French anaesthetist ‘Dr Death’ killed 12 patients to ‘feed his thirst for power’
The judges and jury found that Pechier had deliberately contaminated intravenous fluid bags and syringes with potassium, lidocaine, adrenaline and heparin, triggering sudden heart attacks or haemorrhages during routine procedures.
“It’s a relief, a liberation, because shame has changed sides,” said Stephane Giuranna, a lawyer for several civil parties.
“You bring shame on all doctors. You have turned this clinic into a graveyard.”
Prosecutors at an earlier hearing
“He has been found guilty of all the charges, making him the biggest criminal in French legal history. I have no doubt that there will be a retrial, and we are ready to face it,” he said.
Prosecutors argued that Pechier’s motive was not mercy but power; he aimed to “psychologically damage” colleagues with whom he was in conflict by engineering medical disasters on their watches.
They painted a picture of a man obsessed with control, who derived satisfaction from watching others panic or fail, and then intervening to save the day to “feed his thirst for power”.
Long seen as “the star anaesthesiologist of Besancon”, prosecutors said his uncanny ability to administer a life-saving injection, sometimes “outside of recommended best practices”, eventually became suspect.
Pechier worked as an anaesthetist in two clinics in the eastern city of Besancon.Credit: Getty Images
“His too-good clinical intuition was tied to his knowledge of the true problem facing the patient,” the investigating judges said.
Several doctors testified to careers ruined by unexplained collapses on operating tables, while families described loved ones who had entered clinics for minor surgery and never came home.
One lawyer for the civil parties said Pechier had turned hospitals into “cemeteries”, adding that patients were “drawn at random” to serve a private vendetta.
He “wanted hearts to stop”, one investigator said during the trial. “The life of the patient did not matter.”
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While he eventually accepted that an unidentified individual must have contaminated perfusions in at least one of the clinics, he insisted that he was not responsible. “I am not a poisoner,” he repeated in court.
His defence lawyer, Randall Schwerdorffer, pleaded “judicial error”, accusing investigators of building a theory around the doctor as a “common denominator” rather than proving guilt beyond doubt.
He likened his client’s plight to that of Patrick Dils, the Frenchman wrongly convicted as a teenager of murdering two children. “Coincidences exist,” Schwerdorffer told jurors.
He argued that no one had seen Pechier poison a patient, that some incidents occurred when he was not present, and that his reserved, taciturn manner had been wrongly construed as a lack of empathy.
“Is there an instrument that measures empathy?” he asked.
After the verdict, the lawyer said he would appeal.
“I’m not at all convinced by the prosecution’s case and remain convinced of Frederic Pechier’s innocence,” he said. “He is facing this new ordeal with his head held high.”