"Death Doctor" jailed for life

Frédéric Péchier, 53, was convicted at the end of his four-month-long trial in the eastern city of Besançon.

The former anesthetist has now been jailed for life for intentionally poisoning 30 patients, of whom 12 died. He was found to have introduced chemicals like potassium chloride or adrenaline into the infusion bags of his patients.

His youngest victim was a four-year-old child who survived two cardiac arrests during a routine tonsil surgery in 2016. The oldest victim was 89.

"You are a doctor of death, a poisoner, a murderer bringing shame on all doctors," said prosecutors last week. "You have turned this clinic into a graveyard."

Péchier triggered cardiac arrest or hemorrhage in patients, which required emergency intervention in the operating theater. The operations were often performed by Péchier himself, who was then able to pose as the patient savior.

In 12 of these cases, he was unable to intervene, resulting in the death of a patient. The prosecution continuously argued that Péchier acted in order to discredit fellow anaesthetists, as he bore a grudge against them.

Péchier rarely acted as the primary anesthetist. Instead, he came in early to the clinic to tamper with the infusion bags, and when things went wrong, he was able to step in after diagnosing the problem and ordering an antidote.

The alert was raised in 2017 after a surfeit of potassium chloride was found in the infusion bag of a woman who had a heart attack while being operated on for a back complaint.

Investigators found a pattern of "serious adverse events" at the Saint-Vincent private clinic in Besançon. While the national average for fatal heart attacks under anaesthesia was 1 in 100,000, at the clinic it was more than six times that.

During the 15 weeks of the trial, Péchier sometimes acknowledged that some of the patients who fell ill or died may have been poisoned, but he denied any wrongdoing.

"I have said it before and I'll say it again: I am not a poisoner... I have always upheld the Hippocratic oath," he stated.

Péchier will now spend a minimum of 22 years behind bars, having been at liberty throughout the trial.

According to the trial prosecutor: "His colleagues said he always seemed to have the answer. That he made himself out to be the best, that he created this character of the saviour, so that colleagues would instinctively turn to him."

Péchier denied the charges, and his lawyers argued that there was no hard proof linking him to the crimes. But his own testimony varied during the trial, and he ended up admitting there must have been a poisoner at large in the clinic, but it was not him.

"It's the end of a nightmare," said survivor Sandra Simard. Another patient who survived, Jean-Claude Gandon, said: "We can have an easier Christmas now."