German serial killer doctor who murdered 15 patients with sedatives is jailed for life amid fears he was behind dozens more deaths
German ‘serial killer’ doctor sentenced to life imprisonment today The investigation into dozens of murders continues, for the crime of killing 15 people with a lethal dose of sedatives.
The court in Berlin found the 41-year-old palliative care specialist, identified only as Johannes M., guilty of murdering 12 women and three men during home visits between September 2021 and July 2024.
But chief judge Sylvia Busch said his convictions for 15 murders may have been just a fraction of his many crimes.
Prosecutors said during the trials that he was suspected of killing more than 70 people.
Busch described the man as a ‘serial killer’ who was at the center of a ‘preposterous’ and ‘extraordinary’ case.
And because the court found that his crimes carried ‘guilt of special gravity’, it gave him the harshest possible sentence, making it much harder for him to win release.
The court also banned him from ever practicing medicine again.
The court ruled that he killed not out of compassion for his patients or a misguided sense of assisted dying, but out of a drive to assert power over his victims.
Pictured is photo of Johannes M., 40, undated. Doctor killed at least 15 people
This image shows the entrance to the apartment of one of the doctor’s suspected victims
Prosecutors stated that the killer had a “desire for murder” and that the doctor “had no reason other than killing himself to kill these people.”
The victims, all of whom were under his medical care at the time, ranged in age from 25 to 94.
The court found that he deliberately administered an anesthetic and muscle relaxant that “paralyzed the respiratory muscles, leading to respiratory arrest and death within a few minutes.”
He allegedly set fire to the victims’ apartments at least five times to cover up the murders.
On Monday, Johannes M. admitted to ‘killing people’ and told the court: ‘I despair of myself.’
He said he only now realized the ‘extent of pain’ he had caused, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.
He once killed two patients on the same day.
On the morning of July 8, 2024, he killed a 75-year-old man in his home in Berlin’s central Kreuzberg district.
The man attacked again a few hours later, killing a 76-year-old woman in the neighboring Neukoelln district, the court heard.
The picture shows one of the apartments that the doctor allegedly set on fire to erase his traces.
An attempt to burn down the scene failed when no fire broke out, according to prosecutors.
Suspicions regarding Johannes M.’s activities were first raised by the care services, which led to a police investigation. He was arrested in August 2024.
Initially, investigators investigated four cases, but the number of suspicious deaths continued to increase and other cases continued to be investigated.
The case is reminiscent of that of German nurse Niels Hoegel, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing 85 patients in 2019.
In another case, a palliative care nurse was sentenced to life in prison in November for killing 10 patients and attempting to kill 27 people by lethal injection.
