A Berlin court has sentenced a 41-year-old German palliative care doctor to life imprisonment for the murder of 15 patients, in a case that investigators believe may be one of the largest serial killing cases in Germany's postwar history. The doctor, identified only as Johannes M. under German privacy law, was found guilty of killing 12 women and three men between September 2021 and July 2024. Authorities are now investigating a further 76 potential victims, with officials describing the confirmed cases as likely "the tip of the iceberg."

Prosecutors told the court that Johannes M. administered lethal combinations of medicines — including sedatives and muscle relaxants — to his patients during home visits, without their consent or medical justification. Victims, who ranged in age from 25 to 94, were all seriously ill but not imminently dying at the time of their deaths. In at least five cases, the doctor set fires at victims' homes in an attempt to conceal the murders and destroy evidence. Police initially identified him as a suspect after several of his patients died in house fires, and tips from the nursing service he worked for helped bring him to investigators' attention.

Johannes M. worked at a palliative care centre in Berlin from April 2021 before later joining a palliative care service in January 2024. Palliative care is specialised medical support aimed at improving quality of life for patients with serious, incurable conditions rather than curing them. During the year-long trial, the doctor remained largely silent before delivering a partial confession last month, admitting to 12 of the killings. He claimed he had convinced himself he was acting in his patients' best interests, sparing them "suffering and infirmity." He also described developing "dangerous feelings of control and omnipotence, accompanied by emotional detachment," adding: "After each murder I thought it had to stop, only to then fetch new medicines and reach for the syringe again."

Relatives of the victims offered harrowing testimony. The mother of the youngest victim, a 25-year-old woman who died in 2021, said through tears: "She never said she didn't want to live anymore." The son of a 72-year-old victim said his mother had been planning a trip to the Baltic Sea with her sister. "My mother wanted to keep on living."

The Berlin court ruled that the doctor's guilt was "particularly serious" and, in addition to the life sentence, imposed a lifetime ban on him practising medicine and ordered him into preventive detention beyond his prison term — a measure used in Germany to detain offenders deemed a continuing danger to society. Notably, Johannes M. wrote his doctoral thesis on the killing of elderly patients and the widespread under-reporting of such crimes. With 76 further cases still under investigation and authorities having examined a total of 395 deaths for possible links to the doctor, a new indictment is widely expected.