BERLIN(National Times)- A German palliative care doctor was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday for murdering 15 people with lethal doses of sedatives, and he remains under investigation for dozens more killings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The court in Berlin convicted the 41-year-old of killing 12 women and three men during home visits between September 2021 and July 2024. But presiding judge Sylvia Busch said the conviction for 15 murders may well be only a glimpse of his many crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prosecutors said during the proceedings that he was suspected of having killed more than 70 other people. Detained in 2024, he is only partially identified in court records as Johannes M.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Busch described the man as a \u201cserial killer\u201d at the centre of an \u201cunfathomable\u201d and \u201cextraordinary\u201d case. And as the court found his crimes carried a \u201cparticular gravity of guilt\u201d, he was given the harshest possible sentence, making it much more difficult for him to ever win release. The court also banned him from ever again practising medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Death \u2018within minutes\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The court ruled that he had killed not out of any compassion for his patients or a misguided sense of assisted dying, but instead by a drive for power over his victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prosecutors had described the killer as having \u201ca lust for murder\u201d, saying the physician had had \u201cno other motive for killing these people than the act of killing itself\u201d. The victims, all of whom were under his medical care at the time, ranged in age from 25 to 94.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The court found that he intentionally administered an anaesthetic and a muscle relaxant that \u201cparalysed the respiratory muscles, leading to respiratory arrest and death within minutes\u201d. On at least five occasions, he allegedly set fire to the victims\u2019 apartments to cover up the killings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Monday Johannes M. confessed that he had \u201ckilled people\u201d and told the court that \u201cI despair at myself\u201d. He said he only now understood \u201cthe extent of the suffering\u201d he had caused, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On one occasion, he killed two patients on the same day. On the morning of July 8, 2024, he killed a 75-year-old man at his home in the central Berlin district of Kreuzberg. A few hours later, said the court, he struck again, killing a 76-year-old woman in the neighbouring Neukoelln district. His attempt to incinerate the crime scene failed when the fire did not catch, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BERLIN(National Times)- A German palliative care doctor was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday for murdering 15 people with lethal doses of sedatives, and he remains under investigation for dozens more killings. The court in Berlin convicted the 41-year-old of killing 12 women and three men during home visits between September 2021 and July […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n