Killer nurse may have struck 100 times

A NURSE who is serving a life sentence for two murders may have killed more than 100 patients in northwestern Germany, prosecutors revealed yesterday.

Investigators have completed toxicological examinations on patients who died during Niels Hoegel’s time as a nurse in hospitals in Oldenburg and Delmenhorst, prosecutors and police in Oldenburg said.

They have found a further 16 cases in which he is suspected of murder.

In August, they said they had determined that he might have killed at least another 84 patients beyond the ones for whose murders he is already serving time. If substantiated, it would make Hoegel Germany’s deadliest postwar serial killer.

Prosecutors expect to file additional charges against him next year. Additional convictions could affect any possibility of parole, but there are no consecutive sentences in Germany.

Hoegel was convicted in 2015 of two murders and two attempted murders at a hospital in Delmenhorst and was sentenced to life in prison.

During his trial, Hoegel said he deliberately triggered heart attacks in around 90 patients because he enjoyed the feeling of being able to resuscitate them. He later told investigators he also killed patients in Oldenburg. Hoegel worked at the Oldenburg hospital from 1999 to 2002 and in Delmenhorst from 2003 to 2005.

As part of a wider investigation involving both hospitals, police and prosecutors reviewed more than 500 patient files and hundreds more hospital records. They also exhumed 134 bodies from 67 cemeteries, and questioned Hoegel six times.

Police have said Hoegel could have been stopped earlier had local health officials not hesitated in alerting them.

Authorities are already pursuing criminal cases against some former staff at the two medical facilities.