A palliative care nurse at a hospital in Germany has been handed a life sentence, convicted for the murder of 10 patients and the attempted murder of 27 more.
Prosecutors had alleged that between December 2023 and May 2024, the man, who has not been named publicly, injected mostly older patients at a hospital in Wuerselen, in western Germany, with lethal doses of painkillers or sedatives, including morphine and midazolam, to ease his workload during busy night shifts.
Midazolam is a muscle relaxant and is occasionally used in executions in the U.S., according to CBS.
Prosecutors accused the man, who was arrested in 2024, of playing “master of life and death” over patients in his care, said the man had a personality disorder, lacked compassion for patients and never expressed remorse during his trial.
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Other suspicious cases that happened during his career are also being investigated, the BBC reported.
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The court stated that his crimes carried a “particular severity of guilt,” which should bar him from early release after 15 years, a provision typically available in cases of this nature. He will be allowed to appeal.
French outlet Agence France-Presse (AFP) said the man had worked at the hospital where the murders took place since 2020 and completed his nursing training in 2007. It added that exhumations are underway to identify more potential victims, which could lead to another trial.
The unnamed man is not the first nurse to be found guilty of mass murdering patients.
In 2019, former nurse Niels Högel was jailed for life for murdering 85 of his patients at two hospitals in northern Germany.
A court found that he injected lethal doses of heart medicine to patients in his care between 1999 and 2005.
Similarly, in 2023, British nurse Lucy Letby was jailed for life after being found guilty of murdering and attempting to murder newborns, and attempting to kill eight more at the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital in northern England between June 2015 and June 2016.
During her trial, the court heard that she abused babies in her care by overfeeding them with milk, administering air into their blood and stomachs, poisoning them with insulin and physically assaulting them.
Letby was also found guilty of trying to kill a 15-week premature baby girl, referred to during the trial as Baby K.
A consultant pediatrician, Dr. Ravi Jayaram, intervened and resuscitated Baby K. He told the court there was “no evidence” Letby made any attempt to save the newborn, including calling for help. The baby’s alarm, which monitored heart rate and oxygen levels, was seemingly silenced.
Letby would wait until infants were left alone in the hospital before attacking, witnesses testified.
She has never admitted any wrongdoing and maintains her innocence.
Letby was handed a whole-life order, the most severe sentence possible under British law, which will ensure she remains in prison until her death.
There is no possibility of parole. She was the fourth-ever woman to be given this sentence in the U.K.
— With files from Global News staff
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