A German court has imposed a life sentence this Wednesday on a doctor specializing in palliative care for the murder of 15 patients. The sentence also includes a lifetime ban from practicing medicine, after judges described him as a "serial killer".
The ruling by the Berlin Regional Court imposes the maximum sentence on the 41-year-old physician, concluding that between 2021 and 2024 he administered a lethal combination of different drugs to twelve women and three men aged between 25 and 94. All of them suffered from serious ailments, although their death was not considered imminent.
"The patients placed themselves in his hands, and he was the one who had the power over life and death," said the court president, Sylvia Busch, explaining the grounds for the verdict. "The patients wanted to live," she stressed, adding that "these acts have nothing to do with palliative care or euthanasia."
The doctor has been in pre-trial detention since August 2024. He has faced charges since April 2025 and in June admitted to killing twelve seriously ill patients during home visits, according to the German news agency DPA. However, Busch indicated that investigators suspect he may be involved in more than 15 homicides.
"He is a serial killer. It is probably just the tip of the iceberg," stated the president of the Berlin Regional Court, adding that the accused told his wife in a phone call that he had been killing for a long time. The Public Prosecutor's Office has ongoing investigations into another 76 cases and expects to file new charges, after the convicted man expressed his willingness to cooperate with the investigations.