Fears doctor killed 60 patients ‘for the thrill of it’

A doctor accused of murdering four elderly patients is feared to have killed at least 60 people by injecting them with a lethal cocktail of drugs.

The 40-year-old doctor, named only as Johannes M., is being investigated on suspicion of killing scores of elderly people just ‘for the thrill of it’.

It has chilling similarities to Harold Shipman – dubbed Dr Death – who is believed to have killed more than 200 patients using similar methods.

The medic, who worked for a nursing home in Berlin, Germany, was originally arrested on suspicion of manslaughter in August.

Prosecutors now believe that the palliative care doctor killed elderly people out of sheer bloodlust and there may have been over 60 victims.

Now investigators are looking into whether he can be held criminally responsible for his alleged actions.

Investigators are exhuming bodies so they can be examined by a forensic pathologist.

So far, in over 10 cases, it has been confirmed that a lethal cocktail of drugs was allegedly administered by the doctor to elderly and seriously ill patients in their homes.

He then allegedly set fire to their homes.

It has also emerged that in his doctoral thesis 12 years ago, he said that killing was ‘basically part of the behavioural spectrum of every human being.’

In the thesis, Johannes M. devoted a chapter to the topic of ‘homicides of elderly people’, according to German media.

He discusses a study that assumes a high number of unreported cases, since the murder of people in need of care is ‘not easy to prove’, saying that the deaths are often ‘classified as natural deaths in the first autopsy’.

The alleged killing spree is said to have started in 2022 when he is accused of drugging a 70-year-old woman to death and then setting her home on fire.

In January 2024, another 70-year-old patient died in their home after being given a lethal combination of drugs, say prosecutors.

Two further victims aged 61 and 83 were also killed by the doctor, police believe.

The investigations are ongoing.

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