Niels Hoegel, a German nurse already serving life for injecting patients with overdoses of cardiovascular medication that were deadly, is now seen as responsible for a total of 90 deaths – 84 more than thought. All to impress co-workers with his resuscitation skills.
He is actually suspected of double that, but those patients were cremated after they died and couldn’t be tested. More than 130 bodies have been exhumed and tested for the presence of the medication, per Agence France-Presse.
Prosecuters said Hoegel would try to successfully resuscitate his patients after inducing a heart failure or circulatory collapse, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported.
Authorities said he injected patients at hospitals in Oldenburg and Delmenhorst from 1999 and 2005.
Hoegel was sentenced to 7½ years in prison on attempted murder charges for trying to give a patient an overdose of the drug in 2008 and then a life sentence in 2015 after he was found guilty on six murder counts for following through on others.
Prosecutors said a three-year investigation into other patients under Hoegel's care determined he was responsible for at least 84 more deaths.
"The death toll is unique in the history of the German republic," Arne Schmidt, Oldenburg chief police investigator, said, per AFP. "[There was] evidence for at least 90 murders, and at least as many [suspected] cases again that can no longer be proven."
Prosecutor Daniela Schiereck-Bohlemann claimed that Hoegel admitted to 30 cases in which he killed patients, AFP said.
"Eighty-four killings ... leave us speechless," said Oldenburg police chief Johann Kuehme Kuehme, per The Associated Press. "And as if all that were not enough, we must realize that the real dimension of the killings by Niels H. is likely many times worse."
Kuehme said many of the deaths could have been prevented if the medical officials at the clinics in Oldenburg and Delmenhorst would have gotten law enforcement involved sooner.
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