German doctor kills 15 patients, ongoing investigation may reveal more murders

A German doctor providing medical attention to palliative care patients has been charged with 15 murders. The doctor is said to have been killing his patients between September 2021 and July 2024.

Public prosecutors have ordered the exhumation of bodies, and an investigation is also underway. The death toll could increase as the probe proceeds. The victims who succumbed to the doctor's malicious intent were aged between 56 and 94.

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The 40-year-old doctor allegedly used an anaesthetic induction drug and then administered a muscle relaxant to the victims. All this was done without a medical need for the injections. The patients or their kin had no knowledge of this, nor was their consent taken. The combination of the injections paralysed the patients' respiratory muscles, leading to respiratory arrest and ultimately death in a few minutes.

When the doctor did not execute this long procedural method, he resorted to setting the victims' houses on fire and with that, the evidence of the crime was also moved to ashes.

The doctor, whose identity has not been revealed yet, has been in custody since August 2024. He has not commented on the charges so far. The prosecutors are looking for a lifelong professional ban on the doctor. He had been actively practicing in several German states until his criminal intentions were highlighted.

Germany's privacy laws do not allow revealing identities, and so he has not been named officially. It was the suspicion over four deaths last year that led to the investigation. This came to the fore after he torched the houses of his patients. It was then that the doctor's involvement in other such deaths came to be highlighted as well.