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It was early March 2014, and residents of Caress and Care Long-Term Care Home were feeling restless, despite the prospect of spring just around the corner, which meant more outdoor visits with family and friends. There was a shadow hanging over the place. People felt uneasy. As the sound of shoes coming up the hallway towards them came closer, an elderly man and woman sat up a little straighter, and a few nervous feet began to tap the floor.
as if keeping time and tracking the seconds until the night shift was over. Although it was late, few were sleeping, except for those who could not think clearly, and those were the ones who needed to be most vigilant and most worried for their lives. Nothing had been proven yet, of course, but rumors in such a small place and such a small town run rampant, and rumors had been flying around about the night shift RN
Elizabeth Wettlaufer for quite some time, ever since she was a little girl, in fact. People said she wasn't quite right, that there was something off about her. There were whispers of people being injected with insulin who weren't even diabetic, and others who suffered from the disease who had been given far too much medication, dying in the night, years before their appointed hour.
Everyone remembered Mary Zurawinski and how she had talked up a storm in the dining room before meals. She hadn't looked frail or ill despite her 96 years of age. And yet the following morning after Wettlaufer had worked the night shift, she had been found dead, stone cold, like she'd been that way for hours. As Wettlaufer began her medication rounds, pouring pills into cups for each resident, a few heads poked out of their rooms
perhaps trying to catch a glimpse of something sinister, a vial of poison with the skull and crossbones on the label, or a bottle of antifreeze tucked in the cabinet. But instead, they simply saw a nurse pouring medication into tiny paper cups, looking bored. Her coworker was leaving for the day, and the nurse gave a tense wave goodbye to Wettlaufer, looking nervously over her shoulder at one of the residents sitting in the corner by himself, shaking her head.
She punched in the security code for the door and left the unit, exiting Caressent Care through the wide front doors. Shuddering, she wondered what horrors tomorrow would bring. She was the one who worked the day shift and would come in to find the corpses left in Elizabeth Wettlaufer's wake. And the next morning, she was going to find another body. Part 1: A Little Different
Elizabeth Wettlaufer grew up in the 1950s and 60s in Woodstock, Ontario, Canada. A small city nowadays, boasting 40,000 citizens, Woodstock was an even more intimate place in those days, and everyone knew everyone. Now, this wasn't the home of the famous Woodstock Music Festival, where Jimi Hendrix would play Star-Spangled Banner behind his back on the guitar.
This was a little Canadian village, where not much happened beyond the mundane and boring. The one thing which made up for that was the sense of familiarity and a strong community atmosphere. Few people would want to run away from a town like that, and Wettlaufer embraced it, calling the place home, even after college when she could have gone anywhere. Despite growing up in such a friendly, close-knit town, Elizabeth was a relative outcast. She never really fit in.
she was always a little different. Growing up in a staunchly religious Baptist household, Wettlaufer was supposed to be a shining example of Christianity. Her family went to church twice a week, and the plan was for Elizabeth to go to Bible college when she finished high school. What nobody in her family expected was that Bethy, as she preferred to be called,
would begin having romantic feelings about other girls in her class. Her parents found out about these inclinations and were likely furious, sending her to a strict Bible camp where something called conversion therapy was attempted by the staff. For those unfamiliar with the practice, conversion therapy is a pseudo-scientific approach aimed at altering someone's sexuality or gender identity.
The practice is now banned in multiple countries, including Canada, where it is illegal. The scientific consensus is that conversion therapy does long-term, significant psychological harm. This is no excuse for Wettlaufer's horrifying actions later in life. But it is interesting to note, as many serial killers have traumatic childhoods and domineering parents, it appears that Elisabeth Wettlaufer had a bit of both.
During her high school years, friends described her as awkward and not having many friends. She participated in band and field hockey, where she played goalie, but she definitely wasn't the popular kid or the prom queen. She stuck out like a sore thumb, stocky, short, with thick glasses and a strange smile, and an awkward personality to match. After graduating from Huron Park Secondary School, where she attended high school,
Bethy went on to London Bible College, where she would earn a bachelor's degree in religious education counseling. Her father, possibly in an effort to continue monitoring her sexual preferences, decided he would also attend the same college during that time, in an odd helicopter parenting tactic which would be considered bizarre even by today's standards. Finally, after finishing Bible College,
Elizabeth decided she wanted to be free of her father's watchful eye and went on to study journalism and then nursing, graduating from Conestoga College and becoming a registered nurse in 1995. In 1997, she married a long-haul truck driver named Daniel Wettlaufer. They would have no children together, later divorcing after 11 years of marriage.
