A German physician went on trial Monday accused of killing 15 sufferers with deadly injections and performing as “grasp of life and dying” over these in his care.
The 40-year-old palliative care specialist, named by German media as Johannes M., is alleged to have killed 12 ladies and three males between September 2021 and July 2024 whereas working in Berlin.
The physician is accused of injecting the victims, aged between 25 and 94, with lethal cocktails of sedatives and in some circumstances setting fireplace to their houses in a bid to cowl up his crimes.
The accused had “visited his sufferers underneath the pretext of offering medical care”, prosecutor Philipp Meyhoefer mentioned on the opening of the trial on the state courtroom in Berlin.
Johannes M. had organized “residence visits, already with the intention of killing” and exploited his sufferers’ belief in him as a physician, Meyhoefer mentioned.
“He acted with disregard for all times… and behaved because the grasp of life and dying.”
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A co-worker first raised the alarm over Johannes M. final July after turning into suspicious that so lots of his sufferers had died in fires, in keeping with Die Zeit newspaper.
He was arrested in August, with prosecutors initially linking him to 4 deaths.
However subsequent investigations uncovered a bunch of different suspicious circumstances, and in April prosecutors charged Johannes M. with 15 counts of homicide.
Prosecutors and police beforehand mentioned that the accused is alleged to have had no motive past killing, and that the suspect’s acts meet the authorized definition of “lust for homicide.”
“Why do individuals kill?”
An additional 96 circumstances had been nonetheless being investigated, a prosecution spokesman advised AFP, together with the dying of Johannes M.’s mother-in-law.
She had been affected by most cancers and mysteriously died the identical weekend that Johannes M. and his spouse went to go to her in Poland in early 2024, in keeping with media stories.
The suspect reportedly educated as a radiologist and a normal practitioner earlier than occurring to specialise in palliative care.
Based on Die Zeit, he submitted a doctoral thesis in 2013 wanting into the motives behind a sequence of killings in Frankfurt, which opened with the phrases “Why do individuals kill?”
The physician allegedly “administered an anesthetic and a muscle relaxant to his sufferers with out their information or consent,” the Berlin prosecutor’s workplace mentioned in an announcement. “The latter paralyzed the respiratory muscle groups, resulting in respiratory arrest and dying inside minutes.”
In 5 circumstances, Johannes M. allegedly set fireplace to the victims’ flats after administering the injections.
On one event, he’s accused of murdering two sufferers on the identical day.
On the morning of July 8, 2024, he allegedly killed a 75-year-old man at his residence within the Berlin district of Kreuzberg.
“A couple of hours later” he’s mentioned to have struck once more, killing a 76-year-old lady within the neighboring Neukoelln district.
Prosecutors say he began a fireplace within the lady’s house, nevertheless it went out.
“When he realized this, he allegedly knowledgeable a relative of the lady and claimed that he was standing in entrance of her flat and that no person was answering the doorbell,” prosecutors mentioned.
In one other case, Johannes M. “falsely claimed to have already begun resuscitation efforts” on a 56-year-old sufferer, who was initially saved alive by rescuers however died three days later in hospital.
Echoes of different circumstances
The case remembers that of infamous German nurse Niels Hoegel, who was handed a life sentence in 2019 for murdering 85 sufferers.
Hoegel, believed to be fashionable Germany’s most prolific serial killer, murdered hospital sufferers with deadly injections between 2000 and 2005, earlier than he was finally caught within the act.
Extra just lately, a 27-year-old nurse was given a life sentence in 2023 for murdering two sufferers by intentionally administering unprescribed medication.
In March, one other nurse went on trial in Aachen accused of injecting 26 sufferers with giant doses of sedatives or painkillers, leading to 9 deaths.
Final week, German police revealed they’re investigating one other physician suspected of killing a number of primarily aged sufferers.
Investigators are “reviewing” deaths linked to the physician from the city of Pinneberg in northern Germany, simply outdoors Hamburg, police and prosecutors mentioned.
In England, neonatal nurse Lucy Letby is serving a life sentence for murdering seven infants and trying to homicide six others. On July 1, three former senior leaders on the hospital the place Letby labored had been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.
