Nurse who murdered 87 patients modern Germanys most prolific serial killer
Niels Hoegel has been convicted of 85 counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison (Picture: Hau..
A nurse who murdered 87 of his patients has been sentenced to life in prison.
Niels Hoegel, 42, is believed to be modern Germanys most prolific serial killer.
He injected patients with overdoses in order to give them cardiac arrests, because he enjoyed the feeling of being able to resuscitate them.
Sometimes he succeeded in bringing them back, but in at least 87 cases they died.
Your guilt is incomprehensible, presiding judge Sebastian Buerhmann said as he handed down the verdict. I felt like an accountant of death.
Hoegel worked at a hospital in Oldenburg between 1999 and 2002 and another hospital in nearby Delmenhorst from 2003 to 2005, and the killings took place between 2000 and 2005, the dpa news agency reported.
Hoegel was convicted in 2015 of two murders and two attempted murders and is already serving a life sentence.
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After his initial trial, an investigation took place into his patients which revealed the staggering scale of his criminality. Police and prosecutors reviewed more than 500 patient files and hundreds more hospital records. They also exhumed 134 bodies from 67 cemeteries, and questioned Hoegel multiple times,
Prosecutors noted that many of his victims were not terminally ill patients, but were on the path to recovery.
The fact is sometimes the worst fantasy is not enough to describe the truth, judge Buehrmann said.
A court in the northwestern city of Oldenburg today found the nurse guilty of murdering 85 patients, aged 34 to 96, and sentenced him to life in prison.