Skip to main content

Doctor with ‘lust for murder’ convicted in deaths of 15 patients

A German palliative care doctor accused of killing 15 patients and described by prosecutors as having “a lust for murder” was convicted Wednesday and sentenced to life in prison.

The 41-year-old Berlin doctor, identified only as Johannes M., allegedly killed 12 women and three men between September 2021 and July 2024 using deadly cocktails of sedatives.

On at least five occasions, he allegedly set fire to the victims’ apartments to cover up the killings.

Presiding judge Sylvia Busch said the conviction for 15 murders may well be only a glimpse of his many crimes.

Prosecutors said during the proceedings that he was suspected of having killed more than 70 other people.

The doctor allegedly “administered an anesthetic and a muscle relaxant to his patients without their knowledge or consent,” the Berlin prosecutor’s office said in a statement. “The latter paralyzed the respiratory muscles, leading to respiratory arrest and death within minutes.”

Prosecutors previously demanded a life sentence, additional steps to make early release less likely and a lifetime ban from practicing medicine.

On Monday Johannes M. confessed that he had “killed people” and told the court that “I despair at myself.”

He said he only now understood “the extent of the suffering” he had caused, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily reported.

Trial Resumes in Murder Case Against Palliative Care Physician
As the murder trial against a palliative care physician resumed, the defense attorneys stood in front of the empty glass booth on July 8, 2026. The accused physician did not appear in court.

Soeren Stache/picture alliance via Getty Images

Prosecutors and police previously said that the accused is said to have had no motive beyond killing, and that the suspect’s acts meet the legal definition of “lust for murder.”

The victims, who were all receiving care at the time, were aged between 25 and 94 years old.

“Why do people kill?”

On one occasion, the suspect is accused of having killed two patients on the same day.

On the morning of July 8, 2024, he is alleged to have killed a 75-year-old man at his home in the central Berlin district of Kreuzberg.

A few hours later he allegedly struck again, killing a 76-year-old woman in the neighboring Neukoelln district.

The suspect’s alleged attempt to incinerate the crime scene failed when the fire did not catch, prosecutors said.

Suspicions over Johannes M.’s activities were initially raised by care services, leading to a police investigation. He was remanded in custody in August 2024.

Investigators looked into four cases, but the number of suspicious deaths continued to grow, with further cases still being looked into.

“The accused appears to have had no motive for killing the people other than the act of killing itself,” prosecutors said last year.

According to German media, Johannes M. wrote his doctoral thesis on homicides and started the paper with the words, “Why do people kill?”

The case recalls that of the German nurse Niels Hoegel, who was jailed for life in 2019 for murdering 85 patients. Hoegel, believed to be modern Germany’s most prolific serial killer, murdered hospital patients with lethal injections between 2000 and 2005, before he was eventually caught in the act.

In another case, a palliative care nurse was sentenced to life in jail in November for the murder of 10 patients and attempted murder of 27 others with lethal injections.

Last year, German police revealed they were investigating another doctor suspected of killing several mainly elderly patients.

This artist’s most-used tool isn’t a paintbrush — it’s a pair of sneakers

By CNN
Beijing/Hong Kong (CNN) — In the top corner, there’s a very small Star of David. On the center right side, the number 51. Near the center, a pentagon. Squint and you might notice a teeny-tiny series of music notes amid a busy grid. And, wait, is that the US Capitol missing its dome?British artist Gareth Fuller doesn’t make the kinds of maps you’d find in an atlas. They’re not done to scale and don’t include street names. He calls them “mind maps,” and they’re his artistic representations of time spent walking around and exploring cities — in this case, Washington, DC.In an age of Google Maps, with many using their phones to navigate new places, Fuller believes people have lost their sense of discovery. That’s why he began doing these large-scale pen and ink drawings, which he calls his “personal geography.”In his DC work, there’s an itsy-bitsy PBS logo, because the broadcaster has its headquarters in the nation’s capital. There’s also a pattern inspired by the trademark breezeblock ceilings of the DC metro system, flowers to represent the National Arboretum, and the Potomac River cutting through it all. That number 51? It’s a shoutout to the movement that wants to make the District of Columbia into the 51st state.You could stare at these mind maps all day and still not catch every detail— which is exactly how Fuller wants it. For each of his drawings, he spends months or even years exploring cities as much as he can on foot. And, he explains, the maps don’t just incorporate what he sees – they build on anecdotes, random conversations and human experiences that happen along the way. They’re also not very helpful if you need an actual map – the Pentagon, for example, is out in the Virginia suburbs, not in DC proper.“The maps are very much a kind of emotional portrayal of the place,” Fuller says. “It’s a real privilege to be an artist in that respect. People are quite warm to tell you about where they live, and what’s important to them, and their personal stories, and where they’ve come from. The conversation can go in all sorts of ways.”Fuller says his love of wayfinding began in childhood. Raised in rural Wales, he joined the Boy Scouts and learned how to use a compass and flashlight to find his way home without a map. Moving to London as an adult, he got to know the frantic, wiry place on foot. As he became interested in art, he began to see his doodles of places as “problem-solving with ink and lines.”But it was a move to China where Fuller’s work truly blossomed.One of Fuller’s friends was studying in Beijing, so Fuller packed up his bicycle, crashed at his friend’s apartment and tried to learn Mandarin.The result of the year spent off and on in the capital inspired his largest work to date. The Beijing map is littered with fountains, pagodas, power plants, building cranes, and flowers. There are hutongs, the famous side streets where everyday life happens in Beijing, alongside mega-skyscrapers. The central motif is a piece of the Great Wall, snaking through the map like a snake, with bicycles on top – intentional, as Fuller got to know the city while riding around on two wheels.“Coming from somewhere like London, and then coming to somewhere like China, and seeing a Chinese city function, and at the cusp of quite mod ideas in terms of the smart city and things like this, and it was just the cultural aspect. I was just kind of dumped upside down. I don’t want to sort of fetishize Chinese culture, but as a Westerner, it was a huge education. It was exciting.”The person most affected by Fuller’s artwork is, of course, Fuller himself. He has relocated to China permanently, gotten married and become a dad. His current works-in-progress are viewed through the lens of a toddler as much as they are from an adult man.If you try to use Fuller’s “Beijing” as a map to Beijing, it won’t help you get around. But if you use it as an emotional pathway to understand a large, complicated and dynamic place, it might help you get to know the city as a friend. Perhaps you’ll get an entirely different city than the one he visited, one personalized to your own random encounters and accidental discoveries.“We’ve always done this, as humans,” Fuller says. “We will navigate our way through towns, cities, villages, and we will talk and seek shelter with each other and trust.”Fuller’s work will soon come to the US for an exhibit at Stony Brook University in upstate New York. Walking the World: Gareth Fuller’s Art of Place will run from September 9 to December 18 at the college’s Skylight Gallery.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
Read Next Story

Related Stories

Latest News
Julio fue el mes más caluroso en Estados Unidos en más de 130 años
1 hour ago

Julio fue el mes más caluroso en Estados Unidos en más de 130 años

Trump administration ends support for flagship Arctic climate reports

Captain of boat that capsized in New York facing federal charges after mom, infant die

Big Bear bald eagle Jackie dies after health "continued to deteriorate," California veterinary center says

Trump signs order on vaccination recommendations