‘Devil’s nurse’ admits to killing 100 patients in his care

A nurse who overdosed patients so he could try to resuscitate them out of “boredom” admits he killed 100, but the toll may be triple that.

“Devil’s nurse” Niels Hogel, accused of killing more than 100 patients in his care, wears a bullet proof vest as he is lead out of court towards a prisoner's transport vehicle after the first day of his trial. Picture: Hauke-Christian Dittrich/DPA/AFP

A German nurse has admitted murdering more than 100 patients with toxic doses of drugs.

Niels Hogel, 41, dubbed the “Devil’s nurse” by German media, is already serving a life sentence for six murders and attempted murders at two hospitals between 2000 and 2005. Police are said to believe that the true number of his victims could be as high as 300.

At the start of a trial yesterday Hogel was accused of injecting patients with overdoses so that he could try to resuscitate them out of “boredom and a desire for recognition by his colleagues”. Asked by the judge at the state court in Oldenburg, Lower Saxony, whether the allegations that he was to blame for the deaths of another 100 people were true, Hogel said: “Yes. What has been stated is how it is.”

Hogel said that he had struggled to cope with stress and the “pressure to perform” after he began working at a hospital in Oldenburg in 1999.

In 2005 he was caught administering an unauthorised injection to a patient.

Three years later he was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison for attempted murder.

Hoegel, already serving a prison sentence over the deaths of six patients in his care.

Police subsequently exhumed 134 bodies from 67 graveyards, some as far away as Poland and Turkey, for toxicological tests. The bodies of at least another 100 patients could not be examined as they had been cremated.

Born December 30, 1976, in the North Sea coastal town of Wilhelmshaven, Hogel became a nurse, like his father, at the age of 19, AFP reports.

In 1999 he took a job at the main hospital in Oldenburg and transferred to a facility in neighbouring Delmenhorst in 2003.

Former colleagues described him as diligent and likeable but began to take notice of a “troubling” number of deaths in the intensive care unit on his watch.

Between 2000 and 2005, he allegedly administered medical overdoses to his victims, intentionally, so he could bring them back to life at the last moment.

He was rarely successful and in 2005 was caught in the act.

Psychiatrists who have evaluated Hogel, the father of an adolescent daughter, say he has a severe narcissistic disorder.

They believe he was motivated by vanity, wanting to show off his skills and that he also acted out of “boredom”.

Before taking the stand on Tuesday, Hogel had only acknowledged around 30 murders, all of them committed in Delmenhorst.

But he surprised the court on the first day of his trial by admitting to all 100 murders he is charged with, at the Delmenhorst and Oldenburg hospitals.

Hoegel said he had kept quiet “out of shame” and because it had taken him a long time to realise the full scope of what he had done.

— The Times