'Lust for murder': German doctor who killed 15 patients gets life term; suspected in 76 more deaths

A German palliative care doctor has been sentenced to life imprisonment for killing 15 of his patients, with prosecutors investigating 76 other cases that could make it one of the worst serial murder cases in Germany’s history.A court in Berlin found the 41-year-old man, named only as Johannes M. , guilty of murdering 12 women and three men aged between 25 and 94 between September 2021 and July 2024. Presiding judge Sylvia Busch described him as a “serial killer” at the centre of an “unfathomable” and “extraordinary” case.The court ruled that he had killed not out of compassion or a misguided sense of assisted dying, but by a “drive for power over his victims.” Prosecutors described the killer as having “a lust for murder,” saying the physician had “no other motive for killing these people than the act of killing itself.”During home visits, the doctor administered an anaesthetic and muscle relaxant that “paralysed the respiratory muscles, leading to respiratory arrest and death within minutes,” the court found. On at least five occasions, he allegedly set fires to cover up the killings.In July 2024, shortly before his arrest, he killed two patients in a single day — a 75-year-old man in central Berlin and hours later, a 76-year-old woman in a neighbouring district. His attempt to set fire to the woman’s house failed, prosecutors said.For much of the year-long trial, the doctor said nothing. But last month, he confessed, telling the court: “Throughout it all, I thought this was the best thing for everyone.” He added: “I despair at myself.”The mother of the youngest victim, a 25-year-old woman who died in 2021, was in tears. “She never said she didn’t want to live anymore,” she said.The court imposed a lifetime ban on him practising medicine and ordered preventive detention following his prison sentence. If the 76 other cases are proven, it would be one of the worst serial murder cases in Germany’s history.