A German nurse has admitted in court to being the county’s deadliest serial killer since the war by murdering 100 patients with lethal injection so that he could play the hero by trying to revive them.
41-year-old Niels Hogel, when asked by the judge if the charges against him were valid said “All that I have admitted to is true.”
Hogel has already been sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2015 after we was found guilty of killing two patients with lethal injections. In January this year prosecutors brought new charges for killing another 97 people In court at the end of October the number increased to 100.
Prosecutors in the northern German city of Oldenburg say that toxicology reports revealed he injected 36 people at one clinic in Oldenburg and 64 at another in nearby Delmenhorst between 1999 and 2005.
Police investigators have identified a potential 322 victims. 134 bodies in 67 different cemeteries have been exhumed which have been tested for the drugs Hoegel is known to have used.
Hoegel is believed to have chosen his victims, aged 34 to 96, at random. He pumped them with drugs in order to trigger cardiovascular arrests so that he could then be seen trying to revive them.
Arne Schmidt, director of the investigation, said the true number of victims may never be known since many were cremated. It was reported that 60 patients he injected survived.
