A German palliative care nurse has been sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering 10 patients and attempting to kill 27 others in a bid to reduce his workload during night shifts.
The unnamed nurse, protected under German privacy laws, was found guilty by a court in Aachen of administering fatal doses of morphine and sedatives to mostly elderly patients at a hospital in Wuerselen, western Germany, between December 2023 and May 2024.
Prosecutors told the court that the nurse routinely injected patients with excessive quantities of morphine and midazolam, a muscle relaxant, to keep them quiet and easier to manage.
They described him as someone who became "irritated" by patients in need of intensive care and who acted as though he were a "master of life and death."
The court ruled that his crimes carried a "particular severity of guilt," meaning he is unlikely to be eligible for parole after serving the mandatory 15-year minimum term.
Investigations revealed that the nurse, who began working at the facility in 2020 after qualifying in 2007, was arrested in 2024 following a string of unexplained deaths that raised alarm among hospital staff.
Authorities are now re-examining other suspicious deaths that occurred during his employment, and exhumations have already begun to determine whether more patients may have been victims.
Prosecutors said further charges could follow depending on the outcome of these inquiries.
The case has drawn comparisons to that of Niels Högel, a former German nurse convicted in 2019 for murdering 85 patients with lethal drug doses between 1999 and 2005, one of the worst serial killing cases in Germany’s post-war history.
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