Stephan Letter (born 17 September 1978) is a German serial killer and former nurse responsible for the murder of at least 29 patients while he worked at a hospital in Sonthofen, Bavaria, between January 2003 and July 2004.
His murders were described as the largest number of killings in Germany since the Second World War, until the discovery of Niels Högel's crimes.
Letter also reportedly gave an inappropriate injection to a 22-year-old soldier with minor injuries from a fall; she lost consciousness but recovered.
[6] Letter confessed to some of the killings but insisted that he had acted out of sympathy and a desire to end the suffering of sick patients.
However, the prosecution indicated that Letter was not the assigned nurse for some of the patients and that some of them were in stable condition and were due to be released from the hospital.