Nurse ‘could be worst mass murderer since the war’ in Germany
A MALE nurse serving life for murdering two patients in Germany is now a suspect in at least 84 other murder cases.
Police fear the true body count could be even higher and that Niels Hoegel could turn out to be Germany’s most prolific killer since the Second World War.
Hoegel, 40, confessed he had deliberately given lethal drug doses to around 90 people at one clinic alone.
Relatives of patients who died at other clinics where he worked have urged police to investigate further.
Hoegel was convicted in 2015 of two murders and two attempted murders at an intensive care clinic in Delmenhorst, a suburb of Bremen in northern Germany.
He admitted deliberately injecting patients then trying to revive them to play the hero. He felt ‘euphoric’ if he brought a patient back to life and devastated when he failed.
Each time he vowed to himself to end his warped game, only to do it again and again.
He admitted during his trial he had injected 90 people at Delmenhorst and a commission set up to find out the scale of his crimes exhumed scores of bodies.
Johann Kuehme, chief of police in nearby Oldenburg, where Hoegel also worked at a clinic, said yesterday that there was now evidence of 84 more killings.
The true number was probably higher because it had been impossible to gather evidence when the victims had been cremated.
‘Eighty-four killings leave us speechless,’ said Mr Kuehme. ‘And the real dimension of the killings by Niels H is likely many times worse.’
Many deaths could have been prevented if other clinic staff had alerted authorities, he said.
Former staff at the two clinics are now facing criminal charges.