Nearly four months ago, on August 6, the doctor was placed in pre-trial detention for the murder of four patients whose apartments he then set fire to to remove the evidence.
“The use of patient files and forensic examinations of deceased persons, including two after exhumation, led to suspicion of other murders committed by the accused,” write the public prosecutor’s office and the Berlin police in a joint press release. .
From now on, the doctor’s first known victim dates back to June 24, 2022: the defendant allegedly administered a mixture of different medications to a 70-year-old patient and then lit a fire to conceal his act.
The spread of the flames to the rest of the building was prevented thanks to firefighters called by a neighbor.
The patients who entered Doctor Petiot’s office never left him: “Such monstrous crimes… We couldn’t believe it”
On January 29, 2024, the defendant allegedly administered a lethal mixture of medications without medical indication to a 70-year-old man, also in his apartment, with the aim of killing him. Same procedure, on April 4, 2024, for a 61-year-old woman, who died at her home.
Finally, on April 29, 2024, the suspect allegedly killed an 83-year-old man in his room at a retirement home using a mixture of drugs.
The four alleged victims revealed in August were women aged 72 to 94, living in Neukölln and Treptow, two working-class neighborhoods in the German capital. They were allegedly killed between June 11 and July 24, 2024.
Homicide as a thesis subject
Among these four patients, the first, aged 87, was resuscitated on June 11 after the firefighters arrived in her apartment. But she died in hospital shortly after.
According to Berlin-based radio and television RBB, the suspect scientifically studied homicides as part of his doctoral thesis in medicine, focusing in particular on undetected homicides and the homicides of patients.
RBB also notes that, according to his social media profile, he previously worked in clinics and medical practices in Berlin, North Rhine-Westphalia (northwest) and Hesse (center).
Germany remains marked by the case of a serial killer caregiver who raged in the early 2000s: Niels Högel, a former nurse suffering from “a severe narcissistic disorder”, according to psychiatrists, who had been convicted in June 2019 to life imprisonment for the murder of at least 85 patients in two hospitals in Lower Saxony (north).
Between 2000 and 2005, he caused cardiac arrests in arbitrarily chosen patients and then tried to resuscitate them, hoping to appear as a hero among his colleagues.
However, investigators estimated that the death toll could exceed 200 victims, with many patients having been cremated. “This job was not made for me,” the nurse admitted.
In May 2023, a 27-year-old nurse was sentenced in Munich to life in prison for the murders of two patients and six attempts on other patients, including the German intellectual Hans-Magnus Enzensberger.
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