Former German Nurse Guilty Of Killing 85 Patients In Serial Murder Case - NPR

Former nurse Niels Högel was found guilty of killing patients in his care by injecting them with drugs and then trying to resuscitate them. He's seen here in court, awaiting his verdict in Oldenburg, Germany. Hauke-Christian Dittrich/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

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Hauke-Christian Dittrich/AFP/Getty Images

Former nurse Niels Högel — who has admitting to giving potentially lethal drugs to patients so he could try to resuscitate them — has been sentenced by a German court to life in prison for murdering 85 people.

"Your guilt is unimaginable," Oldenburg District Court Judge Sebastian Bührmann said as he sentenced Högel, according to Deutsche Welle. "The human mind struggles to take in the sheer scale of these crimes."

It's the latest judgment in what the local police chief in Oldenburg has called a "horrifying" serial killer case. After initially being accused in a handful of deaths, Högel was discovered to have been involved in dozens more.

Högel is already serving a life sentence for killing two patients. Thursday's ruling adds to that punishment, in a case that initially accused Högel of committing 100 murders between early 2000 and the middle of 2005.

The former nurse was accused of carrying out the killings as he tried to gain attention at two different jobs: in an Oldenburg medical clinic and a hospital in Delmenhorst. While he admitted to inducing cardiac arrest in scores of patients, there were so many victims that in some instances, he said he simply couldn't recall details about the people who died. In others, he denied playing a role.

"I feel like an accountant of death," Judge Bührmann said Thursday, noting the scale of the crimes.

The judge's ruling includes a notation of the severe gravity of the case — an addition that will likely complicate any attempts to free Högel on parole after 15 years, as is common for life sentences under German law.

The disgraced nurse's victims ranged in age from 34 to 96, according to the district court in Oldenburg. Högel was found to have injected them with a variety of drugs that included the heart medicines ajmaline, amiodarone and sotalol, along with potassium and the anesthetic lidocaine.

As the scope of Högel's crimes became clear, authorities exhumed dozens of bodies to test them for the cocktail of drugs he had administered to his victims. The true extent of his killing spree may never be known: In some cases, the bodies of people who died under Högel's care already had been cremated.

This week, Högel offered an apology to families and others who lost loved ones. Some of those surviving relatives spoke outside of the district court today — including families of former patients whose cases remain painfully unresolved.

"That is very, very bitter," said Frank Brinkers, according to the Associated Press. The cause of his father's death is still an open question, although Högel is suspected of playing a role. Brinkers added, "I have gone through hell and that is hard to bear."

As they explored the case, investigators have also criticized some of Högel's colleagues, saying they could have done more to stop him after noticing his irregular behavior. Some hospital employees in Delmenhorst, near Bremen, were charged with negligent manslaughter for not taking quick and decisive action to stop the killer — even after a colleague saw Högel inject a patient with ajmaline.

And police have complained that Högel was given a clean reference when he moved to the Delmenhorst hospital from the clinic in Oldenburg, despite his actions there.

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