Lifelong for serial killer Högel | Germany | '
Lifelong with particular severity of guilt: The Oldenburg district court found Niels Högel guilty in the so-called "trial of the century". The court finds it proven that the former nurse killed 85 people. An early dismissal Högel's on probation after 15 years detention usually leaves in this judgment. He was acquitted in 15 other cases. He was charged in 100 cases. The 42-year-old was already before this process twice because of individual acts in court and was convicted of six patient killings.
The court had to judge the worst serial murder in German history. Attended to men and women who were seriously ill or hoped for their speedy recovery. People between the ages of 34 and 96 who in their grief confided in a hospital, but whose lives there ended abruptly. With the addition of the judgment of "particular gravity of guilt", the judiciary determines after 15 years how much more sentence has to be served until the convicted person can be released on probation. He will not be released until he is no longer considered dangerous. As a rule, no more than ten additional years are imposed.
Judge as "Accountant of Death"
Judge Sebastian Bührmann said in explaining the verdict that "the trial and the deeds are beyond any bounds and frame." He referred to the legal system in the United States, where unlike in Germany single penalties would be added. With 85 murders and 15 years, this would be 1275 years, calculated Bührmann. Högel killed week after week, month after month and year after year. "I felt like an accountant of death," said the judge.
85 murders. Behind this number there are many more relatives whose lives are brutally beaten, if not destroyed. What might they have thought and felt at the verdict? Do you find the verdict appropriate in the face of Högel's monstrous crimes? maybe even as fair? The fact is: a court can only speak justice, not justice. This is especially true for this case.
In the hospital of Oldenburg, the first patients fell victim to the serial killer
Between 2000 and 2005, Niels Högel swung himself to the Lord of Life and Death. In the hospitals of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst in Lower Saxony, he injected patients with drugs in life-threatening dosage, in order to revive them after the cardiovascular failure. Then he let himself celebrate as a savior. But again and again Högels failed perfidious rescue maneuvers – with fatal outcome. He had always been one of the first in reanimations and "pushed away others who were actually in charge," a retired caretaker recalled as a witness in court, but young and inexperienced physicians were also glad that he had helped. His colleagues called him "Rescue Rambo".
Caught in action
That the serial killer flew open in June 2005 is due to caretakers in Delmenhorst, who caught him manipulating a patient's syringe pump in the intensive care unit. The horror was finally put an end – after almost five years. Initially, the investigation was about attempted manslaughter, later was three murders, then added more suspicions and evidence for murders. Högel pretended to be cooperative in court, but confessed his actions only to the extent that they could prove it. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the first time in February 2015.
Attorney General Daniela Schiereck-Bohlmann led the charges against Högel
But subsequent examinations and autopsies on dead patients revealed the true extent of his actions. In the now terminated trial before the Oldenburg district court, which began at the end of October 2018, the Prosecutor General's Office has now charged him with 97 murders, while three others have lacked the evidence. The bodies of many other potential victims could not be investigated for their cremation. The unprecedented murder series could have been even greater. Högel confessed to 43 acts, to the others he could not or did not want to remember, five he denied.
Looking for the kick in case of emergency
When Högel was individually referred to these allegations of murder during the trial, he repeatedly replied succinctly, "No memory, but I can not rule it out." The defendant did not talk about "pity and remorse, but only astonishment and wonder what is possible," wrote a court reporter of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. He also did not know when he was so mutated, said Högel during the process in Oldenburg. He had oriented himself to the professionals in the intensive care unit, "who had already lost their humanity."
After the pleadings Högel had the last word last Wednesday. He apologizes to all, "about whom I have brought pain and untold grief. When I killed people, I took the most valuable things from countless relatives. "Statements he made in a monotone voice. Victims were then shocked and angry at the media. They did not believe any of his words.
Analysis of the murder motives
What kind of person is Högel? As far as we know, he had a happy childhood, a carefree youth and later led a largely unremarkable life. There is no evidence of stressful traumas. Just looking into his past leaves the question of his motives for the crime unanswered. "Högel is an extremely narcissistic person who has acquired much stability for his unstable ego from external recognition of colleagues," says the psychiatrist Karl Beine in a conversation with the ‘ on the motive.
Högel had finally brought these emergency situations willfully, "because he wanted to shine then, because he wanted to have the kick after successful resuscitation." The chief physician of the St. Marien-Hospital in Hamm and Professor of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the University of Witten / Herdecke has been working on the topic of patient killing in clinics and homes for 25 years. Legs refers to Högel as a threatened and dulled person with a significant deficit of empathy and compassion.
The view into an abyss
"I suspect that until today he has no real idea of the unimaginable suffering he has brought on the families of his victims," says the chief physician. There is an abyss, "in which you will ultimately not learn the motives in detail." After the verdict so questions remain open. Also because the legal processing of his actions with the judgment is far from complete. In connection with the serial murder, the role and behavior of the clinic staff from Oldenburg and Delmenhorst are examined.
The victim's advocate Gaby Lübben made an emotional plea: Högel may be "behind the door of dead souls are persecuted old"
Some of Högel's former colleagues are under investigation. To be clarified, why he was not stopped earlier and why the control mechanisms failed so much. Thus, the former nurse in Oldenburg had been suspected because of the increased death toll during his shifts and taken out of service in the intensive care unit. Nevertheless, he got a good report, could go to the clinic to Delmenhorst and kill more people there.
Cover-up after suspicion
"Serious early warning signs or serious suspicions were ignored, ignored or even covered up," says the psychiatrist. This has nothing to do with the failure of control mechanisms, but with "that one has tried to put the ostensible well-being of one's own hospital above the interest of the patients."
Beine points out that the number of staff of German clinics has fallen in the last twenty years, with a simultaneous increase in the number of patients. There is therefore an amount of workload that makes hospitals error-prone. "Such long periods of action and such high numbers of casualties can certainly be explained by the high level of burden." Factors that favored Högel's series of murders.
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