German nurse was annoyed with patients: ‘I wanted to immobilize them, not kill them’ Supporters of right-wing ‘Oath Keepers’ convicted of storming the US Capitol

With his head bowed, a weak posture and a sheet of paper in front of his face, a former employee of the Klinikum Rechts der Isar enters the hall of the Munich I regional court. The man had been detained for two years. Because he would have killed two of his patients in 2020 and tried it on six other patients.

The reason for the 26-year-old: he regularly had a hangover after intensive use of alcohol and drugs and therefore wanted to sleep or call his mobile, he said in court on Tuesday. He was often no longer able to care for the patients and, in his own words, wanted to ‘anesthetize’ them with medicines. This ended fatally for two people.

Defendant apologizes in court

In August 2022, the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office filed charges of murder “for base motives” in two cases and attempted murder in six cases. The man’s trial began on Tuesday. “The charge is correct,” the suspect said after the reading. “I want to apologize, even if the behavior is inexcusable.” He is sincerely sorry for causing “great damage”.

The allegations made by the public prosecutor against the man from Dorsten in the Ruhr area are serious. According to him, he had already been convicted in Austria in 2018. As a geriatric nurse, he stole a patient’s money there. That is why he is no longer allowed to work in the Alpine Republic today. Not only in Austria, but later also in Munich, the man was caught on theft. He allegedly stole 130 euros from a patient in a normal ward. “I am a professional when it comes to theft,” he said in an interrogation of suspects, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Nurse has never had any medical training

An employment agency placed the then unemployed man in 2020 as a nurse in the Klinikum Rechts der Isar. But the information in his application was incorrect: the man had no nursing certificate and no extensive medical knowledge. In addition, the suspect wrongly stated that he had previously worked as a nurse at the University Hospital in Essen.

According to his own statement, most of the employees in the clinic to the right of the Isar knew that the man was not a nurse by profession. “I was known to everyone as a nurse for the elderly.” He lacked the medical knowledge that would have been necessary from day one – the man himself admitted this in court and caused the judge to shake his head briefly.

Heavily drunk on duty

The man probably wouldn’t have been able to do any medical work anyway. In court, he said that before the service began, he had consumed at least twelve mixed beer drinks (“Desperados”), a rosé and a bottle of vodka or Jägermeister at the kiosk on the Reichenbachbrücke.

Even after the service, he drank between 60 and 80 small mini liqueur bottles (“Stamperl”), especially on Bundesliga match days of his favorite club Borussia Mönchengladbach, and about three liters of beer. “I am two meters tall, weigh 120 kilograms – I can bear that,” the suspect said in court. When drunk, he urinated in front of bars and drew negative attention with far-right slogans.

He spent about 150 euros a day on alcohol and cigarettes. In addition, there was a phased use of cocaine of three to six grams per day. As a result of this addictive behavior, the man said he owed 10,000 euros – his father, among others, is said to have paid for this.

He wanted to know what it feels like to be a doctor

Between August and November 2020, something strange happened in the neurosurgical department of the hospital at the guard posts – a transition station between the normal and intensive care units: two people died for reasons that were initially unexplained. Three other patients barely survived. It took four months for light to shine in the darkness. Then an assistant doctor became suspicious and alerted the police.

Five acutely ill patients with high nursing needs, aged between 80 and 90, had been placed on sedatives, including benzodiazepines such as diazepam and lorazepam – to “calm them down”. According to the investigation files, he had a “doctor feel” with a “kick” when the medication started to work. No doctor noticed, because he injected the doses sometimes 24 times faster than normal. The overdoses quickly led to unconsciousness and life-threatening bleeding among the patients.

The man stole the medication from the hospital’s “aid car”. According to him, the Klinikum Rechts der Isar is “not looked at very closely” when it comes to missing medication. He also officially ordered medicines from the hospital pharmacy. All orders were approved by regulators, the accused testified in court.

He brought his own medicines from the clinic

The man probably didn’t just use the drugs to anesthetize the patients: he also took home some pills, including oxycodone, diazepam and tramadol. In some phases he took between eight and ten tablets a day. The suspect could no longer even take the metro to work, but only a taxi from the hotel, for which his employer paid. Once, an employee even sent him home – because he was not “healthy”. The man would have to come to work “without a flag” in the future, it was said at the time. From then on he helped with half a bottle of perfume every day.

In order to continue to finance his drug use, among other things, he says he borrowed between 10,000 and 12,000 euros under a pretext from his boss. The informal carer must repay 700 euros a month – with a gross salary of 3,200 euros.

False daily visit logs

What also became known during the trial: so that the man did not have to worry about the patient’s feces, he began to insert catheters into it. Shortly before the shift change, he removed them again so that no doctors would notice them. He would have falsified the care logs. “I entered vital signs that normally don’t require further investigation,” the 26-year-old admits. He also put patients who couldn’t move on a chair and pushed them in front of a wall – so that they would automatically ‘calm down’.

However, this did not help against the fatigue caused by the high alcohol consumption. The man was often caught sleeping shortly after starting work. The defendant admits that. “I’m not the only one who slept, but the only one who slept so deeply.” To wake up on time, the man occasionally set an alarm just before the end of the shift.

The man worked a total of 210 to 220 hours per month – until his arrest in November 2020. According to him, his misconduct during working hours was never addressed by the Klinikum right der Isar, as he testified in court.

The suspect would not want to kill anyone

The man has never had a bad conscience because of the anesthetized patients. He was “too drunk” for that. He now receives psychological treatment once a week while in custody. He also went through rehab. “I have no words for what I did,” he says today.

Whether his repentance will be recognized by the court and possibly have a mitigating effect remains to be seen. Presiding Judge Norbert Riedmann said he thought the defendant would want to blame the hospital for many things.