Man handed life sentence for poisoning co-workers’ lunches

A German court has sentenced a man who poisoned his co-workers’ lunches to life in prison.

The 57-year-old employee - identified only as Klaus O. in accordance with German reporting restrictions - had worked at the metal fittings company in Schloss Holte-Stukenbrock, North Rhine-Westphalia, for 38 years.

For decades, he secretly spiked his colleagues’ food and drink with deadly heavy metals including lead, mercury and cadmium.

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One of those targeted, a 23-year-old trainee, “fell into a coma after ingesting mercury and now has permanent brain damage”, The Independent reports.

Two other employees, men aged 27 and 67, sustained irreversible chronic kidney damage from exposure to lead and cadmium.

The poisoner was finally apprehended in spring last year after an employee noticed white powder in his sandwiches and persuaded managers to install a hidden camera.

“When authorities searched his home, they found a primitive chemistry laboratory in the basement and a substance that Judge Georg Zimmermann described as ‘more dangerous than all combat agents used in World War Two’,” says the Associated Press.

Colleagues described the defendant as a loner, but said he did appear to bear any ill-will to co-workers. He did not take the stand during the trial, and his motive for the poisonings remains unclear.

The only clue came from a series of interview with a prison psychologist in which the defendant reportedly said he wanted to observe the effects of the poison on human subjects, German newspaper Deutsche Welle reports.

A district court in Bielefeld found Klaus O. guilty of attempted murder and multiple counts of bodily injury yesterday. Sentencing him to life in prison, Judge Zimmerman told the defendant that the court viewed his crimes to be as serious as murder.

A life sentence in the German legal system equates to 15 years behind bars, but the judge took the unusual step of ordering that the man remain in prison after completing his sentence, in order to protect the public, The Independent reports.