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A palliative care nurse in Germany has been sentenced to life in prison after he was convicted of the murder of 10 patients and the attempted murder of 27 others.
Prosecutors alleged that the man, who has not been publicly named, injected his mostly elderly patients with painkillers or sedatives in an effort to ease his workload during shifts overnight.
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Where I live (Philly suburb) there was an incident where a guy driving a 12,000 gallon gasoline truck pumped out 4000 gallons at his first gas station stop and then decided he just wanted to go home rather than making the rest of his deliveries. So he ran the hose to the back of the station and dumped the other 8000 gallons onto the ground. This happened to be right above a creek and about 200 feet from an elementary school.
It just doesn’t make any sense how anybody could be this stupid. He got 20 years in prison for it or something like that. He certainly deserved it, but meanwhile executives who manage to create far worse disasters never see a day in jail.
When I’m in palliative care, go ahead and murder me tbh.
Air traffic controllers, you guys hang on okay!? You guys just hang on. Let’s be rational.
The article does not mention the evidence basis, so I will keep my comment general. In the Netherlands similar accusations were made against Lucia de Berk, the evidence was based on opinions of superiors and colleagues plus the statistical unlikelihood of so many patients dying under her supervision. But crucially there was never any direct evidence that she deliberately killed patients, and in the end it turned out that she didn’t. She was particularly unliked by her colleagues because she was a sex worker in the past and that is why she was given the worst shifts (and coincidentally the shifts where more patients die). In the end her life was ruined by her colleagues and the judiciary system not understanding statistics (5 percent of all nurses have a statistically-significant high death rate). Again this case could be a real psychopath but the fact that they don’t mention the evidence basis makes me think of Lucia de Berk.
the judiciary system not understanding statistics (5 percent of all nurses have a statistically-significant high death rate)
There was a study years ago in Norway where they wanted to see if there were correlations between any disease and living underneath high-voltage power lines. They found that 5% of all diseases were so correlated … when using an alpha of .05.
There’s a former nurse here in the UK called Lucy Letby who’s currently in prison for murdering several babies and attempting to kill more. There’s a campaign to get her released based on basically 3 strands.
The first is the fact that there’s no actual evidence that any of the deaths were not of natural causes. The second is the statistical argument. The third is that the police enlisted the help of people who worked with Letby to assess the evidence. As one person put it “how can any fair investigation be even partially carried out by people who the police should actually be treating as potential suspects?”
I have no ideas whether or not she’s guilty, but since i had previously heard of cases like the one you describe I’m definitely of the opinion that there should be a retrial.
the judiciary system not understanding statistics (5 percent of all nurses have a statistically-significant high death rate).
And for those in this thread who also don’t understand statistics, that’s because the threshold for statistical significance is usually 5% by definition and has nothing to do with nursing at all.
This could also not be a serial killer thing at all, and moreso be that the nurse was drugging patients to put them out. Which is still terrible, but not the same thing as intending to kill people even if some people died by malpractice of drugging them.
I would think if a nurse really wanted to be a serial killer and was a sole on-duty nurse there are probably slicker ways to have done so than using painkillers and sedatives that would turn up on an autopsy. Not to mention painkillers and sedatives arent really a surefire way to intentionally kill anybody, even if they can. But giving them in doses that are sure to stop someones breathing would also make them show up upon investigation quite clearly.
Sounds like this person was not a serial killer and was just drugging people to knock them out, which isnt necessarily intentionally lethal even if it can also kill. Realistically, as a palliative care nurse (even with him drugging people) some of them probably died more generally whether he happened to have drugged them or not. When dealing with people already dying I imagine it would be harder to concretely say he killed them without having massively overdosed them
Either way though, its certainly malpractice and people certainly died. So the verdict seems fair. He knew he was rolling the dice with their lives even if not trying to kill them
That’s so unbelievably fucked up.
May he rot in a cell for the rest of his days.
That’s one way to get your break
It’s totally infuriating how that goes. Every few years some serial killer is exposed working in hospitals or care homes. Sobody really cares. This news about a serial killer killing 10 is not even headline news. Others have killed over 80 people and nobody really cares, nobody is trying to improve the situation so that people like them can’t kill. But if some migrant harms someone with a knife, everybody totally freaks out.
The media doesn’t care. People do, but the media hasn’t been for the benefit of the people for quite a while now.
Like dude… JUST GET A DIFFERENT JOB. If that was actually why he started doing it. Of course, big if lol. Bro probably was just getting a power trip doing it. Sick freak
This guy seems to be a serial killer with a long history. Don’t know why they’re highlighting that he did it all to “reduce work load”.
More broadly, there’s a hell of a lot of compassion fatigue in caring professions. Time is tight. There’s understaffing everywhere. If an elderly person is complaining of pain or discomfort, the solution might be to spend some time with them and reposition them or get to the cause of the problem. I wouldn’t be surprised if staff are rushed and take the quick and easy way out to just give medication instead…which might accidentally have unintended side effects in an elderly person. But this case was nothing of the sort. This guy is just going around killing people.
More broadly, there’s a hell of a lot of compassion fatigue in caring professions.
It could be a warped sense of excess compassion, too. Some of these caregiver serial killers are “angel of death” types who think they’re doing euthenasia.
(Not saying that’s the case here, since OP’s blurb gives a different motive and I can’t be bothered to read further, but more broadly it seems to be a well-known thing.)
If it’s the same as other country, patient dying in your work is the busiest part of the day. The paperwork, phone calls and wrapping the body. Most nurses pray for patients to die after they clock out due to paperwork alone.
Wasn’t this an episode of Dexter?
In the Dexter episode the nurse just hated and killed people with unhealthy lifestyles and causing extra workload for medical staff
Yeah actually it sounds just the same, life imitates art
There’s also The Good Nurse and Jessie Buckley’s character from Fargo season 4
Sounds like their plan kinda worked.
It’s Germany, not Louisiana. The logic checks out. They won’t have to work ever again.
They won’t have to work ever again.
It’s still possible. Even with the particular severity of guilt, life sentences are usually commuted to probation after 16 to 20 years, which would still give him 7 to 3 years until retirement age.
Honestly if I was 3-7 years from retirement and I had a choice between a somewhat comfortable prison or going to some shit job because no one will hire me as a felon…
Really depends what their priorities are at that point. Who is left in their life who still cares about them, knowing they were murdering people left and right.
I’m guessing they’ll get out after 16 years and find some way to not work, if they get out.
