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Elizabeth Wettlaufer: Woodstock woman details the murders of eight seniors under her care in Woodstock and London as she pleads guilty

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By the end of the interview with the Woodstock police, killer nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer admitted people would likely think she’s “a monster.”

That’s putting it mildly.

For a harrowing two-and-a-half hours, Wettlaufer, 49, using a tone of voice you might hear if someone was describing a vacation or a shopping trip, nonchalantly described how she murdered eight elderly, vulnerable people in long-term care homes in London and Woodstock by injecting them with overdoses of insulin she swiped from supply cupboards.

The former long-term care nurse pleaded guilty Thursday to eight counts of first-degree murder, four of attempted murder and counts of aggravated assault, confessing publicly to the biggest health care mass murder in Canadian history.

Already, the guilty pleas are fueling calls for a full-blown public inquiry into the quality of care in Canada’s long-term care homes, especially in Ontario where the province’s own auditor general has had harsh things to say about backlogged complaints in the province’s more than 630 homes with 78,000 residents. So far, the government is sitting back — waiting for the court case to conclude.

Clearly, the people Wettlaufer murdered or tried to kill were vulnerable.

In the prime of their lives, they were average Canadians — immigrants, Second World War veterans, tradesmen, loyal church-goers, restaurant workers and housewives.

But in their later years, many of them had dementia, some of them had diabetes and all needed care.

Wettlaufer spoke in a clear, strong voice as she entered her guilty pleas. She stayed focused on the video screen showing her interview, never straying from it, even when one friend of the dead uttered insults when he stormed out of the courtroom.

The difference between living and dying, for the unfortunate souls in Wettlaufer’s care, depended on her mood. If she was feeling frustrated or angry or overwhelmed at her “really hard job” looking after patients, she might decide it was your time to go.

She might like you, but decide you weren’t really enjoying your life anymore, so why not hurry death along? And if you were “miserable” or “a handful,” she knew what to do.

That “red surge” that would bubble up inside her every time, she thought, came from God — or maybe, she admitted, from the devil. It told her to load up an insulin needle with long- or short-acting insulin and and inject her victims with massive dosages.

Killing, she said, “relieved the pressure.”

But their deaths weren’t instant. As was outlined by the Crown in the agreed statement of facts, Wettlaufer worked evening shifts at Caressant Care nursing home in Woodstock and would often be gone from work by the time the medication began the painful process to death.

Her victims would have massive drops in blood sugar, causing hypoclycemia. They might become confused, pale, sweaty, shaky, irritable. Their heart rates might go up. They might become weak.

And they might slip into into a coma. Or, as Wettlaufer so matter-of-factly described it, “stroke out.”

Someone, like Helen Matheson, 93, originally from Innerkip, so sweet that Wettlaufer went out to buy the woman her favourite blueberry pie and ice cream the night she injected her in 2011, “might have said “‘Ow’” when the needle was stuck in her arm, she said in the confession.

Or, Mary Zurawinski, 93, who asked she be put in “the death bed” in palliative care in November 2011. “Well, she must be the next one,” Wettlaufer said she thought, before injecting her.

Some had to be rushed to hospital.

Others tried to fight her off, like the stubborn Gladys Millard, 87, an Alzheimer’s patient in Caressant Care in 2011 who “struggled” until Wettlaufer found a place on her body where Millard wouldn’t grab her.

Or, Helen Young, 90, who often told the nurses, “Help me die.”

“Helen was miserable,” Wettlaufer told the police officer in the interview.

On July 13, 2013, something “snapped inside’ and Wettlaufer thought, “Okay, you will die.”

She injected so much insulin into Young that she later had a seizure. She died the next morning after Wettlaufer was long gone.

But when her niece came to retrieve Young’s belongings, Wettlaufer hugged her as she cried. Wettlaufer said she felt “guilt, shame” and as if she had “betrayed her.”

She told the officer she felt badly for all the families. Her first murder victim in 2008, James Silcox, who suffered from dementia, had been a nuisance to her while he recovered from hip surgery. She felt it was “his time to go.”

He called out, “I love you” and “I’m sorry” before his death. “His wife and his daughter loved him a lot,” she told the officer.

In the public gallery, filled with family, daughter Andrea Silcox sobbed.

Mo Granat, 84, was so ravaged by cancer, she had to inject him in his leg. “There were people who loved him,” she said. “He had friends who would come who were like family.”

One of those friends, Laura Jackson, looked on in tears.

