Oldenburg, Germany

A 38-year-old male nurse has admitted killing 30 patients and trying to kill 60 more with drug overdoses because he was “bored” and wanted to show his CPR skills.

Prosecutors had earlier decided to limit the trial to just 3 killings to make the case against NIELS H easier to prove.

But a court-appointed psychologist told the court in the north-western city of Oldenburg the man admitted in their talks he had used overdoses of a cardiac drug to kill “about 30” seriously ill people from 2003 to 2005 at Delmenhorst Hospital.  Another 60 survived the injections.

The accused insisted he had not tried to kill anyone at other hospitals during his career or while he had worked as an ambulance crewman.

“I was bored”, he told police.

Prosecutors said his motive was to create intensive-care emergencies where he could impress and win gratitude with his talent for saving people from the brink of death.

His name has been withheld under German media privacy guidelines.

At the trial that began last year he has been charged with three murders and two attempted murders.

He is already serving seven and a half years in prison on a 2008 conviction for attempted murder.

A colleague caught him red-handed in the summer of 2005 as he injected a patient in intensive care with an overdose.

Her accusation set the series of cases going, but more deaths a decade ago only gradually emerged to reviews of patient files.

One doctor who gave evidence in September said he was a “passionate medic” who made a good impression on staff at the clinic.

“I found it strange that he was always on hand with patients were being resuscitated, often helping younger doctors with intubation  – inserting a breathing tube into a patient’s airways”, the doctor said.

“No one wants to believe that a colleague would rather kill patients instead of helping them”, Erich Joester, a lawyer for the clinic, said.