Germany: Man gets life for poisoning co-workers for mysterious reason

Berlin, March 9: Sometimes, human mind is difficult to fathom. A man in Germany was recently convicted on charges of attempted murder for poisoning several of his co-workers over the years by sprinkling their food and drinks with toxic materials. He was handed a life term on Thursday, March 7, US-based NPR reported.

The man, partially identified as Klaus O. as German privacy laws do not allow revelation of full identity, was known to be a reclusive man who often wore headphones during his long tenure at a metal fittings company in Schloss Holte-Stukenbrock in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in central-western Germany, Deutsche Welle reported.

Fifty-seven-year-old Klaus's manager called him "conspicuously inconspicuous" and one of his victims who worked with the man for three decades, rarely spoke with people and had no friends.

"I had no problem with Klaus, and I accepted that he does not want any contact. There was never an argument," he was quoted as saying by a daily called 'Bild'.

During Klaus's trial, a lawyer told the court that there weren't many quarrels either just as there were no conversations about private issues.

Klaus was arrested in May last year after one of his colleagues found what the officials later discovered as lead acetate - a highly harmful toxic - on his lunch, NPR reported.

It was after the colleague found that his sandwiches were repeatedly laced with some mysterious substance that he bought the issue to the management's notice and after an hidden camera was installed in the break room, it was found that Klaus calmly pulling food out of his colleagues' bags and filling them with a powder and putting the food back into the bags.

Klaus's colleagues still could not believe that he was poisoning them till those who ingested the toxic in their food started falling ill. The police searched Klaus's home to find a makeshift laboratory that featured lead acetate, lead, mercury and other metals.

Two of Klaus's colleagues had serious kidney damage while a third suffered brain damage and is unlikely to recover from vegetative state.

None though has an idea what had prompted the man to target his colleagues. A psychologist who had a talk to Klaus said that he approached the poisonings as a researcher curious to know the effects of toxins on his co-workers. Klaus himself also did not say anything about what motivated him to do something sinister.