The prosecution initially charged de Berk of causing thirteen deaths or medical emergencies. In court, the defence was able to show definitively that de Berk could not have been involved at all in several of these cases. For instance, she had been away for several days; the idea that she was there was due to administrative errors. Furthermore, all deaths had been registered as natural, with the exception of the last event. Even that last event was initially thought to be a death by natural causes by the doctors responsible for the child; but within a day, on being connected by other hospital authorities with de Berk and her repeated presence at recent incidents, it became classified as an unnatural death.