Former French anaesthetist Frédéric Peschier was sentenced to life imprisonment for deliberately poisoning 30 patients. 12 of them died.
A court in the eastern French city of Besançon found the 53-year-old doctor guilty of killing the patients. Peschier pleaded not guilty.
Chemicals added by the anaesthetist caused the patients to suffer cardiac arrest or bleeding. This required emergency intervention in the operating theatre, which Peschier himself often did. He could then pass himself off as the patient’s saviour.
In 12 cases he failed to intervene, or it was too late and the patient died.
His youngest victim was a four-year-old child. In 2016, she suffered two cardiac arrests during a routine tonsillectomy. The oldest victim was 89 years old.
“You are Dr Death, a poisoner and a murderer. You are a disgrace to all doctors,” prosecutors said last week.
“You have turned this clinic into a graveyard.”
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Peschir first came under investigation eight years ago when he was suspected of poisoning patients at two clinics in Besançon between 2008 and 2017.
His first known victim was 36-year-old Sandra Simard, who suffered a sudden cardiac arrest during spinal surgery. She survived thanks to the intervention of Pesce himself, although she slipped into a coma. A check of her infusion bags revealed that her potassium chloride concentration was 100 times higher than normal, after which the incident was reported to the local prosecutor’s office.
Investigators found a pattern of “serious side effects” at the Saint-Vincent private clinic in Besançon. While the national average rate of fatal heart attacks under anaesthesia was 1 per 100,000, it was more than six times higher at the clinics.
In most cases across the country, an explanation for the heart attack was later found, while on St Vincent the cause remained a mystery.
Another “serious adverse event” occurred a few days later with a 70-year-old patient.
The first fatality occurred in October 2008. Damien Ihlen, 53, went to St Vincent’s for routine kidney surgery and died after suffering a cardiac arrest. Later tests showed he had been given a potentially fatal dose of the drug lidocaine.
“It’s horrific. You can’t imagine the impact this has had on my family,” his daughter Amandine told French media.
“It’s unbelievable that this could happen and that so many people were affected in so many years, from 2008 to 2017.”
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During the 15-week trial, Peshear occasionally acknowledged that some of the patients who fell ill or died could have been poisoned, but he adamantly denied involvement.
“I have said it before and I will say it again: I am not a poisoner … I have always followed the Hippocratic Oath,” he said.
Peshear claimed during the hearing that he was framed.
One of the doctor’s lawyers says he waited eight years to finally prove his innocence, while the former anaesthetist himself said it was a chance to put “all the cards on the table”.
“After I was sacked, they still had serious side effects and cardiac arrest. After I left in March 2017, they claimed nine more cases,” he told RTL radio.
However, the four-month long trial found the former doctor guilty. Peschier will now spend at least 22 years behind bars. He has been at large throughout the trial. He has 10 days to appeal, which means the case will be retried within a year.
The doctor’s own testimony at the hearing varied. In the end he admitted that there was probably a poisoner in the clinic, but it wasn’t him.
“Colleagues said he always had the answer. That he pretended to be the best, that he created this image of a saviour so that colleagues would instinctively turn to him,” the prosecutor said.
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The son of doctors, Peschier was described by a forensic psychologist as a man with a “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” personality: decent on the one hand, but capable of causing immense damage on the other. He attempted suicide in 2014 and again in 2021.
A divorced father of three, he told the court before sentencing that his only concern was protecting his family. His children cried as the verdict was announced, but he remained indifferent.
“This is the end of a nightmare,” said survivor Sandra Simard.
Another surviving patient, Jean-Claude Gandon, said:
“Our Christmas will be more peaceful now.”