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.

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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.

“Beginning in the spring of 1983 and lasting through the early weeks of 1989, Death got a helping hand at Lainz,” investigators later concluded. While official counts confirmed 42 victims, experts believe the real number may be closer to 300 patients.

Waltraud Wagner and the Birth of the Angels of Death

At the center of the crimes was Waltraud Wagner, a nurse’s aide who reportedly discovered a perverse sense of power after administering a fatal morphine overdose to a 77-year-old patient who asked to die. Authorities later said Wagner “enjoyed playing God,” holding life and death in her hands.

Rather than stopping, she escalated—and recruited others.

Wagner enlisted Irene Leidolf, Maria Gruber, and Stefanija Mayer, teaching them how to prepare lethal injections of insulin and tranquilizers, according to reporting by the Mirror.  The four women would later be known collectively as the Angels of Death.

Killer Nurses have A Ritual of Drowning and Overdoses

Some of the murders went far beyond injections. In what investigators described as a horrific ritual, one nurse would hold a patient’s head and pinch their nose while another poured water into their mouth, drowning them in their own beds.

The suffering was immense.

“The majority of their victims were in their 80s, but all were over the age of 75,” investigators reported. Tragically, at least 22 victims could have survived if hospital administrators had cooperated fully with police earlier.

One suspect chillingly told authorities:

“The ones who got on my nerves were dispatched directly to a free bed with the good Lord.”

Police Encounter a Wall of Silence 

Chief investigator Max Edelbacher later stated that he encountered a “wall of silence” within the hospital, which hindered the inquiry. The case finally cracked when a doctor overheard the nurses casually discussing the killings at a local pub.

The ensuing investigation shocked Austria and garnered global coverage, with outlets like The New York Times reporting estimates of the number of victims as high as 300. The story was later echoed in international tabloids such as the Express, which described the women as “twisted angels of death.”

Vienna’s then-Mayor Helmut Zilk drew grim historical parallels, labeling them “Angels of Death” and likening the crimes to Nazi medical atrocities at Auschwitz. There was nothing angelic about the killer nurses.

Trials, Sentences, and Controversial Releases

In 1991, Waltraud Wagner and Irene Leidolf were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Despite the severity of their crimes, both were conditionally released in 2008 for good behavior.

Their accomplices, Gruber and Mayer, were convicted on lesser charges of attempted murder and manslaughter and released earlier. Authorities granted them new identities to protect them from vigilante attacks.

Today, Lainz hospital has been repurposed into a nursing home—but the legacy of the Angels of Death killer nurses remains a sobering reminder of how fragile trust in healthcare can be when safeguards fail.

Twisted 'angels of death' nurses drowned patients in bed and now free | World | News | Express.co.uk