German nurse admits to murdering 100 patients

Man has already been sentenced to life in prison for 6 deaths

BERLIN — Niels Hoegel, a 41-year-old former German nurse, confessed Tuesday to one of Europe’s most gruesome mass murder cases since World War II, admitting to killing 100 patients between 2000 and 2005.

Hoegel has already been sentenced to life in prison after being charged with at least six murders and several more attempts. But prosecutors pushed for a new trial after details indicated that Hoegel may have killed 100 more victims, according to prosecutors.

The death toll may be even higher because some victims — aged between 34 and 96 — were cremated. More than 130 other bodies were exhumed during the investigation.

As his trial got underway Tuesday, Hoegel admitted the accusations were largely correct. “That’s the way it is,” he said.

His mass murder went unnoticed for years, partly because many of the patients were already critically ill and because Hoegel tried to resuscitate his victims after deliberately putting them on the brink of death. In some cases, patients survived, but records show that fatality rates regularly increased when Hoegel was on shift.

Investigators are also probing the responsibility of the hospitals where Hoegel worked. Authorities said that staff there was aware of irregularities, but failed to act. Hundreds of relatives backed the new trial against Hoegel, even though the former nurse’s sentence won’t substantially change. Under German law, Hoegel could theoretically walk free within little more than a decade, unless he is barred from an early release at the end of the current trial.