In discussions of this case, people tend to focus on the statistics and/or on the Digoxin. Of course, these are two key points in the prosecution’s case, and both of these arguments for Lucia’s guilt have now been totally discredited. This means that the legal case against Lucia has dissolved. But people will still say: a lot of children were murdered, all the same! Lucia is the only person who is in the picture, as far as the public is concerned. People can still believe that Lucia is a killer, even if it can’t be legally proven. In order not just to get Lucia free, but also to clear her name, we need to take a serious look at the medical evidence; at all the medical evidence. The fact that there are huge holes in all this evidence is, consciously or unconsciously, still being ignored.

For example, Amber displayed symptoms of decompensation (heart failure) during the weekend, two days before her death. At first I wondered whether a digoxin overdose could have been administered in the panic of the moment. But the concentration of digoxin in the liver at time of death was 0 while it was 10… in the kidney. That contradicts the administration of this medicine near the time of death. More importantly, the real experts say that such a concentration doesn’t correlate with a single injection. Had a single dose been administered the concentration in the organs would have been considerably higher. This gives all the more reason to believe that as far as any digoxin was measured, it was a remnant of pre-operative medication.

The earlier hypothesis that Amber died of an overdose of Kalium (potassium) is also incorrect. Amber’s drip contained a large dose of Kalium (1200 mg/l). Shortly before the drip, Kalium was measured at 3.8. When Amber became nauseous, vomited, had strong stomach pains and very smelly diarrhoea (probably NEC – Necrotising Enterocolitis) the locum paediatrician diagnosed an intestinal infection. The possibilities of decompensation, PH (pulmonary hypertension), cerebral dysregulation (dysfunction), and relapse because of NEC, weren’t even included in the working hypothesis. It is clearly recorded that they did not consider that Amber was in a bad shape. This might have been a result of their overcompensating for the feeling of panic which Lucia was exuding. Lucia had even put Amber on the monitor, using a finger-cup.

My question is, what happened to Amber’s ECG? If you present a baby for autopsy when that baby has died shortly after a heart operation, surely you’ld also print out her ECG? At the beginning of the investigation of the case they didn’t even mention this, all the talk was of heart activity, and there is no talk anywhere of connecting the ECG. Later, the doctor’s assistant sketched a complex that he was supposed to have seen. This appeared to exhibit a broad QRS-complex (a structure on the ECG that corresponds to depolarisation of the ventricles). Even though he had, in honesty, earlier stated that it was his first night shift and that he had not yet learned anything about cardiology, the prosecution case, as accepted by the court, depends crucially upon that sketch, since from it, the digoxin intoxication was supposed to be manifestly evident.

The line on the ECG sketch appears more like the SO2 (sulphur dioxide) curve from the monitor than an ECG.

Initial speculation concerned Kalium, but that cause was no longer promoted after six months, possibly because the dosage in the drip would have made such a diagnosis problematic.

I’m still trying to work out why such strange jumps in logic were made.

Had Lucia not been on duty, Amber’s death would have been diagnosed as being from multiple disorders. At the time, the pathologist didn’t think she had a viable chance of life. However, because he was later told that the child had been doing quite well, and that she had died rather suddenly and unexpectedly, he raised no objections to his original opinion being completely discarded.

It seems as though everyone influenced each other. There was a strong link to the Public Prosecutor’s office, and to a psychologist who dreamed of being the one who’d uncovered a serial killer. Paula Lampe’s book describes the most awful, damning and untrue stories about Lucia, all of which can be traced back to him.

I sincerely hope that medical practitioners will take note of Lucia’s case. We too are responsible if we just look the other way while incorrect medical diagnostics are used to unjustly sentence someone to life imprisonment.