Stephan Letter, a male nurse, has admitted ending the lives of some of the 29 patients he is accused of killing. He is currently on trial in Kempten, Bavaria, Germany. He accepted that what he did cannot be justified under any circumstances - however, he claims he carried out acts of compassion.

He is asking for the murder charges to be reduced to manslaughter.

After medication went missing at the Sonthofen Clinic, where he worked, he was arrested (2004). He told police he had ended twelve patients' lives with lethal injection. However, he now retracts that statement and will not say how many patients' deaths were by his own hand. He says he had confessed to killings which he had not committed.

When searching his home, the police found enough unsealed vials to kill ten people.

He is charged with killing 17 female and 12 male patients. Most of them were quite old.

Relatives of the dead say that some of the patients were not seriously ill. They added that some of the patients were not even in his charge.