A German nurse arrested for killing elderly patients with injections has admitted responsibility for four more deaths, bringing the total to 16, prosecutors said today.
Officials have ordered the exhumation of 42 bodies to check if he killed more patients.
He has been asked to explain 81 deaths that happened during his shifts in a hospital in the southern town of Sonthofen and is cooperating, the prosecutors' office in the city of Kempten said in a statement.
The 25-year-old man, named only as Stefan L, has said he killed patients because he was unable to bear seeing them "wasting away." Bodies are being exhumed to check how sick the patients really were.
"Given the large number of exhumations the digging has been outsourced to various companies," the statement said.
The nurse, who has been remanded in custody while investigations proceed, now faces charges of 15 counts of manslaughter, one case of attempted manslaughter and one case of "killing on request", a form of illegal euthanasia. He has not been charged with murder.
The nurse worked in the hospital's internal diseases ward and killed his victims with injections of drugs he stole from hospital supplies. He stole quantities of a tranquiliser drug and a muscle relaxant which, when used in combination, cause death.
If prosecutors change the charges to murder, the case could turn into Germany's biggest serial murder case since World War Two.