A German former hospital nurse who has admitted to killing more than 100 patients in his care apologised on Thursday to victims’ grieving relatives.
“If I knew a way that would help you, then I would take it, believe me,” Niels Hoegel, 41, said at his trial, according to national news agency DPA.
“I am fully convinced now that I owe every relative an explanation,” said the bearded, heavyset defendant.
“I am honestly sorry.”
Hoegel, Germany’s worst post-war serial killer, has already spent nearly a decade in prison on a life term for six other patient deaths but has now admitted to 100 more killings.
He has confessed to giving patients drug overdoses because he enjoyed the thrill of trying to reanimate them at the last moment.