A German palliative care doctor has been sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of murdering 15 of his patients.
A court in Berlin found the 41-year-old, identified only as Johannes M., guilty, in accordance with German privacy laws, of murdering 12 women and 3 men between September 2021 and July 2024.
However, authorities believe these murders may be just a fraction of a much larger number of crimes.
The prosecution is currently investigating dozens of other cases related to him.
The victims were aged between 25 and 94. During the trial, it was said that all of them suffered from serious illnesses, but were not in immediate danger of death.
According to the prosecution, during visits to patients' homes, the doctor administered a lethal combination of medications to them without their consent.
In some cases, he is suspected of setting fire to apartments to cover up the crime.
In July 2024, shortly before his arrest, prosecutors said the doctor killed two patients within the same day: first a 75-year-old man in his apartment in central Berlin and, just a few hours later, a 76-year-old woman in a neighboring neighborhood.
According to the investigation, he also tried to set fire to the woman's house, but failed.
For most of the trial, which lasted about a year, the doctor made no statement. Only last month did he admit to "killing people," confessing to the murders of 12 of his seriously ill patients.
He told the court he had convinced himself he was doing the right thing, sparing patients "suffering and helplessness".
"All this time I believed that this was the best solution for everyone," he declared.
The doctor also apologized for the suffering he had caused.
Authorities suspect he may have killed other patients as well. The prosecution is currently investigating 76 other cases.
According to German media, if these suspicions are confirmed and he is found guilty of them as well, the case could be considered one of the largest series of murders in German history.
The doctor stated before the court that he will cooperate earlier and more actively in future court proceedings.
During the trial, the victims' families said they still couldn't believe what had happened.
The mother of the youngest victim, a 25-year-old woman who lost her life in 2021, burst into tears, saying: “She never said she didn’t want to live anymore.”
While the son of a 72-year-old woman who died in 2024, revealed that his mother had planned to go with her sister to the Baltic Sea.
"My mother wanted to continue living," he said.
The court found the doctor's guilt to be particularly serious. In addition to the life sentence, it ordered that he be held in preventive detention even after the end of his sentence, and permanently banned him from practicing medicine.