A GERMAN GP dubbed “Dr Death” has been jailed for life after suffocating 15 patients over a three-year kill spree.

Cops discovered fatal drugs in the blood of his victims – the chilling clue which finally lead to the arrest of Johannes M in Berlin.

Johannes M. is Germany’s ‘Dr Death’ after killing more than a dozen of his own patients

Police claim the doctor tried to cover his tracks by setting fire to the flats of some of his victims

Prosecutors say that Johannes M, 41, had a “lust for murder” and accused him of using a deadly cocktail of sedatives to asphyxiate his patients.

He was also accused of torching the homes of victims in Berlin in a bungled attempt to cover his crimes.

The sentence of life imprisonment comes just days after the GP admitted to killing 12 of his “suffering” patients.

Police initially arrested him in connection with four deaths, but that number soon rocketed to 15 – and the true number could be as high as 90.

Now Dr M has finally been flung behind bars – following an agonising 57 court hearings in a trial that has gripped Germany.

His murdered patients – 12 women and three men – were aged from 25 to 94.

All of his victims were terminally ill – but distraught relatives say they wanted to live.

The son of a 72-year-old woman who was murdered by Dr M said: “She had plans, wanted to travel to the Baltic Sea with her sister—my mother wanted to live.”

Johannes M’s court-appointed lawyers Klaudia Dawidowicz, Ria Halbritter and Christoph Stoll

He drugged his patients with a muscle relaxant which led to death by suffocation

And the heartbroken mother of a 25-year-old victim wept in the courtroom, saying: “She never said she didn’t want to live anymore.”

The doctor had previously maintained a stony silence – but on the 54th day of the trial he finally told the court: “Only now am I able to explain my actions and accept responsibility for my deeds.”

The deadly doc explained that he was not confessing due to “overwhelming evidence”, but out of a desire to clear his conscience.

He told the victims’ loved ones: “I apologise for the immense suffering I have caused.”

He claimed to act out of a wish to stop his patients “suffering and illness”.

“After every act, I thought: This has to stop,” he told the court.

In a chilling twist, his killing spree began nearly a decade after he wrote his doctoral thesis on the deaths of elderly people, in which he concluded: “Killings of dependent care patients are not easy to prove.”

Investigators believe he could be responsible for at least 90 murders as they trawl through the records of 395 deaths which occurred on his watch.

If that proves to be the case, that would make him Germany’s – and one of the world’s – most prolific serial killers.

Officers are still baffled about the doctor’s motives  and suspect that he relished being the “master of life and death”.

The case of Johannes M is a sinister echo of British GP Harold Shipman who was given the infamous “Dr Death” nickname after he killed a suspected 250 people under his care from 1975 to 1998.

The true number of victims is suspected to be even higher.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/16657833/dr-death-jailed-life-suffocating-15-patients/