German Doctor Goes on Trial for 15 Murders

The 40-year-old palliative care specialist, named by German media as Johannes M., is alleged to have killed 12 women and three men between September 2021 and July 2024 while working in Berlin.

The doctor is accused of injecting the victims, aged between 25 and 94, with deadly cocktails of sedatives and in some cases setting fire to their homes in a bid to cover up his crimes.

The accused had "visited his patients under the pretext of providing medical care," prosecutor Philipp Meyhoefer said at the opening of the trial at the state court in Berlin.

Johannes M. had organized "home visits, already with the intention of killing" and exploited his patients' trust in him as a doctor, Meyhoefer said.

"He acted with disregard for life... and behaved as the master of life and death."

A co-worker first raised the alarm over Johannes M. last July after becoming suspicious that so many of his patients had died in fires, according to Die Zeit newspaper.

He was arrested in August, with prosecutors initially linking him to four deaths.

But subsequent investigations uncovered a host of other suspicious cases, and in April prosecutors charged Johannes M. with 15 counts of murder.

A further 96 cases were still being investigated, a prosecution spokesman told AFP.

Source: HDN