A year before her divorce, Bethy took a job as an RN at the Carescent Care long-term care facility in her hometown of Woodstock, where she grew up. With 160 beds, it was the largest in the county, and Bethy settled in quickly, accepting a night shift position in 2007. A friend of Wettlaufer would later say that she relished the power and authority she had as the one in charge of the place overnight.
But rather than setting an example for the less experienced nurses at Carescent Care, Bethy was running into her own trouble. Nothing was working out for her after her divorce, as she was almost fired on numerous occasions, with the union being the only factor stopping her dismissal. It didn't take long before management was watching her like a hawk. She would receive accusations of showing up to work drunk, and was at one point found passed out in the basement.
She was suspended on four separate occasions for medication errors. Vanishing pills and substance abuse allegations would plague her career at Carescent Care and elsewhere. Not only that, but there was a peculiar tendency for healthy patients to die during her shifts. Although nobody could call that anything but a bad coincidence. Finally, Wettlaufer was dismissed from her position at Carescent Care in March 2014
after another medication error which nearly cost a patient their life. The union was protective of its members, but they could only do so much, and there was no stopping fate this time. Bethy was forced to find employment elsewhere, after being terminated from the home where she had worked for seven years. After that, she had some issues holding down a job, jumping from place to place over the following years. Her family and friends likely didn't understand why she couldn't hold a job.
Wettlaufer would later admit the reason to a neighbor, in an offhand sort of way which disturbed him. The two were chatting in their driveways, as neighbors often do, and Bethy looked a little down. The man asked her how things were going, and why she had been changing jobs so frequently. "I got fired for stealing medication," she told him casually, "and then I got fired for my second job after Carescent Care.
When I was high, I gave a patient the wrong medication and they almost died." The man was stunned at the turn the casual conversation with his neighbor had just taken. "It was information that most people would take to their graves," he said to CBC News reporters later. "Most people would never even admit something like that to their closest family members." Wettlaufer's ex was also receiving texts around that time, where Bethy seemed to be crying out for attention, saying she was nervous about her job.
and that she had made a mistake during a routine dressing change, which could have cost a patient their life. Elizabeth Wettlaufer was unraveling. She was going through severe withdrawal after struggling with substance abuse for years. After using narcotics and alcohol to get through life, finally she admitted her problems and sought help at CAMH, the Centers for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.
Perhaps Bethy had been waiting all these years for someone, anyone, to talk to her and to listen to her story. Because at CAMH, she found that person, a psychiatrist named Dr. Khan, who would listen to her talk for hours, believing every word. And her entire life was about to change forever as a result of what she would tell him. Part 2. The Wounded Soldier
James Silcox was a pilot officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force, a tough, no-nonsense man who loved his family and worked hard to support them. Sadly, as James got older, he developed dementia and diabetes, and eventually his aging wife and children had more and more trouble taking care of him. Dementia and diabetes can be an extremely difficult combination of conditions to manage, even for trained healthcare professionals.
Those with dementia become irritable, confused, disoriented, and sometimes combative with loved ones trying to care for them. Caregiver burnout is common among family members who care for those with dementia, as it truly does become a 24/7 job. The advanced dementia patient may have trouble being left alone and can be a danger to themselves as they might wander outside in bad weather and become lost.
