An anaesthetist who deliberately poisoned patients so he could then heroically “save” their lives and bring them back from the brink of death, has been sentenced in a French court to life imprisonment, reports News24.
He had been unable to resuscitate all 30 of his victims, 12 of whom died.
In one of the survivors’ cases, the parents of a four-year-old boy were devastated when their son’s heart had suddenly stopped beating during a routine operation to have his tonsils removed. For a few minutes the medical team tried and failed to get it going again – and then a miracle happened.
The hospital’s superstar anaesthetist Dr Frédéric Péchier burst into the theatre at Saint-Vincent clinic and took charge, positioning himself at little Tedy Hoerter-Tarby’s head and barking orders to the team.
Cardiac massage was performed, adrenaline was administered and after 20 minutes, the boy’s heart started beating again.
It was a traumatic time but eventually Tedy emerged from his coma and was on the mend.
Even though nobody was able to explain why their son had gone into cardiac arrest, his parents were so grateful to the hero doctor who’d saved his life.
A year later they felt very differently about Péchier (53) when the news broke that he was being investigated for deliberating poisoning 30 patients between 2008 and 2017 – with their son suspected of being his youngest victim and the oldest a man of 89.
An investigation revealed that he tampered with IV bags or anaesthesia pouches to trigger heart attacks and then heroically jumped in to save the day. But he wasn’t always successful – 12 patients couldn’t be resuscitated and died on the operating table.
“You are Dr Death, a poisoner, a murderer,” prosecutor Christine de Curraize said at his trial where he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. “You have turned these clinics into graveyards.”
Sandra Simard needed a walking stick to go into court to testify against Péchier. She was 36 and in good health in 2017 when she went into Saint-Vincent for back surgery.
But after her heart stopped during surgery she ended up in a coma for several days and has been left with lifelong consequences, including memory problems, fatigue and noise intolerance.
She takes comfort from the fact it was her case that triggered the alarm. After she went into cardiac arrest, Péchier had administered an injection of calcium gluconate that would save her life.
But after a lethal dose of potassium – 100 times higher than the norm – was later found in one of the saline bags feeding her intravenous drip, hospital staff suspected he might not be the hero he appeared to be.
It emerged he’d deliberately contaminated the saline bag to trigger a crisis so he could impress his colleagues by swooping in and saving the patient’s life.
Damien Iehlen (53) is believed to be Péchier’s first victim. After a kidney operation at Saint-Vincent in October 2008, he subsequently died of cardiac arrest. A post-mortem later revealed he’d been injected with a massive overdose of lidocaine, a local anaesthetic.
But it was only nine years later that Simard’s case raised serious suspicions, triggering an investigation that found Péchier was the common denominator in 30 cases with unexpected complications or deaths.
Each appeared to have followed a similar pattern: Péchier would contaminate IV bags with substances like potassium, adrenaline, local anaesthetics and anticoagulant, triggering a heart attack. Then when all seemed lost, he’d step in to try to save them.
During his three-month trial the court tried to establish his motives for poisoning patients. It emerged that in many of the cases, Péchier intervened to show he was “all powerful” in contrast to his fellow doctors.
The court heard he had often aimed to discredit fellow anaesthetists and doctors with whom he was in competition, targeting their patients to make them look incompetent.
It took a long time for Péchier to come under scrutiny because he was so respected. He lived with his cardiologist wife and their three children before their divorce in 2021.
Until the day of the verdict, he continued to protest his innocence, claiming the “entire medical community” had conspired against him and that all of the deaths and near-fatalities were the result of “medical errors” by his colleagues.
His plans to appeal the verdict.
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