The prosecutor’s workplace introduced prices towards the 40-year-old physician “for 15 counts of homicide with premeditated malice and different base motives” earlier than a Berlin state court docket. The prosecutor’s workplace is looking for not solely a conviction and a discovering of “significantly critical” guilt, but additionally a lifetime ban on training drugs and subsequent preventive detention.
Murder prices carry a most sentence of life in jail. If a court docket establishes that the defendant bears significantly extreme guilt, which means he wouldn’t be eligible for launch after 15 years as is often the case in Germany.
Parallel to the trial, the prosecutor’s workplace is investigating dozens of different suspected circumstances in separate proceedings.
The man, who has solely been recognized as Johannes M. in step with German privateness guidelines, can also be accused of making an attempt to cowl up proof of the murders by beginning fires within the victims’ houses. He has been in custody since August 6, 2025.
The physician was a part of a nursing service’s end-of-life care group within the German capital and was initially suspected within the deaths of simply 4 sufferers. That quantity has crept greater since final summer time, and prosecutors at the moment are accusing him of the deaths of 15 folks between September 22, 2021, and July 24 final 12 months.
The victims’ ages ranged from 25 to 94. Most died in their very own houses.
The physician allegedly administered an anesthetic and a muscle relaxer to the sufferers with out their information or consent. The drug cocktail then allegedly paralyzed the respiratory muscle tissues. Respiratory arrest and demise adopted inside minutes, prosecutors mentioned.
The physician didn’t comply with an interview with a psychiatric professional forward of the trial, German information company dpa reported. The professional will due to this fact observe the defendant’s behaviour in court docket and listen to statements from witnesses to be able to give an evaluation of the person’s persona and culpability.
So far, it’s unclear what the palliative care doctor’s motive may need been, dpa reported. The victims named within the indictment had been all critically in poor health, however their deaths weren’t imminent.
The defendant is not going to make a press release to the court docket in the intervening time, his defence lawyer Christoph Stoll mentioned, in accordance with dpa.
The Court has initially scheduled 35 trial dates for the proceedings till January 28, 2026. According to the Court, 13 kin of the deceased are represented as co-plaintiffs. There are a number of witnesses for every case, and round 150 folks in complete may very well be heard in court docket, dpa reported.
Among the circumstances now being heard in court docket is that of a 56-year-old girl who died in September.
On September 5, the physician allegedly administered an anaesthetic and a muscle relaxant to the bodily weakened girl in her dwelling with none medical want. However, fearing discovery, he then made an emergency name and falsely said that he had discovered the girl in a “situation requiring resuscitation”, in accordance with the indictment. Rescue staff had been in a position to resuscitate the girl and took her to hospital, dpa reported.
The indictment mentioned that “in continuation of his plan of motion and within the information of the injured celebration’s residing will”, in accordance with which the girl didn’t need any life-prolonging measures, the physician is alleged to have known as considered one of her daughters and apologized for violating this can. With the consent of each daughters, synthetic respiration was discontinued and the girl died on Sept. 8 in a Berlin hospital.
An investigation into additional suspected deaths is continuous.
A specifically established investigation group within the murder division of the Berlin State Criminal Police Office and the Berlin public prosecutor’s workplace investigated a complete of 395 circumstances. In 95 of those circumstances, preliminary suspicion was confirmed and preliminary proceedings had been initiated. In 5 circumstances, the preliminary suspicion was not substantiated.
In 75 circumstances, investigations are nonetheless ongoing in separate proceedings. Five exhumations are nonetheless deliberate for this separate process, prosecutors mentioned.
Among the circumstances nonetheless being investigated is the demise of the physician’s mother-in-law, who was affected by most cancers, court docket spokesman Sebastian Büchner mentioned. Local media reported that she died throughout a go to by the physician. In 2019, a German nurse who murdered 87 sufferers by intentionally bringing about cardiac arrests was given a life sentence.
Earlier this month, German investigators within the northern city of Itzehoe mentioned they had been analyzing the case of a health care provider who has been suspected of killing a number of sufferers.
