11:33 EDT Aug 07, 2024updated
12:01 EDT Aug 07, 2024
11:33 EDT Aug 07, 2024updated
12:01 EDT Aug 07, 2024
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A German doctor is said to have murdered four patients in their homes and then set fire to their property to cover his tracks.
The 39-year-old, who reportedly worked in the palliative care team of a nursing home in Berlin, was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of manslaughter and arson, a joint statement from police and the local public prosecutor’s office said.
The doctor is said to have murdered four elderly women who were being cared for by the nursing service between June 11 and July 24. However, the police do not yet know exactly how these patients, aged 72 to 94, died.
To cover his tracks, the man set fire to the women’s homes and in one case even called a relative of the victims and lied about the woman being unresponsive, covering up the murder when the fire in her apartment went out on its own, police said.
The man began his alleged killing spree on June 11, when he allegedly murdered an 87-year-old woman in her home in Berlin’s Neukölln district and then set fire to her apartment.
Emergency services were called to extinguish the fire at around 12:30. They were initially able to resuscitate the woman, but she later died in hospital.
Three other residents of the apartment building were slightly injured in the fire.
The second alleged case of homicide occurred almost a month later, on July 8, just a few miles away.
The public prosecutor’s office believes that the doctor murdered a 76-year-old woman, who also lived in Neukölln, and then tried to set a fire, which went out by itself.
He then tried to cover up the murder by calling a relative of the victim, telling them he was standing outside her apartment and that no one answered when he rang the doorbell.
On July 15, just a week later, police suspect the alleged serial killer struck again. That time, a 94-year-old woman died in her apartment after her kitchen was set on fire. This happened in the same Berlin neighborhood as the woman a week earlier.
The fourth victim, aged 72, was killed and her home in an apartment building set on fire in the Plaenterwald district, bordering Neukoelln, around noon on July 24.
A neighbor noticed the fire in the woman’s ground-floor apartment and alerted the local fire department at 1:15 p.m., who found her dead.
The Berlin Public Prosecutor’s Office has charged the alleged serial killer with four counts of manslaughter, three counts of attempted particularly serious arson and one count of completed arson. The investigation is ongoing.