Same with the Horvath family when they heard Londoner Arpad Horvath Sr., a resident with dementia at Meadow Park nursing home in London, where Wettlaufer was hired after she was fired from Caressant Care, “fought the first needle. The second needle got in.”

She really didn’t want to kill Maureen Pickering, 73, in 2004, but just put her in a coma to make her “less hard to handle.” She suffered a stroke and died.

Six others survived Wettlaufer’s insulin indignities. Her first two victims were lovely sisters-in-law, Clothilde Adriano and Albina DeMedeiros, who were her first test runs.

“I didn’t really want her to die,” she said about Adriano. “I just don’t know, I was angry and had this sense inside me that she might be a person that God wanted back with him.”

Wayne Hedges was schizophrenic. Mike Priddle had Huntington’s disease. Wettlaufer thought they weren’t enjoying life anymore. They survived.

Through all of it, Wettlaufer was drinking heavily — rye and water was her drink of choice — and was addicted to hydromorphone, a drug she would steal from patients. Her marriage had collapsed, she had a year-long, same-sex relationship and was involved in counselling.

She gave up killing for a couple of years and focused on God and the Bible. But that old familiar red surge returned.

Over the years, she told at least 11 people what she was up to, including her pastor, who prayed with her and told her if she did it again he would report her, and a lawyer who told her to remain silent.

It was only after she was told in her last job that she would be working with diabetic kids, and not seniors, that she gave up nursing. She was too frighted she might harm kids.

She entered treatment at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and confessed.

At the end of the police interview, Woodstock Police Const. Nathan Hergott asked Wettlaufer about her tattoo. It reads “Hope and Dreams” and “that somehow, some way I can help somebody.”

That includes people in jail, or maybe, she said, hopefully, someone can study her so this doesn’t happen again. What she knows for sure now is that it wasn’t God at all— it was her and “my mental illness."

She returns to court June 26 and 27 for victim impact statements and sentencing — a mandatory life sentence, with no chance of parole for 25 years.

The day ended with Superior Court Justice Bruce Thomas commending the families who suffered through a day of sadness. He said he couldn’t imagine their grief and emotions.

And “I can’t imagine the betrayal,” he said.

Appendix C - Wettlaufer Oct 5 2016 Transcript by The London Free Press on Scribd

 

Postmedia tweets from Thursday:

 

CHRONOLOGY

Sept. 16, 2016:

Registered nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer, 49, of Woodstock, gives up her nursing licence and checks herself into the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. Later that month, Toronto police contact Woodstock police about a possible homicide investigation.

Oct. 6:

Wettlaufer agrees to an unusual peace bond to remain in Woodstock under curfew, because there are police concerns she will “commit a personal injury offence.” One of her conditions is not to possess any drugs, including insulin.

Oct. 25:

Wettlaufer is charged with eight counts of first-degree murder in deaths at two longterm care homes, from 2007 to 2014, in Woodstock and London. Police say the residents died “after they were administered a drug,” but aren’t specific.

Oct. 28:

News reports point to an expanded police probe that includes Paris, Brantford and Port Dover, after police say they don’t believe there are more homicide victims.

Nov. 2:

Wettlaufer’s first court appearance in Woodstock, made by video from a detention centre in Milton.

Jan. 13, 2017:

— Wettlaufer is brought to Woodstock where six more charges — four of attempted murder and two of aggravated assaults – are laid against her.

— Search warrants obtained by The London Free Press show police had been investigating the additional charges from the start and point to insulin as the drug believed used in the case.

Jan. 24, 2017:

Police exhume two bodies — one in London, another in Innerkip — of two alleged victims for forensic examination.

Jan. 26:

— The province orders Caressant Care in Woodstock, one of the homes where Wettlaufer worked, and where seven of the eight alleged murder victims lived, to halt all new admissions until it meets provincial standards.

— The move comes after the home was cited for infractions under Ontario’s longterm care law, including more than 40 “medication incidents.”

March 25:

New information released in a redcacted search warrant obtained by The Free Press reveals that Wettlaufer was fired from Caressant Care “for failing to follow insulin protocols” and had a history of giving the wrong medications to patients. Her firing comes just days after the last suspicious death at Caressant.

April 7:

Wettlaufer, in a route video court appearance, waives her right to a preliminary hearing, sending the case straight to trial.

April 21:

First appearance, in person, before the higher court.

June 1:

Enters guilty pleas to all 14 charges against her — eight of first-degree murder, four of attempted murder and two of aggravated assault.

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