German investigators believe a Berlin doctor may have murdered eight elderly patients under his care and set fire to some of their homes to conceal his crimes, prosecutors announced on Thursday.
The unnamed suspect, aged 40, who worked in palliative care for a nursing service, was detained in August on suspicion of killing four women aged 72 to 94 and igniting fires at their residences. Berlin prosecutors have now connected the suspect to four additional deaths of men and women aged between 61 and 83.
In August, police stated that the man was under investigation for four counts of manslaughter, one count of arson, and three counts of attempted arson. The Berlin prosecutors now consider the alleged killings as murder cases.
"The accused seems to have had no motive for killing the people other than the act of killing itself," they stated, accusing him of a "lust for murder". In August, police suspected the man of killing four female patients in the care of his nursing service in Berlin between June 11 and July 24.
In one instance, an 87-year-old woman was resuscitated after emergency services arrived but later died in the hospital. In another case, the suspect allegedly started a fire, but it extinguished on its own. "When he realized this, he allegedly informed a relative of the woman and claimed that he was standing in front of her flat and that nobody was answering the doorbell," police said.
In the four new cases, dating back to the period from June 2022 to April 2024, the suspect is accused of killing two men and two women in Berlin. In one case, he is suspected of administering a combination of medications to a 70-year-old female patient in her apartment in Berlin's Tempelhof district and then setting a fire to cover up his crime. The fire department, called by a neighbor, managed to prevent the flames from spreading to the rest of the building.
He is also accused of administering lethal medications to two men, aged 70 and 83, and to a 61-year-old woman.
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