Serial killer nurse in Germany calls for life sentence for 85 murders

Driven by the desire to show his skills to bring patients back from the brink of death, Niels Hoegel has repeatedly played with the lives of vulnerable victims.

Berlin, Germany:

Germany's most prolific serial killer in post-war history has appealed his life sentence for 85 murders, a district court announced today.

Former medic Niels Hoegel, 42, was convicted last week of killing patients chosen at random by lethal injection.

The frenzy of killings of patients aged 34 to 96 years took place between 2000 and 2005, before he was finally caught.

"I can inform you that the defendant has now filed an appeal," said on Tuesday Melanie Bitter, a spokesman for the Oldenburg court, without specifying further.

Last Thursday's judgment brought the official number of victims to 91, knowing that Hoegel had already been convicted of six other murders.

Police suspect Hoegel's final count could be over 200.

However, it is never known exactly how many people he killed, as many probable victims were cremated before the autopsy and because of gaps in Hoegel's memory.

The court in Oldenburg had also rejected 15 other counts of murder for lack of evidence.

Driven by the desire to show his skills to bring patients back from the brink of death, Hoegel has repeatedly played with the lives of vulnerable victims.

He was arrested in 2005 after injecting an unwarranted drug into a patient in the northern German town of Delmenhorst and sentenced in 2008 to seven years in prison for attempted murder.

A second trial followed in 2014-2015 under pressure from the families of the alleged victims. Hoegel was found guilty of the murder and attempted murder of five other victims and sentenced to life imprisonment.