The combination of all these factors makes it exhausting and difficult to care for loved ones suffering from this illness. Diabetes can be tricky for even otherwise healthy people to manage, as it involves using lancets to prick one's finger for a blood sugar check, as well as requiring the dexterity to draw up a syringe and the appropriate amount of insulin to be injected for the blood sugar reading.
you must have good eyesight to see the small numbers on the syringe, which can be challenging for older people with vision issues. If done incorrectly, this procedure can result in a fatal overdose, causing the patient to expire if their blood sugar reaches zero. At that point, their heart will simply stop beating. These increasingly life-consuming activities became too much for James' wife and family to handle as his conditions progressed and became more serious.
they understood they needed help. And where better to turn to than the largest, most well-known facility in the county, which had been operating for 32 years. Carescent Care seemed like the perfect choice. Nurses and PSWs who were trained to look after patients with dementia could monitor James 24/7, and his diabetes could be managed by a nurse rather than his aging wife and busy children, who could no longer handle it by themselves.
Things went well for a while, and James lived at Caressant Care peacefully with the other residents. The Silcox family was able to visit regularly since they lived within close proximity. The whole arrangement seemed to be working out all right, despite some family members' initial concerns. That was until the facility hired a new nurse, 40-year-old Elizabeth Wettlaufer, the woman who had been considered odd and unusual her whole life
was now working the night shift where she was in charge, responsible for dozens of patients and multiple staff members. Two months into her employment there, James Silcox was found dead. He was discovered in his bed on August 11th, 2007, no longer breathing. Silcox's family was told it was a heart attack brought on by an embolism. As with most deaths in long-term care homes, there was no autopsy.
The majority of nursing home residents choose a medical directive labeling themselves as DNR or do not resuscitate as the rib shattering trauma from doing compressions would likely maim most 80 year olds and the chances of life-saving measures bringing them back to a fully healthy state following a cardiac arrest is very unlikely at that age. So people seem to just accept that James Silcox had died quietly in the night
with no foul play even remotely suspected. Their family mourned his death, feeling a sense of disquiet about the whole thing. James had seemed fine to them. It was hard to believe he had just died in the night when they had seen him recently, looking relatively healthy despite his 84 years. Still, they accepted it was his time. They didn't think to call the police or even suspect foul play, especially from his bubbly, talkative night nurse.
Eventually, the Silcox family decided that despite their concerns, James really had just died from natural causes. But at least one person knew better. Elizabeth Wettlaufer had just gotten away with her very first murder, and she wasn't going to stop at just one. She had a taste for it now. Part 3: Poor Lost Souls A few months passed. It was two days before Christmas in 2007, when there was another tragedy on the night shift.
Resident Maurice Granat was found to be suffering greatly. He was in bed and looked like he was dying. Wettlaufer, the RN on duty, could have easily checked his blood sugar to see if he was hypoglycemic, and an injection of dextrose or even a few glasses of orange juice might have saved him if that was the case. But if she did check, she did not tell anyone the real reading, and she did not treat Maurice for his life-threatening hypoglycemia. Instead,
She let him die in the early morning hours of the morning. His obituary would say that he had passed away peacefully, but Maurice would likely have disagreed, as would Elisabeth Wettlaufer, the one who watched him go and caused his death. Again, she would later admit to killing the man with an overdose of insulin, administering far too much, and causing him to die from low blood sugar.
This would turn out to be Wettlaufer's MO, her modus operandi, or the mode in which she operated. Around this time, Wettlaufer began posting poetry online, often with dark, violent themes. Some talked about slicing intestines and others about keeping secrets that no one should ever know. The average person reading them might think the author was a little strange or depressed, but as far as we know, nobody reported the poetry to the authorities.
despite its disturbing content. Much worse can easily be found by browsing the pages of Reddit, No Sleep or popular horror books after all. And nobody suspects Stephen King of being an actual serial killer, despite the disturbing subject matter which he describes in detail. Bethy also started dating women online around this point, as if starting a new chapter in her life without her husband or her parents to boss her around.
She had divorced her husband and was now living by her own rules. She traveled to Saskatchewan to meet a woman she'd met online, but after spending one night together, the other woman decided it was not a match. She would speak to reporters from the CBC later on, detailing how the visit from Wettlaufer turned sour. There was something not there, she would say of Bethy. Something was off about her. She described her as clingy and said that she talked nonstop.
By the morning after her arrival, she knew it was not meant to be, and Elizabeth returned home to Woodstock shortly afterwards. Back at Caressant Care, three more elderly residents would die one by one at Wettlaufer's hands over the following four years. By 2011, she had murdered 87-year-old Gladys Millard, 95-year-old Helen Matheson, and 96-year-old Mary Zurawinski, in addition to her previous two victims.
