niels hoegel
Niels Hoegel covers his face in court during his trial and he is now being charged with 97 murders Getty

A nurse in Germany who was serving a life sentence for two murders has now been charged with the deaths of a further 97 individuals.

In February 2015, Niels Hoegel was jailed for life after killing two patients who were in intensive care at a hospital in Delmenhorst near Bremen.

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The new charges he faces include the deaths of 62 patients at the same hospital.

The other charges are related to similar deaths but at an institution in Oldenburg, northwest of Bremen.

Hoegel worked as a nurse at the Oldenburg site between 1999 and 2002 before moving to Delmenhorst hospital between 2003 and 2005.

The latest charges came to light after many more deaths related to his case were reviewed.

Police questioned Hoegel six times to get to the bottom of the latest charges which also involved the exhumation of 134 bodies from 67 different cemeteries.

Hoegel killed his patients by administering overdoses of heart medication. Sky News reported that he enjoyed the sensation of resuscitating them. Unlike other countries where consecutive sentences can be handed down, leading to prison sentences of hundreds of years, Germany does not do this, but the latest charges are expected to affect his parole chances.

Germany