{"id":13093,"date":"2018-10-30T18:51:36","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T18:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=13093"},"modified":"2018-10-30T18:51:36","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T18:51:36","slug":"nurse-from-hell-kills-over-100-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=13093","title":{"rendered":"Nurse from hell kills over 100 patients"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nFormer nurse Niels Hoegel admitted Tuesday to killing 100 patients in his care, on the first day of his trial in the biggest serial killing case in Germany\u2019s post-war history.
\nHoegel, 41, has already spent nearly a decade in prison on a life term for other patient deaths, and is accused of intentionally administering medical overdoses to victims so he could bring them back to life at the last moment.
\nAs the proceedings opened in the northern city of Oldenburg, presiding judge Sebastian Buehrmann asked whether the charges against him were accurate. Hoegel replied quietly \u201cyes\u201d.
\n\u201cWhat I have admitted took place,\u201d he told the courtroom crowded with dozens of grieving relatives.
\nBuehrmann said the main aim of the trial was to establish the full scope of the murder spree that was allowed to go unchecked for years at two German hospitals.
\n\u201cIt is like a house with dark rooms \u2014 we want to bring light into the darkness,\u201d he said.
\nAfter a minute of silence in the courtroom for the victims, the bearded, heavyset Hoegel listened impassively, his head lowered, as public prosecutor Daniela Schiereck-Bohlmann read out the name of each dead patient and the charges against the defendant.
\nProsecutors say at least 36 patients were killed at a hospital in Oldenburg where he worked, and about 64 more at a clinic in nearby Delmenhorst, between 2000 and 2005.
\nMore than 130 bodies of patients who died on Hoegel\u2019s watch have been exhumed, in a case investigators have called \u201cunprecedented in Germany to our knowledge\u201d.
\nOne of the more than 100 co-plaintiffs in the trial, Christian Marbach, said it was a scandal that Hoegel had been allowed to kill with impunity for such an extended period of time without hospital authorities or law enforcement intervening.
\n\u201cThey had everything they needed (to stop him) \u2014 you don\u2019t have to be Sherlock Holmes,\u201d Marbach, the grandson of one of the patients, told AFP.
\nHoegel told the court he was \u201csurprised\u201d when a superior at the Oldenburg hospital asked him to resign in late 2002, saying he would get a positive recommendation and holiday pay if he left voluntarily.
\n\u201cI felt bad, like I had been caught,\u201d Hoegel said, adding however that he was never explicitly told why they wanted him gone.
\nMarbach said the defendant seemed remarkably composed as he admitted to the extraordinary list of killings.
\n\u201cHe looks like a little, vulnerable mass murderer.\u201d
\nCaught in 2005 while injecting an unprescribed medication into a patient in Delmenhorst, Hoegel was sentenced in 2008 to seven years in prison for attempted murder.
\nA second trial followed in 2014-15 under pressure from alleged victims\u2019 families.
\nHe was found guilty of murder and attempted murder of five other victims and given the maximum sentence of 15 years.
\nIt was then that Hoegel confessed to his psychiatrist at least 30 more murders committed in Delmenhorst. That prompted investigators to take a closer look at suspicious deaths in Oldenburg.
\nTaking the stand Tuesday, Hoegel said he began taking painkillers shortly after becoming a nurse in 1999 as he felt overwhelmed by the stress of working in the intensive care unit.
\n\u201cI should have quit,\u201d he said.
\nAsked by the judge why he didn\u2019t admit to the remaining murders before now, Hoegel said it was \u201cout of shame\u201d and because it took him a long time to face up to what he had done at the first hospital.
\nIt was only through reading the court files and in therapy that \u201cI started to recognise the full dimension\u201d, he said.
\nInvestigators say the final toll could top 200 but fear they might never know for sure because the bodies of many possible victims were cremated.
\nHoegel appears to have followed a similar procedure each time, first injecting a medication that triggered cardiac arrest, followed by an often futile attempt at resuscitation.
\nProsecutors say he was motivated by vanity, to show off his skills at saving human lives, and by simple \u201cboredom\u201d.
\nThe choice of victim appears to have been entirely random, with their ages ranging from 34 to 96.
\nBy NAN.<\/strong>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former nurse Niels Hoegel admitted Tuesday to killing 100 patients in his care, on the first day of his trial in the biggest serial killing case in Germany\u2019s post-war history. Hoegel, 41, has already spent nearly a decade in prison on a life term for other patient deaths, and is accused of intentionally administering medical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":13094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}