Patients in the Intensive Care area who become unemployed, machines that move, nurses that run, defibrillators that are charged and hours of death that are ruled These are things that frequently happen in hospitals.
Even after covid-19, it began to be believed that there was a post-ICU syndrome, a disease that “includes physical, neuropsychological symptoms, mental health and socioeconomic problems,” according to ‘El País’.
Nevertheless, have a nurse inject drugs that speed up the patient’s heart ratee, that they make him produce a heart attack and later, kill him is not at all an ethical or common practice in the world of medicine.
However, and although it may seem like a horror movie, this is the case of Niels Högel, a nurse from Germany who would have killed at least 300 patients who were in his care in this way between 2002 and 2005.
the ascent
According to Spotify’s ‘Medial Murders’ podcast, on a morning like any other, a colleague of Niels noticed that there had been a high spike in deaths that day. It was there, when a colleague of the then nurse discovered that something was wrong with the patient who had just died.
In addition, the nurse also noticed that the deceased’s potassium levels were high, which only meant that something had been injected into the patient without authorization.
(Also read: The ‘Rostov butcher’: the most sadistic cannibal and serial killer in the USSR).
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However, and although his partner told his supervisor, the case did not escalate, as it was considered an accident.
And it is that, according to Dr. Davis Kipper, analyst of this case, the assassin was so good in emergency situations and pressure, that the doctors felt lucky to have him on their team. Even his work was so good that he was given the nickname ‘Resuscitation Rambo’, or Rambo resuscitator in Spanish.
What the hospital seemed to ignore was that their ‘Rambo’ was nothing more than a murderer who experimented on his patients.
The discovery
The revelation came one afternoon in 2005, when Niels Högel was discovered by one of his colleagues while injecting a strange substance into one of his patients.
Additionally, while he was helping him in the resuscitation practices, he noticed that, next to the bed, in a waste basket, he had discarded the box of an antiarrhythmic alkaloid that was not among the drugs prescribed by the family doctor, they say from ‘ The country’.
(Also read: The fearsome nurse who tortured and played with the lives of her patients).
How good he felt when he managed to revive them and how depressed the deaths left him
Once the investigation was opened, the crimes came to light. “Reviewing the deaths that have occurred at the hospital over the last two years, the police found that the number of deaths in the hospital had doubled since Högel’s arrival in 2005. They also verified that 73% of these deaths had occurred during their working hours and that the proportion of deaths due to heart failure was greater than those due to other causes”, they affirm in the aforementioned medium.
With evidence in hand, The former nurse went to trial, in which he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.
But the story did not stop there, investigations of colleagues and administrative staff of the hospital revealed more irregularities during Högel’s passage through the compound.
That is why the police decided to exhume the bodies of the 83 patients that he had been in his care and that they had not been cremated. To no one’s surprise, the vast majority of these had the deadly chemical in their bodies.
I apologize to each and every one of them for everything I have done to them over the years.
“The accused has described in detail the tension he experienced in the face of what could happen when he injected patients with medication, how good he felt when he managed to revive them and how depressed the deaths left him,” reports ‘El País’.
According to experts from ‘BBC’, this man may suffer from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental illness in which the caregiver makes up false symptoms or causes real symptoms to make the caregiver appear to be ill.
(Read also: The crimes of the ‘werewolf of Angarsk’, the biggest murderer in Russia).
The Prosecutor’s Office, for its part, believes that this man did it for the mere fact of showing off to his colleagues how good he was at resurrecting patients.
Second and third round
This is how in 2015 a second trial was held against him, in which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Not satisfied with this situation, the nurse began to talk in prison about the other crimes he committed.
Reason why, was reinvestigated and put on trial for the third timein 2019. In this he was charged with the murder of 106 more people, who were under his care and the imputation of another life sentence.
The defendants ignored all the warning signs of the murders in their workplaces
In his last words before the relatives of the victims, Högel, 42, he said he was sorry and ashamed and pointed out that during the trial he came to understand the enormous suffering caused by the acts committed during that period.
“I apologize to each and every one of them for everything I have done to them over the years,” were the words of Niels Höge at the trial, addressing the families of those affected.
(Also read: The infamous and terrifying prison where famous criminals have passed).
During the trial that began in October 2018 Högel explained that he acted like this for the satisfaction of the “positive comments” What do you get if you save a life? According to the prosecution, however, the defendant was acting out of boredom while psychiatric experts detected problems of narcissism in the defendant and fear of death.
Judgment against his colleagues
In March 2022, the Prosecutor’s Office formally charged the murderer’s colleagues, saying that “the defendants ignored all the warning signs of the murders in their workplaces.”
According to the report, they would have considered that “the acts of N. Högel were really possible, at least since the end of October 2001”, but that “however, it is alleged that they did not intervene and that they consented to the commission of new crimes in pavilion 211.”
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According to the specialized media in medicine ‘Medscape’, the employees would have put the reputation of their workplace above instead of the punishable actions of their partner.
“This is a moral duty! What responsibility does the individual have when he notices something anomalous? Even in a position of responsibility, it’s a matter of prioritising:Should we protect the patient or the reputation of the hospital?”said Karsten Krogmann, spokesman for the White Ring victim support association, which supports the families of the murderer.
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