A former nurse, only identified as Niels H., hides his face behind a folder next to his lawyer, Ulrike Baumann, at a court in Oldenburg, Germany. The court found the 38-year-old guilty of charges including two counts of murder and sentenced him to life in prison. (AP Photo/dpa, Carmen Jaspersen)
At a hospital in northern Germany, he was once dubbed a bad luck charm since so many of his patients required resuscitation. What doctors and nurses there didn’t know was that he was overdosing patients with cardiovascular medication because he got a strange satisfaction from bringing them back to life. But he wasn’t always successful.
Prosecutors accused the 38-year-old male nurse known only as Niels H. because of Germany’s strict privacy laws of three murders and two attempted murders between 2003 and 2005 at Delmenhorst Hospital in northern Germany.
They said he was bored with his job and wanted to sharpen what he called his excellent resuscitation skills, so he pumped excessive amounts of heart medication into patients hearts to create medical emergencies. Then he could revive them and become a hero.
On Thursday, the nurse, who has confessed to killing 30 patients and nearly killing 60 others, was sentenced to life in prison, court spokesman Daniel Moennich told the Associated Press.
The court concluded that the accused used the heart medication to bring about a life-threatening situation in five cases, so as to make himself appear particularly competent when he revived them, Moennich said.
At one point during trial, Niels H. told the court, It was the clinical daily routine which failed to challenge me, according to the German newspaper Deutsche Welle. This life and death game, he said, gave him a high that lasted days.
Court-appointed psychiatrist Konstantin Karyofilis told the newspaper Niels H. was not mentally ill, but wanted to earn the respect of his colleagues as well as recognition from his patients and their families. Eventually, Karyofilis said, he stopped seeing his patients as people.
These people were pawns in a game for you a game that only you could win and all the others could only lose, Judge Sebastian Buehrmann told him, the AP reported, citing German news agency Deutsche-Presse Agentur.
Niels H. had worked with patients at other hospitals as well as at a nursing home. He was a part-time paramedic. And he had been in trouble before, the Guardian reported. In 2008, he was sentenced to more than seven years in prison for attempted murder after another nurse caught him in the overdose act. Since then, the prosecution has faced criticism for failing to uncover his other crimes.
Now, investigators are looking into more than 200 deaths that occurred among the nurse’s patients. The first eight bodies are set to be exhumed next month, followed by more than 100 potential others, Deutsche Welle reported.
I expect we will see each other in another trial, Buhrmann told him, according to the newspaper.