A German doctor allegedly murdered four patients in their homes before setting fire to their property to cover his tracks.
The 39-year-old man, who was believed to have worked in the palliative care team at a nursing facility in Berlin, was arrested on Tuesday on charges of manslaughter and arson, according to a joint statement from police and the local prosecutor’s office.
The doctor allegedly killed four elderly women who were being treated by the nursing service between June 11 and July 24, but police have yet to determine exactly how the patients, aged between 72 and 94, died.
To cover his tracks, the man set fire to the women’s homes and in one case, even called one of the victims’ relatives and lied about the woman being unresponsive to cover up the murder when the fire in her apartment burned itself out, police say.
The man began his alleged murder spree on June 11, when he allegedly killed an 87-year-old woman at her home in Berlin’s Neukoelln district before setting fire to her apartment.
The fourth victim, aged 72, was murdered and her home in an apartment building was set on fire in the Plaenterwald district, adjacent to Neukoelln, around noon on 24 July (scene in photo above).
Emergency services called to extinguish the blaze at around 12.30pm initially managed to revive the woman, but she later died in hospital.
Three other residents of the apartment block suffered minor injuries in the fire.
The second alleged homicide occurred almost a month later, on July 8, just a few miles away.
The prosecution believes that the doctor killed a 76-year-old woman, also a resident of Neukoelln, and tried to start a fire, which extinguished itself.
He then tried to cover up the murder by calling a relative of the victim. He told her that he was standing in front of her apartment and that no one answered when he rang the doorbell.
On July 15, just a week later, police believe the suspected serial killer struck again when a 94-year-old woman was killed in her apartment and her kitchen was set on fire in the same Berlin district as the woman a week earlier.
The fourth victim, a 72-year-old woman, was murdered and her home, an apartment building, was set on fire in the Plaenterwald district near Neukoelln around midday on 24 July.
A neighbour noticed the fire on the woman’s ground floor and alerted the local fire brigade at 1.15pm, who found her dead.
The Berlin public prosecutor’s office has charged the suspected serial killer with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, three counts of attempted arson, and one count of arson. The investigation is ongoing.