Niels Hogel

Victims

87 convictions (2 in 2015, 85 in 2019) - the commission concluded the real total is unknowable and probably exceeds 300

Years active

1999 - 2005

Location

Oldenburg and Delmenhorst, Germany

Method

Lethal injection of cardiac drugs

Status

Convicted of two murders in 2015 and of a further 85 in June 2019, and sentenced to life with a finding of particular gravity of guilt. A GERMAN LIFE SENTENCE CARRIES A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO A PROSPECT OF RELEASE. In 1977 the Federal Constitutional Court held that human dignity requires that a person sentenced to life be left a realistic prospect of being freed, and section 57a of the criminal code, added in 1981, gives effect to it: a life prisoner may apply for release after fifteen years, and a specialist chamber of the regional court decides on conduct, insight and risk. Release is not automatic and carries five years of supervision. THE FINDING OF PARTICULAR GRAVITY OF GUILT IS WHAT CHANGES THAT. Where a court makes it, release beyond fifteen years is barred for a further period that the court fixes later, commonly one to five years, and the archive holds no record of any decision in this case. He has been in custody since 2005 and under a life sentence since 2015, so the statutory fifteen-year point has passed. WHAT KEEPS HIM INSIDE IS THE GRAVITY-OF-GUILT FINDING, and the further period it requires has not been fixed on any record held here.

Niels Hogel was born in Wilhelmshaven on December 30, 1976, into a family of nurses, and qualified in 1997. He worked in the cardiac surgery intensive care unit at the Oldenburg clinic from 1999 to 2002, and at the Delmenhorst clinic from 2003 to 2005. German reporting called him the Angel of Death.

He injected patients with drugs including ajmaline, sotalol, lidocaine, amiodarone and calcium chloride, which cause cardiac arrest or catastrophic circulatory collapse, and then took part in the resuscitation. He told the court he had done it out of boredom, for the thrill of the emergency and to be admired for saving them, and that he had felt euphoric when it worked and wretched when it did not.

The number is what makes this case what it is. He was convicted in 2008 of one attempted murder, after being caught with a syringe. He was convicted in 2015 of two murders and two attempted murders. Only then did a serious investigation begin, and it required the exhumation of well over a hundred bodies from cemeteries across Germany, Poland and Turkey. In June 2019 he was convicted of eighty-five further murders and given a life sentence with a finding of particular gravity of guilt, which in practice removes any prospect of release.

The commission that examined the case concluded that the real total is unknowable and probably exceeds three hundred, and that it cannot be established because a great many of the possible victims were cremated.

He was also not stopped when he could have been. Both clinics had noticed the death rate on his shifts and the missing drugs. Oldenburg moved him on with a neutral reference in 2002 rather than reporting him. Delmenhorst delayed for weeks after suspicion crystallised. Seven former colleagues and managers at the two hospitals were subsequently prosecuted, and several were convicted, for failing to act.