The French justice system sentenced on Thursday (December 18, 2025) an anesthesiologist to life imprisonment for the poisoning of 30 patients, 12 of whom lost their lives, in an alleged attempt to discredit his colleagues. “You will be imprisoned immediately,” said the president of the Besançon court, Delphine Thibierge, to the defendants, who appeared free during the trial, which lasted more than three months, and were impassive when the verdict was announced.
Frédéric Péchier, 53, was working as an anesthetist in two clinics in the eastern French city of Besançon when patients suffered cardiac arrest under suspicious circumstances between 2008 and 2017. Twelve patients could not be resuscitated. The youngest victim, four years old, died during a routine tonsillectomy while the oldest was 89 years old. The judiciary also imposed a period of 22 years during which the now convicted man cannot apply for parole, in a country still in shock over the case of the pedophile surgeon Joël Le Scouarnec.
His lawyers will appeal: “I am not a poisoner”
His entire family, who had always supported him, once again came to support him in a packed courtroom. After the first guilty verdicts were announced, her daughters left her in tears. The court followed the opinion of the prosecution, which had requested a life sentence against this doctor, “one of the greatest criminals in history,” for “using drugs to kill.”
“For eight years I have been fighting against those who accuse me of being a poisoner (…). I took an oath in 1999 and have always respected it, the Hippocratic oath,” said the defendant in his last statement last Monday. Péchier, who has always protested his innocence, emphasized in his last speech: “I am not a poisoner.” His lawyers announced today that they will appeal the verdict.
He was the only one who could have committed the crimes
The mixed court, made up of six members of a popular jury assisted by three professional judges, did not believe the declaration of innocence made by the defendant for three months before the court in Besançon, which was based on the lack of direct evidence. Nevertheless, the jury accepted the prosecution’s arguments, which claimed that Péchier was the only one who could have committed these crimes and that he did so out of resentment towards some medical colleagues on whom he wanted to take revenge.
According to prosecutors, the doctor contaminated IV bags with potassium, local anesthetics, adrenaline and even heparin, causing cardiac arrest or bleeding in patients treated by colleagues. His goal: “psychological impact” on the health workers with whom he was in conflict and “to satisfy their hunger for power,” the state ministry stated.
Prosecutors had described the 53-year-old Péchier as a “serial killer” and “doctor of death,” in a case similar to another recent case in Germany. Although they found no formal evidence of his actions, investigators considered the anesthesiologist to be the only common link between all of these deaths. In 2022, a notorious crime of passion by a Chilean was tried in the city of Besançon.
LGC (AFP, EFE)
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