“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.