Without a single autopsy, Elizabeth Wettlaufer was quietly becoming one of Canada's most prolific serial killers of all time. And once again, she was enjoying the thrill of the power that came with it. But there were a few people asking questions, and there were rumors going around about her behind her back. She had been caught coming to work intoxicated, and she had been found passed out in the basement.
She was plagued by issues with drug and alcohol addiction and began to rack up complaint after complaint with management. Still, the union was protecting her and there was no hope of firing her, so Caressent Care was forced to keep her employed there. By 2014, Wettlaufer had claimed two more victims with insulin overdoses.
Helen Young, 90 years of age, and Maureen Pickering, 79 years of age, were both murdered by her during the night shift when she was meant to be looking after them. But that wasn't all. She injected four more patients with insulin, attempting to kill them, but they all miraculously survived against the odds. Despite her efforts, Wettlaufer wasn't as good at her sick hobby as she thought, and she was about to be caught.
as more and more people were left alive to tell their story of her attempts to kill them. A medication error ended up nearly causing the death of another patient, and Wettlaufer was told by management it was the last straw. She was fired from Caressant Care in 2014. Despite her murdering rampage, nothing had been proven yet beyond substance abuse and supposedly innocent medication errors.
So Wettlaufer was permitted by the College of Nurses to obtain employment with another facility. Needing the money, she decided to pursue a few different job opportunities, including agency nursing. But she would be fired from the first two places for stealing medication and for making further medication errors while intoxicated. In addition to stealing pills and getting high while working with a vulnerable population, Wettlaufer would also seek to extend her killing spree.
Despite her confessions, it's difficult to say what Wettlaufer's real motivations were as she began to search for her next victim. She would later claim she was simply trying to ease their suffering and that God was telling her it was their time. It's possible she enjoyed the thrill of watching people die and the control and power that came with it. While working at another senior residence, Meadow Park Facility in London, Ontario,
she killed 75-year-old Arpad Horvath, a man who his children described as a globe-trotting traveler, before several strokes left him in need of 24/7 medical care. This time, she didn't stick around and quickly moved on to Telfer Place, another long-term care facility in Paris, Ontario, where she injected Sandra Towler, 77 years of age, and what prosecutors later called intent to murder.
Facilities employing her quickly tired of the accidents which happened in Elizabeth Wettlaufer's wake. And she was soon relegated to working in private residences, taking jobs doing home care nursing. It was around this time that she injected her youngest victim yet, 68 year old Beverly Bertram while at her own home in Ingersoll, Ontario. Again, this would later be called attempt to commit murder. But for the time being, Wettlaufer was still innocent in the eyes of the world.
Even her surviving victims weren't pressing charges, although they may have suspected her actions were the cause of their near fatal insulin overdoses. Surprisingly, it would be Wettlaufer herself who would bring about the end of her killing rampage. Some serial killers who deny feeling guilt for their crimes instead complain of a growing sense of paranoia and a fear of being caught. After a while, that paranoia becomes a constant nagging voice in their minds
like the conscience they never had. Perhaps Bethy had such a voice, speaking persistently in her ear, telling her the police were just around the corner, sure to catch her any day. Even if it wasn't the truth, maybe it was those voices that caused her to seek solace in a bottle of hard liquor and from the prescription pills she pilfered from work. In any event, she decided she wanted to quit, not just the booze and the pills, she wanted to quit killing.
Elizabeth Wettlaufer wanted to confess. She packed up her things and checked into CAMH in Toronto, a mental health and addiction treatment center. Within just a few hours of being there, she confessed to a psychiatrist that she had been intentionally harming patients while working as a nurse. Something had broken in her and she needed to tell her story. As awful as it was, and as bone chilling and dark as it was, she wanted the authorities to know the truth.
Part 4: The Truth Will Set You Free Elizabeth Wettlaufer's confessions to the psychiatrist at CAMH was not protected by doctor-patient confidentiality, as this type of crime must be reported to police. She likely knew this, or was told this during the process of revealing her story, but she told it anyway. She wanted to finally get everything off her chest.
