A German palliative care doctor has been sentenced to life imprisonment for killing 15 of his patients.<\/p>\n
A court in Berlin found the 41-year-old man, named only as Johannes M. in line with German privacy rules, guilty of murdering 12 women and 3 men between September 2021 and July 2024.<\/p>\n
The authorities believe these killings could be just the tip of the iceberg. Prosecutors are currently investigating dozens of other incidents involving the doctor.<\/p>\n
His victims were between the ages of 25 and 94. The court heard how they were all critically ill, but that their deaths were not imminent.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors said that during home visits, the doctor administered a lethal combination of various medicines without his patients’ consent.<\/p>\n
On several occasions, they said he set fires to cover his tracks.<\/p>\n
In July 2024, shortly before his arrest, prosecutors said the doctor killed two patients in a single day – a 75-year-old man at his home in central Berlin and, a few hours later, a 76-year-old woman in a neighbouring district.<\/p>\n
They said the doctor tried to set fire to the woman’s house, but failed.<\/p>\n
For much of the trial, which has gone on for about a year, the doctor said nothing. But last month, he confessed to having “killed people,” twelve of his severely ill patients.<\/p>\n
He told the court he had convinced himself that he was doing the right thing, sparing them “suffering and infirmity”.<\/p>\n
“Throughout it all, I thought this was the best thing for everyone,” he said.<\/p>\n
He said he apologised for all the suffering he had caused.<\/p>\n
The authorities suspect him of having killed further patients. Prosecutors are currently investigating 76 other cases.<\/p>\n
German media say if the further cases are proven, and he is found guilty, it would be one of the largest incidences of serial murder in Germany’s history.<\/p>\n
The doctor told the court that he would “get involved much earlier in the forthcoming proceedings.”<\/p>\n
Earlier in the trial, relatives of the victims told the court they still couldn’t believe it.<\/p>\n
The mother of the youngest victim, a 25-year-old woman who died in 2021, was in tears. “She never said she didn’t want to live anymore,” she said.<\/p>\n
The son of a 72-year-old woman who died in 2024, said his mother had had plans to go to the Baltic Sea with her sister. “My mother wanted to keep on living,” he said.<\/p>\n
The court ruled that the doctor’s guilt was particularly serious. It ordered that the doctor be put in preventive detention, following his prison sentence. It also imposed a lifetime ban on him practising medicine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A German palliative care doctor has been sentenced to life imprisonment for killing 15 of his patients. A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-680599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}