Nurse may be responsible for deaths of 80 patients

A German male nurse, who confessed to murdering 10 of his elderly patients with lethal injections, was yesterday being investigated by police on suspicion that he had killed a further 70 patients at the Bavarian geriatric hospital where he was employed.

A German male nurse, who confessed to murdering 10 of his elderly patients with lethal injections, was yesterday being investigated by police on suspicion that he had killed a further 70 patients at the Bavarian geriatric hospital where he was employed.

State prosecutors in the town of Kempten said they had widened their inquiries in the case of Stephan L, 25, who was arrested last week after admitting to the murder of six women and four men aged between 60 and 89 at the Sonthofen hospital over the past 16 months.

He confessed to injecting his victims with a lethal mixture of barbiturates and muscle relaxants, claiming that he could not "bear to witness the suffering" of what he insisted were terminally ill patients. He said he wanted to "release them from their agony".

State prosecutors said it was possible that he had killed many more patients as their inquiries had found that drugs were missing from the hospital.

A spokesman for the prosecutors said: "We are investigating a total of 80 deaths that occurred at Sonthofen while the accused was employed there."