A doctor in Berlin has been charged with homicide over the deaths of 15 sufferers below palliative care, prosecutors stated Wednesday, alleging he acted out of a “lust” for killing. He’s additionally accused of attempting to cowl up the proof by beginning fires of their properties.
The physician was a part of a nursing service’s end-of-life care workforce and was initially suspected within the deaths of just four patients. That quantity has crept higher since final summer season, and investigators now say they’ve discovered proof linking him to the deaths of 15 individuals between September 22, 2021, and July 24 final yr.
The victims’ ages ranged from 25 to 94. Most died in their very own properties.
German press reviews establish the suspect as Johannes M., however prosecutors haven’t launched a reputation, in step with German privateness guidelines.
The 40-year-old physician allegedly “administered an anesthetic and a muscle relaxant to his sufferers with out their data or consent,” the Berlin prosecutor’s workplace said in a statement. “The latter paralyzed the respiratory muscle tissue, resulting in respiratory arrest and dying inside minutes.”
Prosecutors and police previously said that the accused is claimed to have had no motive past killing, and that the suspect’s acts meet the authorized definition of “lust for homicide.”
The physician has been in custody since Aug. 6. Prosecutors stated Wednesday that he has not but responded to the case in opposition to him.
The fees had been filed to the Berlin state courtroom, which is able to now need to determine whether or not to deliver the case to trial and if that’s the case, when.
Homicide expenses carry a most sentence of life in jail. Prosecutors stated they intention to ask the courtroom to determine that the suspect bears significantly extreme guilt, which means that he would not be eligible for launch after 15 years as is normally the case in Germany. Additionally they need him to be banned from his career for all times.
The case recollects that of the infamous German nurse Niels Hoegel, who was sentenced in 2019 to life in jail for murdering 85 sufferers in his care.
Hoegel, believed to be Germany’s most prolific serial killer, murdered hospital sufferers with deadly injections between 2000 and 2005, earlier than he was ultimately caught within the act.
In a newer case in Germany, a 27-year-old male nurse was sentenced to life in jail in 2023 for murdering two sufferers by intentionally administering unprescribed medicine. The nurse, recognized as Mario G., was additionally discovered responsible on six counts of tried homicide.
In England, neonatal nurse Lucy Letby is serving a life sentence for murdering seven babies and making an attempt to homicide six others. Nevertheless, in February, a panel of consultants disputed the medical evidence used to convict Letby. Final month, legal professionals for Letby and former executives on the hospital the place she labored requested a choose to halt an inquiry into the deaths, citing the panel of consultants.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.
