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Berlin Court Convicts a Palliative-Care Doctor of Murdering 15 Patients

The 41-year-old doctor killed seriously ill patients on home visits between 2021 and 2024, the court found. He was given life, preventive detention and a lifetime ban.

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Illustration: empty wooden witness stand beside judge's bench

His patients and their families described him as gentle, and his colleagues called him empathetic. On July 8, 2026, the Landgericht Berlin I found that the 41-year-old palliative-care doctor had murdered fifteen of them. The court sentenced him to life imprisonment with a finding of particular gravity of guilt, ordered him held in preventive detention once the sentence is served, and banned him from practicing medicine for the rest of his life.

"The patients placed themselves in his hands, and he was the one who set himself above life and death," the presiding judge, Sylvia Busch, said as she gave the court's reasons.

Home visits

The doctor, who holds a doctorate in medicine, cared for gravely ill people in their own homes, first for a Berlin medical care center and later for a Berlin nursing service. Between September 2021 and July 2024, the court found, he used those home visits to give fifteen of his patients, twelve women and three men between the ages of 25 and 94, first a sedative used to induce anesthesia and then a muscle relaxant that within a short time stopped their breathing. None of them had consented, and there was no medical reason for either drug. In five cases he set fires afterward at the scene.

Those fires were what first drew the police. The investigation began as an inquiry into arson that had caused deaths, and tips from the nursing service helped bring him into focus. He has been in custody since early August 2024. A homicide team at the Berlin state criminal police went through hundreds of patient files, and in April 2025 prosecutors charged him with fifteen murders. Because the murder counts carried the case, prosecutors set the arson charges aside.

All fifteen were seriously ill, the court found, but none was about to die. "The patients wanted to live," Busch said. "These crimes have nothing to do with palliative medicine or assisted dying." The court found that he did not kill out of pity, misguided mercy or exhaustion, but to feel powerful: an insecure, anxious man playing out fantasies of being master over life and death. That made each killing murder under German law, for base motives and, given how it was done, by treachery.

Confession

After months of silence he told the court on June 25 that he had killed twelve of the patients, saying he had persuaded himself that he was sparing them suffering and decline. He denied the other three. The court called the denials self-serving and found him responsible for all fifteen after a trial of 58 hearing days, 204 witnesses and 22 expert witnesses. "He is a serial murderer," Busch said, adding that the fifteen were probably only the tip of the iceberg. In a phone call with his wife, the judge said, he had told her he had been killing for a long time.

Each murder carried its own life sentence, merged under German law into a single life term, since German courts cannot stack life sentences as courts in some other countries do. The finding of particular gravity means he cannot be considered for release after the usual minimum of fifteen years.

Berlin prosecutors are investigating him over further possible killings, 76 more cases according to the prosecution, and expect to bring new charges. In his final words to the court he said he would speak up "much earlier" in the next trial.

The verdict was not final when it was announced and could be appealed to Germany's Federal Court of Justice. The defendant is not named here: the court does not name him, in line with German practice, and neither do the reports this story is based on. The 76 further cases are uncharged and are not counted among his victims. The judge's and the defendant's words are translated from German.

Sources