A trial is going on in Germany of a man who admits to having killed at least 100 people. He was a nurse and he killed them by injecting them with drugs which, well, caused their death. The thing is, what’s he’s really admitting is to being both hungry for glory and also incompetent. For the purpose of the injections was not to kill but to show his skill at resuscitation. Which, obviously enough, wasn’t that high:
A former nurse has admitted to killing 100 patients in his care, on the first day of his trial in the biggest serial killing case in Germany’s post-war history.
Well, yes, given the location they do have to put that time limit on it. He’s already in jail, having been convicted before this:
The murder charges stem from Hoegel’s time at a hospital in Oldenburg between 1999 and 2002 and at another hospital in nearby Delmenhorst from 2003 to 2005. The alleged victims were aged between 34 and 96. Hoegel was convicted in 2015 of two murders and two attempted murders. During that trial, he said he intentionally brought about cardiac crises in some 90 patients in Delmenhorst because he enjoyed the feeling of being able to resuscitate them.
Actually, they caught him injecting the wrong drug into one patient, then later he confessed to some more, then after that trial and jailing we come to today’s admission of more:
Högel was first caught in 2005 injecting unprescribed medication into a patient in Delmenhorst. In 2008 he was jailed for seven years for attempted murder.
In 2014-15, a second trial found him guilty of two murders and two attempted murders and he was given the maximum sentence.
We’ve had more than just the one case of people killing simply because they like killing. Shipman here in the UK is a good example. The difference here is the reason for the killings:
Hoegel appears to have followed a similar procedure each time, first injecting a medication that triggered cardiac arrest, and then stepping in to resuscitate them.
Prosecutors say he was motivated by vanity, to show off his skills at saving human lives, and by simple “boredom”.
It’s just that he wasn’t as good at the resuscitation as he was at the injection. And thus at least 100 people progressed to the morgue.
The real question here isn’t what the hell he thought he was doing because there’s near no behaviour that some human being won’t indulge in. Rather, it’s how the hell did the system allow him to do this for so long? How did they miss so many heart attacks most of them among those unlikely to have suffered heart attacks without intervention?
