Other doctors around the world have violated the Hippocratic Oath and have committed criminal acts, but his case is unique. The French anesthetist Frédéric Péchier is linked to 30 poisonings and 12 deaths, all alleged premeditated acts, committed between 2008 and 2017. However, he has not spent a day in preventive detention and, as decided a few days ago by the Court of Appeals of Besançon, you will still be able to practice as a doctor, although with severe limitations.
"Serial killer in a white coat or victim of a judicial gear?" Le Journal du Dimanche wondered before this story that seems like a psychological thriller. Although Péchier, 51, who has always claimed his innocence, was indicted six years ago, during the investigations no conclusive material evidence or direct testimony has been found to confirm other apparently clear indications of his guilt.
Most of the events took place at the Saint-Vincent clinic in Besançon. The alarm was given by a surgeon. It was a routine operation on a thirty-something patient who was implanted with a disc prosthesis for back pain. The woman suffered a cardiac arrest, something that can happen, but it is a very rare accident. The problem is that other cardiac arrests had already occurred in the clinic, too many, during operations.
The patient survived, after being in a coma for several days, but suffered irreversible brain damage. Later it was discovered that in the anesthesia bag there was a dose of potassium one hundred times higher than the norm.
A few months later another similar situation was detected, this time with a four-year-old boy, Teddy, who had an operation on his tonsils. He suffered two cardiac arrests in full operation. The anesthetic cocktail was also adulterated.
Although suspicions were quickly directed towards Péchier, whom the Prosecutor's Office considers "the common denominator" of all the cases, his personality did not fit with that of a murderer. He was a man with a stable family life, professional prestige, and married to a well-known cardiologist.
Some hypotheses suggest that the anesthesiologist could have acted according to the so-called arsonist firefighter syndrome. He would have poisoned the patients not to kill them, but to revive them himself and thus show his worth. The suspect, out of a narcissistic impulse, would have wanted to gain more respect among his colleagues and not take second place to his wife. However, these are all assumptions, because the psychologists who studied it did not find any typical characteristics of people who commit these crimes.
One factor that would speak against him is that the cardiac arrests occurred mainly in periods when Péchier had personal or professional problems. Another element, which perhaps marked him as a child, was that Péchier's father, also a doctor, worked in a clinic in Poitiers where there was a serious poisoning problem.
The defense insists that not all the information has been properly collated and that some cardiac arrests occurred when Péchier was on vacation.
Be that as it may, the mystery surrounding the anesthesiologist has not been cleared up. If convicted at trial, he could receive life in prison. But for the moment he is still free and can even practice, with strict limitations. He is prohibited from any medical function that involves physical contact with the patient or issuing a prescription, but he can give advice over the phone, for example through the emergency department.
