Doctor suspected of killing 8 patients in Berlin and setting fires to cover up crimes: “Lust for murder”

German investigators suspect a Berlin doctor of killing eight elderly patients under his care and setting fire to some of their homes to cover up his crimes, prosecutors said Thursday.

The suspect, a 40-year-old whose identity has not been released, worked in palliative care for an at-home nursing service.

He was remanded in custody in August on suspicion of killing four women aged 72 to 94, and Berlin prosecutors have now linked him to four more deaths of men and women aged 61 to 83.

Police in August said the man was being investigated on four counts of manslaughter, one count of arson and three counts of attempted arson.

Berlin prosecutors said they were now treating the alleged killings as murder cases.

“The accused appears to have had no motive for killing the people other than the act of killing itself,” they said, accusing him of a “lust for murder.”

Police in August said the man was suspected of killing four female patients in the care of his nursing service in Berlin between June 11 and July 24.

In one case, an 87-year-old woman was resuscitated after emergency services arrived, but died later in hospital.

In another, the suspect allegedly started a blaze but the fire went out.

“When he realized this, he allegedly informed a relative of the woman and claimed that he was standing in front of her flat and that nobody was answering the doorbell,” police said.

In the four new cases, which date from June 2022 to April 2024, the suspect is accused of killing two men and two women in Berlin.

In one case, he is suspected of administering a cocktail of medications to a 70-year-old woman in her apartment in Berlin’s Tempelhof district and then starting a fire.

The fire department, called by a neighbor, was able to prevent the flames from spreading to the rest of the building.

He is also accused of administering deadly medications to two men, aged 70 and 83, and to a 61-year-old woman.

The case recalls that of the notorious German nurse Niels Hoegel, who was sentenced in 2019 to life in prison for murdering 85 patients in his care.

Hoegel, believed to be Germany’s most prolific serial killer, murdered hospital patients with lethal injections between 2000 and 2005, before he was eventually caught in the act.

A former colleague told the German newspaper Bild that Högel was nicknamed “Resuscitation Rambo” because of the way he “pushed everyone else aside” when patients needed to be resuscitated, the BBC reported.

In a more recent case, a 27-year-old male nurse was sentenced to life in prison in 2023 for murdering two patients by deliberately administering unprescribed drugs.

The nurse, identified as Mario G., was also found guilty on six counts of attempted murder.

During his trial, Mario G. admitted to injecting patients with sedatives and other drug cocktails while working in the recovery room at a Munich hospital.

The case in Berlin comes just weeks after a British doctor admitted posing as a nurse and trying to kill his mother’s long-term partner by injecting the man with poison disguised as a COVID-19 vaccine.

In August, a British judge sentenced nurse Lucy Letby to spend the rest of her life in prison for murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six others while working at a hospital in northern England.