The chilling saga of the Angels of Death remains one of Europe’s most disturbing medical crime stories, exposing how killer nurses were able to exploit trust, institutional silence, and vulnerable patients to carry out a 7-year-long killing spree.
Between 1983 and 1989, a group of killer nurses at Vienna’s Lainz General Hospital is believed to have murdered scores—possibly hundreds—of elderly patients under the guise of mercy, leaving behind a legacy that still haunts Austria’s healthcare system.
Angels of Death in the Austrian Hospital
Built in 1839, Lainz General Hospital was one of Vienna’s largest medical institutions, employing around 2,000 staff. Pavilion 5, where most of the crimes occurred, housed “problem cases”—patients largely in their seventies and older, many terminally ill. In such an environment, death was not unexpected.
But as noted in investigative accounts later summarized by Murderpedia, death at Lainz was not always natural.