Her confession at CAMH would prompt them to notify the Ontario College of Nurses, as well as the Toronto Police Service. Wettlaufer would then write an email to the College of Nurses, explaining that she was resigning as a registered nurse because she had deliberately harmed patients in her care and was being investigated by police for the same. One of the most terrifying twists in this case is that this was not the first time Wettlaufer had confessed to being a serial murderer.
She had done this before. She was begging for the attention of authorities for years and begging to be caught. According to her own confession and a Toronto Star article, Wettlaufer had confessed to a pastor who prayed over her in hopes that she would not kill again. She confessed to a lawyer who told her to take the secret to her grave.
A Narcotics Anonymous sponsor who she confessed to believed that Wettlaufer was a pathological liar and told himself the stories were false. The list goes on and on. There was the neighbor mentioned earlier, as well as a boyfriend who called her confession a psychotic episode. All of these people could have stopped further death, but only one person was responsible, and that was Wettlaufer herself, who chose to continue killing.
One psychiatrist at CAMH put a stop to all of the death, as he would choose to take her confession seriously. Authorities wanted to talk with Bethy, and she was ready to tell them everything. Unlike some serial killers who continue murdering until the police catch up with them, she wanted to put an end to it herself. Police detectives talked to Wettlaufer for almost three hours, in what is posted on YouTube as a video of her confession.
You can also read a transcript online as she describes her thought process in retrospect as she made the decision to murder each individual she had been charged with caring for. Her first victim, James, she said, was rude and grabbed her breast once. According to her, he said things about his wife and sexualized the staff who worked there, touching them inappropriately.
Wettlaufer admitted she had killed Silcox with an overdose of insulin, following up the statement by telling the detective that it wasn't the first time she had tried to do such a thing. She had tried with different people three previous times, giving them too much insulin, but they had all survived. Clotilde Adriano, she said, was the first. "'I didn't really want her to die,' said Wettlaufer about the woman. "'I don't know. I was just angry.'
and had this sense inside me that she might be a person that God wanted back with him. This would be a common theme throughout her confessions. She would describe feeling anger towards the victims for various things they had done, following that up by saying that she thought God wanted them back or that they needed peace, as if to convince herself it was right. The detective interviewing Wettlaufer would follow up this confession by asking her about something she had mentioned earlier to him, something disturbing.
"Is this that point when you had those feelings in your stomach and almost laughed her after it happened?" "Yes," Wettlaufer admitted, saying she had told a doctor about this feeling. "I told him about the laughter in my stomach, but not the feeling that it might be a person that God wants." She would go on to explain how she had talked about her feelings regarding the murders with the psychiatrist at CAMH. "Dr. Kahn kept asking me if God chose me for a special purpose, and I kept saying no.
because that does not sound like a special person, you know? But yeah, I just had a sense after my marriage broke up that God was going to reuse me for something. And then I started to really wonder after some of the murders if it was God or if it was the devil fooling me. "Did you feel you were doing the right thing for those people?" the detective asked. "No," was Wettlaufer's response. And that seemed to bring with it a clarity. She knew it was wrong and she had done it anyway.
At about 9:30 in the evening that night, Wettlaufer explained, talking about James Silcox's death, she had injected him with 50 milligrams of insulin. Wettlaufer said one of the PSWs reported James was restless, yelling and calling out, saying, "I'm sorry." And, "I love you." Throughout the night, he would continue screaming intermittently, but those working likely chalked it up to the unpredictable behaviors associated with dementia.
And for those who expressed their concerns to the night shift RN, they were told everything was fine and not to be worried. By 3.30 a.m., James was no longer breathing. A PSW found him in his bed. Wettlaufer would be the one to come in and listen to his chest with a stethoscope, pronouncing him dead. The doctor and family were notified. The family would go on to commend Wettlaufer for her actions. And she said in the police interview that she felt ashamed when she spoke to them.
but that didn't make her want to confess, and it didn't stop her from killing again. She went home after talking to the family and said she tried to forget about what she had done, playing computer games, talking to her girlfriend on the phone, and eventually trying to sleep. "'Did you have trouble sleeping afterwards?' the detective asked her. "'I tossed and turned a bit,' she replied after some hesitation. She spoke as if the killing of an innocent man did not bother her at all,
and she barely considered it again after the fact. Moving on to the subject of Maurice Grenat's murder, Wettlaufer would describe him in the same way as James Silcox. "He was another one who liked to grab breasts and asses," she said flatly. "One afternoon I was working with him and he grabbed me, and I got this feeling inside that this is his time to go. So I gave him an overdose of insulin after supper."
