The murderer had already been convicted of a double homicide. But he would have much more to his credit. Between 90 and 180, according to estimates.
Germany had already faced its “Angel of Death”. Stephan Letter, a 38-year-old nurse, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2006 for the murder of 29 of his patients. But a new similar case arouses fear across the Rhine.
Niels Högel, still a nurse, would have killed at least 90 people, and possibly up to 180, according to the German authorities. “We can prove at least 90 murders, and there are at least as many that we cannot prove,” said Arne Schmidt, head of the investigation.
This impressive number was obtained after “134 exhumations, and several hundred testimonies”, he specified.
Hand in the bag
The 41-year-old nurse has not been sleeping for several years. He has already been sentenced to prison in 2008, then to life in 2015 for two murders, and four more attempts.
The facts dated back to 2005. Niels Högel was caught in action by a colleague, while he was trying to administer an unprescribed product to one of his patients at the clinic in Delmenhorst, near Bremen, in the north of the country.
The investigation was then fueled by several other suspected cases, reported by people who had doubts about the death of their relatives. After the bodies were exhumed, three murders had been confirmed, and in two more cases injections had been named as a “possible cause” of death.
A convict too talkative
But it was in 2014 that the investigation took a chilling turn. Niels Högel reportedly admitted to his cellmate that his record was much higher. He had recognized about fifty homicides. Serial murders that he later confirmed to a psychiatrist: 30 murders and about 60 attempts to his credit.
The rest of the investigation seems to confirm this, and even go beyond what the serial killer dares to admit. “What we were able to learn is frightening, it exceeds anything that one could have imagined”, declared Johann Kühme, the chief of the police force of Oldenburg, dismayed.
His death toll was established at 33 victims in 2016, and now at 90. But the full list of his murders will undoubtedly never be fully established, admits the prosecutor of Oldenburg.
When a narcissist is bored
The nurse attacked patients in intensive care, with no profile preference, apart from the fact that they must be in critical condition. He wanted to take them as close as possible to death, so that he could then bring them back (or not) to life. By “boredom”, he justified himself.
A classic modus operandi of this kind of murderer, according to Professor Michel Bénézech, psychiatrist and criminologist, interviewed last March by Pourquoidocteur.fr. “The instruments of crime used are most often the injection of toxic substances which, at normal doses, are therapeutic, but which, at excessive doses, become lethal, like any effective drug,” he explained.
On the motivational side, the psychiatrist is more nuanced. “There is no particular profile. These are domination murders. These are people who apparently kill for compassionate reasons, out of pity, believing they are helping terminally ill patients. They cause serious distress in their patients to have, so to speak, the merit of resuscitating them. The psychological profile shows narcissism. On the other hand, they do not particularly suffer from mental disorders. No more than all the criminals. “
In 2017, an anesthetist from the Saint-Vincent clinic in Besançon (Doubs) was indicted for poisoning with premeditation. He is being sued for poisoning seven people, two of whom have died.
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