German police are broadening their probe into a Berlin palliative care doctor suspected of killing eight elderly patients by looking at another 40 suspicious deaths, media reports said on Wednesday. 

The Berlin prosecution service did not confirm the reports when contacted by AFP about the case of the 40-year-old medic who has been in custody since August. 

Prosecutors had reported in late November that the doctor was suspected of killing eight elderly patients under his care and setting fire to some of their homes to cover up his crimes. 

He stood accused of giving his elderly patients lethal drug cocktails motivated purely by a “lust for murder”, they said last week. 

Bild daily reported on Wednesday that a team of police investigators are now searching through the files of some 40 other deceased patients for more possible victims of the doctor. 

Berlin public broadcaster RBB also said a special police unit was studying another 40 suspicious cases, with both media outlets partially identifying the suspect as Johannes M. 

RBB said on its website that “if the investigation team’s lead is confirmed, this would be one of the largest series of murders in nursing and medicine in German post-war history”. 

The developing case, if confirmed, recalls that of the notorious German nurse Niels Hoegel, who was sentenced in 2019 to life in prison for murdering 85 patients in his care. 

Hoegel, believed to be Germany’s most prolific serial killer, murdered hospital patients with lethal injections between 2000 and 2005 before he was eventually caught in the act. 

-Agence France-Presse