A nurse in Germany serving a life term in prison for killing six patients with drugs out of ‘boredom’ has just been charged with killing 97 more, prosecutors reported Jan. 22. The new federal indictment in Germany against Niels Hoegel for murder was expected after government officials stated late last year he might have murdered at least 100 patients total.
Hoegel worked as a nurse in an Oldenburg, Germany clinic from 1999 to 2002 and in Delmenhorst from 2003 to 2005. He was convicted of killing two people and attempting to kill two others in 2015. During his federal trial, Hoegel admitted he purposely put people into cardiac arrest because he liked to resuscitate them.
Those incriminating statements caused German investigators to perform toxicology examinations on dozens of patients who died when Hoegel worked there.
It is unclear when there will be a new trial in Oldenburg for the dozens of suspected murders. If he is convicted of more killings, he could have difficulty getting parole. There are not any consecutive sentences in Germany.
Of all the new cases, 62 feature patients who passed away in Delmenhorst, and 35 in Oldenburg. Federal prosecutor Martin Koziolek noted that in three other cases that agents deemed suspicious, tests did not show sufficient evidence to add them to the new charges.
Hoegel used several drugs to resuscitate patients, Koziolek reported. He also said that prosecutors think that Hoegel accepted patient deaths as a result of the drugs he gave them.
Police have reviewed at least 500 patient files and hundreds of other hospital records. They also dug up 134 bodies from dozens of cemeteries, and questioned Hoegel five times.
The grim revelations go back to 2005 when another nurse say Hoegel trying to inject a patient with a lethal drug in Delmenhorst. The patient lived and the nurse was placed under arrest. In 2008, he was given a sentence of 7.5 years in prison for several attempted murders.
Due to the high level of media publicity, a woman called the police and said she suspected that here deceased mother may have been killed by the nurse. Meanwhile, Hoegel was in prison and allegedly told inmates that he had killed many other patients.
Killer Nurses Are Common Throughout the Years
Medical professionals have been trained to help others, but there have been many killer nurses over the years. Below are some of the most well-known killer nurses in recent years across the world.
- Edson Izidoro Guimaraes: This sicko was convicted of killing four patients in 2000. However, the nurse also admitted to killing five other patients, and some experts say he may have murdered more than 130. All of the deaths occurred between January and May 1999. A coworker was able to stop the murders by reporting it when he saw the killer nurse inject a patient with potassium chloride. After he was placed under arrest, Guimaraes said he did not regret it because he was helping people who were in comas. But investigators suspected he was murdering patients to collect $60 each by reporting deaths to funeral homes in his area.
- Daniela Poggiali: This crazy Italian nurse is alleged to have killed more than 90 patients because she found them annoying. She denied the charges, but the Italian government charged her with the murders. Almost as bad, Poggiali apparently enjoyed taking selfies with dead patients. Police say she took money and jewelry from the patients and bragged to friends that she was killing her ‘annoying’ patients.
- Charles Cullen: This psycho spent 16 years killing patients in New Jersey before he was arrested in 2003. He admitted killing at least 40 patients with lethal injections. But police think he may have killed far more. Cullen was the only one directly to blame for killing patients, but there were many others along the way in his deadly spree that could have stopped it but didn’t. After he was arrested, several hospitals where he worked admitted they had suspected he was hurting or killing patients. It is unknown why these medical facilities did not do more to stop him. Cullen is the most efficient killer in the history of New Jersey, and is serving a 127 year prison sentence.
- Stephan Letter: From 2003 to 2004, German nurse Stephan Letter used various lethal injections to murder 29 or more patients. Most of them were elderly. It is thought that Letter probably killed others because more than 80 people died while he was on duty in the hospital. He admitted to many of the killings, but he tried pathetically to act like he was a mercy killer. The jury did not buy this story, and they convicted him of attempted manslaughter and 28 murders. The massive number of murders in such a short time made him responsible for the most deaths in Germany since the 2nd World War.
- Orville Lynn Majors: This nurse in 1999 received a 360 year prison sentence for a three year killing spree where he murdered at least 130 patients. He was employed in a hospital in Clinton, Indiana from 1993 to 1995. The small hospital’s fatality rate increased by a huge amount after he was brought on board. It is thought that 33% of the patients that were admitted during Majors’ tenure died. Prosecutors could never determine a motive, but it was reported later that the sicko chose the most ‘whiny’ and ‘demanding’ as his victims. He also reportedly told a former roommate that all old people should be killed with gas.
- Kimberly Saenz: This convicted serial killer killed at least five people, but there were suspicious circumstances and unusual medical complications with 16 other patients she cared for. During a 30 day period in 2008, the dialysis center where she was employed called for emergency help 30 times. Only two emergency help calls were placed from that facility in the previous 15 months. Her former coworkers testified that she had injected bleach into dialysis lines.