When the judge announces the verdict, Meike S. shakes his head as if none of this could be true.
The district court in Kassel sentenced her to life imprisonment this Wednesday morning.
She is found guilty of three counts of murder, attempted murder of ten people, three counts of aggravated assault, misuse of titles and fraud.
The court determined that the guilt was particularly serious, so Meike S. can hardly hope to be released after 15 years.
"She acted out of a base motive of the lowest order," says the judge.
Meike S. seems to be sobbing, but her face remains tear-free.
Only her shoulders tremble.
Sarah Obertreis
Editor in the “Society & Style” department.
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The little woman with the blond highlights in her short hairstyle, barely five meters away from Meike S., doesn't sob.
She is the only joint plaintiff in this process.
Meike S. was also sentenced to life imprisonment that day because she married Ms. Sch.
has murdered.
Another part of the family sits behind Mrs. Sch.
in the auditorium.
Mr Sch
had two children and grandchildren.
He was 58 years old when he was operated on at the Holy Spirit Hospital in Fritzlar.
It was not a complicated procedure, the position of an adrenal catheter was to be corrected.
At that time, in May 2017, Meike S. was working as an assistant doctor in the hospital and was Mr. Sch.'s anesthetist.
Two days after she put him under anesthesia, Mr Sch died.
"It was a completed murder"
Meike S. dosed one drug too low and the other too high and administered them in the wrong order.
Mr. Sch.'s blood pressure had plummeted, his larynx swollen.
Meike S. didn't manage to intubate and didn't tell a specialist who rushed to her that she was overwhelmed.
The death of Mr. Sch.
she personally shared with his wife, who she is now sitting across from in the courtroom.
"It was a completed murder," says the judge.
Because what was not known in Fritzlar back then: Meike S. never studied medicine.
With her Abitur grade of 2.7, she would have had to wait a long time for a place.
Instead, she put together her license to practice medicine herself on an Apple computer.
It was only in 2018 that an employee of the State Medical Association in Schleswig-Holstein noticed that Meike S. had made a spelling mistake when faking it.
By then, the 51-year-old had already anesthetized almost 500 patients.
Just as many witnesses have been heard in the year-and-a-half proceedings against her: Nurses told how Meike S. trembled when she was given spinal anesthesia, how she got angry when patients questioned her skills.
Doctors reported that she lacked basic knowledge, that she often seemed completely overwhelmed and helpless.
She cried all the time, said the head of internal medicine in Fritzlar, where she started her career as a clinician.
Two murders could not be proven
She is lucky that Meike S. is now only sentenced for three murders.
In well over a dozen cases, she misdosed narcotics and failed to treat poisoning.
Prosecutors had originally demanded that she be found guilty of murdering five people, but two patients could no longer be proven to have actually died as a result of the anesthesia.
Two men and three women lived only a few days, one even just hours, after Meike S. had anesthetized them.
Mr Sch
had been the youngest victim.
Even on the last day of the trial, it remains unclear why, despite everything, no supervisor ever complained about Meike S., why she could just keep going.
The chief anesthetist in Fritzlar refused to testify.
Actually, not only an assistant doctor, but also a specialist should always be present during operations.
But in the anesthesia protocols, the court found no indication that Meike S. ever brought in a specialist, even in acute life-threatening situations, a specialist was only very rarely present.