A 40-year-old doctor practicing palliative medicine in Germany has been charged with killing 15 of his patients and is suspected in another 95 cases, NBC News reported.
Of the 15 deaths he’s been charged with, patients between the ages of 25 and 94, investigators said they occurred between September 2021 and July 2024. All the alleged victims used a nursing service that the doctor worked with and made house calls.
Germany’s privacy laws prohibit the doctor from being identified, but according to NBC News, he was arrested in August last year on a warrant that the Berlin Public Prosecutor’s Office said had to be “repeatedly amended” to add additional counts of murder.
At the time of his arrest, there were only four known cases.
Investigators say the 40-year-old reportedly gave the victims an anesthetic and a muscle relaxant without their consent or knowledge and that their deaths likely occurred within minutes as their respiratory muscles experienced paralysis from the narcotic cocktail, causing respiratory arrest.
Among the gruesome allegations, the 40-year-old is also accused of starting fires in some of the victims’ homes to cover his tracks.
Prosecutors also allege that in July last year, the doctor killed two people, a 75-year-old man in his apartment and a 76-year-old woman in her apartment, both in a borough southeast of Berlin’s center, just hours apart.
Authorities in Berlin have examined 395 deaths and confirmed suspicion of the doctor’s involvement in at least 95 of the cases, NBC News reported, adding that there are still another 75 deaths waiting to be investigated.
At least a dozen bodies have been exhumed, with five of those cases now included in the indictment, German investigators said.
While the 40-year-old has not made any public statements and a defense attorney has yet to be named, NBC News reported that along with a conviction, prosecutors are seeking “preventative detention,” a form of incarceration that can last as long as a person is considered dangerous and a “lifelong professional ban.”
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