Lucia's case helped change the system. In the Netherlands, judges became wary of tunnel vision and of letting hospitals investigate themselves. Do you think that people understand or believe in chance?
- [42:33]
Professor Richard Gill
Well, I'm not sure they should do. That's a good question. I mean, bad luck is one thing. And coincidences. There was a sequence of unlucky coincidences which led to Lucio going to jail. You could also say there was a sequence of lucky coincidences which need not have come out that way, which led to her miraculously getting out again.
- [42:52]
Amanda Knox
Do you think that nurses in particular are vulnerable to these kinds of wrongful convictions, where statistics is misused?
- [43:02]
Professor Richard Gill
They certainly seem to be. And of course, they are like the bottom of the pile in the medical hierarchy. And so hospitals, mistakes are being made all the time and unexpected things happening all the time. And mistakes are usually allocated to the person with the lowest pay grade. So nurses are very convenient persons to hang the failings of a medical unit on. And this happens in all countries. It seems to happen rather a lot in England. By the way, if you look at the population of people with life sentences in British jails, there are 10 times as many nurses there relative to the size of the nursing population than you would expect. I'm aware of four or five nurse cases in the United Kingdom where nurses are in jail for life, and I believe they're innocent.
- [43:59]
Amanda Knox
Lucia's case isn't isolated. There have Been others in Italy and of course, in Britain, which this podcast has told the story of. But like Richard told me, a pattern isn't proof of innocence or guilt, but it shows how quickly fear can fill the space where understanding should be.
- [44:21]
Professor Richard Gill
The medical world and the legal world in the Netherlands are really aware of what went wrong in the lucid bad case. And they also become very, very conscious of tunnel vision, the danger of tunnel vision in medical cases. They become aware of the importance that investigations, medical investigations are done by external persons, not by the consultants in the hospital itself. Various British cases I know about, every time it's been a group of consultants of the hospital itself who have investigated the mysterious spike in death which has been associated with a particular nurse. So you have tunnel vision and have the bias of people investigating a case who are not independent at all.
- [45:10]
Amanda Knox
Lucia de Bourke's life became a case study in human error, statistical, medical, moral. But even after she cleared her name, the damage lingered. In August 2025, Lucia de Bourke died at the age of.
- [45:29]
Professor Richard Gill
I read about it in the newspaper, and the family had announced that it was going to be a small funeral in small family and friends circle. And I certainly don't qualify to be in that circle. I mean, the whole case had an enormous impact on my life. But I only spoke to Lucia herself, like, half a dozen times. I'm sure that early death was caused by the physical and mental effects of. Of the experiences she'd had. So it's tragic because she was enjoying life to the full and her family was enjoying her presence, obviously, completely. She had her husband and her daughter and her grandchildren and many friends and family. So she shouldn't have been taken away from us, from them. Right.
- [46:17]
Amanda Knox
Well, thank goodness she was free at the very least.
- [46:20]
Professor Richard Gill
Yeah. Yes.
- [46:25]
Amanda Knox
Lucia de Bourke spent six years in a cell because of numbers that seemed to make sense until they didn't. Her story reminds me how easily data can harden into dogma, how quickly coincidence becomes blame. Lucia's story ends with truth restored, but not before it cost her everything. And that's why I think it's important to tell it, to remember what justice looks like when the numbers don't add up. What would you like judges and lawyers and the public to understand better about the role of statistics in evaluating evidence?
- [47:07]
Professor Richard Gill
I would like them to understand that it's rocket science. It's for experts. There are experts. To do it properly and meaningfully, you need to find serious experts involved. The good experts will be able to explain what they're doing. To you and why they're doing it. And I'm afraid that you'll probably find that the good experts will not give you such clear cut answers as you would have hoped because it's not so simple.
- [47:38]
Amanda Knox
The Case of Lucy Letby is brought to you by Vespucci, iHeart podcasts and Knox Robinson Productions. I've been your host, Amanda Knox. This episode was written by Joe Meek. The co producer was Lucy Ditchmont. The assistant producer was Ami Gill. Senior producer is Natalia Rodriguez. The sound designer is Tom Biddle. The theme music was written by Tom Biddle. Story editing by Kathleen Goldhar. Legal advice was provided by Jack Browning. The producers at iHeart Podcasts are Chandler Mays and Katrina Norville. The executive producers were Joe Meek, Amanda Knox, Christopher Robinson, Daniel Turkin and Johnny Galvin. Thank you for listening.
- [48:37]
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Professor Richard Gill
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