Nurse gets life in jail after murdering 10 patients to reduce workload
A palliative care nurse in Germany has been sentenced to life in prison after he was convicted of the murder of 10 patients and the attempted murder of 27 others.
Prosecutors alleged that the man, who has not been publicly named, injected his mostly elderly patients with painkillers or sedatives in an effort to ease his workload during shifts overnight.
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The offences were committed between December 2023 and May 2024 in a hospital in Wuerselen, in western Germany.
Investigators are reported to be looking into several other suspicious cases during his career.
According to media outlet Agence France-Presse (AFP), the unnamed man had been employed at the hospital in Wuerselen since 2020, after completing training as a nursing professional in 2007.
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Prosecutors told a court in Aachen that he showed “irritation” and a lack of empathy to patients who required a higher level of care, and accused him of playing “master of life and death”.
The court was told that he injected patients with large doses of morphine and midazolam, a type of sedative, in an effort to reduce his workload during night shifts.
He was arrested in 2024.
When issuing the life sentence, the court said that the man’s crimes carried a “particular severity of guilt” which should bar him from early release after 15 years.
He will be able to appeal the verdict.
Prosecutors have told AFP that exhumations are taking place to identify further potential victims, which could see the man put on trial again.
The case bears similarity to that of former nurse Niels Högel, who was handed a life sentence in 2019 after he was convicted of murdering 85 patients at two hospitals in northern Germany.
A court found that he administered lethal doses of heart medication to people in his care between 1999 and 2005.
He is believed to be the most prolific killer in Germany’s modern history.
Similar case in 2019
A former nurse was convicted of murdering 85 patients at two hospitals in northern Germany and handed a life sentence.
Judge Sebastian Buehrmann described Niels Högel’s killing spree as “incomprehensible”.
Högel, who is already serving life for two murders, administered lethal doses of heart medication to people in his care between 1999 and 2005.
He is believed to be the most prolific killer in Germany’s modern history.
Prosecutors said he attacked patients in order to impress colleagues by subsequently trying to revive them.
A former colleague told the German newspaper Bild that Högel was nicknamed “Resuscitation Rambo” because of the way he “pushed everyone else aside” when patients needed to be resuscitated.
On the last day of his trial, Högel, 42, asked the families of his victims for forgiveness for his “horrible acts”.
Högel had been accused of murdering 100 patients in the northern cities of Delmenhorst and Oldenburg. Police believe he may have killed far more but the cremation of bodies had destroyed any possible evidence.
Högel had confessed to 55 murders and the court in Oldenburg convicted him of 85, German media reported.
Delivering sentence, Judge Buehrmann expressed regret that the court had not been able to “lift the fog” for many grieving relatives.
The BBC’s Jenny Hill in Berlin says the case has shocked Germany – not least because senior staff at the two hospitals are accused of having turned a blind eye to unusually high mortality rates.
Högel’s killing spree was stopped when he was caught in the act of administering unprescribed medication to a patient in 2005 in Delmenhorst. He was sentenced to seven years for attempted murder in 2008, but the families of his other suspected victims pressed for a further investigation.
At a second trial that ended in 2015 he was jailed for life for two murders and two attempted murders.
However, during that trial he confessed to a psychiatrist that he had killed up to 30 people.
Investigators then widened the investigation, exhuming 130 former patients and looking for evidence of medication that could have triggered cardiac arrest. They also pored over records in the hospitals he worked at.
Records at the Oldenburg hospital showed rates of deaths and resuscitations had more than doubled when Högel was on shift, German media said.