The way Wettlaufer described killing people was similar to how one might describe taking out the trash. I believe he died the next day, she said, sipping from a water bottle in the police interrogation room. The officer speaking with her managed to maintain his composure throughout the interview, but one can only imagine the turmoil he was feeling inside as she confessed to one heinous act after another. What was his reaction to receiving the insulin? The detective asked her.
"I just told him the doctor wanted him to have a vitamin shot," she told him. "That's what I usually said." The detective asked if she was worried when he didn't die during her shift. "Wasn't there always the chance of being caught?" "I always wondered if they'd find the injection site," she said. "You know, there'd be an investigation. I always wondered that. But other than that…" Between 2007 and 2011, there were attempts, but no further murders, according to Wettlaufer.
although it would be difficult to know for sure. But in 2011, she set her sights on another one. Again, she felt about this woman that it was her time. Wettlaufer described the night she took her victim's life in great detail, and the events are disturbing to hear in such flat tones. "Helen, I don't remember a lot about. "She was very quiet, just seemed to be waiting to die. "I made a bit of a fuss over her that night "because she was very lucid,
We talked about how much she likes blueberry pie and ice cream. So on my break, I went to Walmart and got a small blueberry pie and some ice cream. I brought it to her, and she had three or four small bites," Wettlaufer told the homicide detective. "Nice," he said, looking at the woman as if she might not be completely evil after all. "Then that night I overdosed her," she said next, breaking the peaceful moment in the interrogation room, "cause I got that feeling that it was her time to go."
What do you mean by that? The detective asked. Like she was towards the end of her life by that point or that she was the person to go next? And was that in your mind or your stomach? In my chest area. After I did it, I got that laughter. Once you injected the person or once they passed away? Both. If you ever wanted a glimpse into the twisted mind of a serial killer, this was it.
The interview continued for hours, as Wettlaufer outlined her thought process leading up to, during, and after each killing. She explained how she was in charge of nine staff members during her shift, as the charge RN. One other nurse reported to her as did eight PSWs, and some of the residents who she brazenly injected with insulin were not even her patients, they were the responsibility of the other nurse who reported to her.
who asked her for help and looked to her for advice as a mentor and educator. During the night, as the patients deteriorated, she would be obligated to check on them, pretending to monitor their vital signs and to help them, when really she was just making sure they were on their way toward death. Mary Zerwinski, who was not diabetic, was Wettlaufer's next target. "She was feisty," Wettlaufer said of her. "She didn't hit the nurses or anything. She was just very outspoken.
By this point in the interview, it sounds as if Wettlaufer is becoming less discerning about her victims and is going to less effort trying to explain her justifications. She continued to recount the night when she killed the woman. "I'm gonna die tonight. Why don't you get me into that deathbed?" She recalled the woman saying. Rather than trying to reassure her, Wettlaufer made the woman's nightmare a reality. She had another one of her feelings and gave the woman an overdose of insulin.
As the detective moved on to the next murder, he asked about the behavior of the next victim, Mary Zurawinski, who would be the fifth in the string of killings at Caressant Care. Had Mary ever done anything to harm you or upset you in any way? He probed, gentle as ever, patient and polite as the most understated Canadian policeman. No, Elizabeth Wettlaufer answered simply. It seemed that her criteria was becoming far less discerning.
Her scope was broadening when it came to her next target. "She was spunky and outspoken," she said of Mary Zurawinski. Suddenly, the detective was having increasing trouble keeping up appearances. As his replies were clipped and shortened, his stomach likely felt as if it was full of cement, hardening and expanding as he listened to the psychopathic serial killer talking about her victims like a list of chores she had finished.
"I felt a lot of guilt after Mary," she said, as if trying to convince him of her humanity. "There was a period of two to three years where I didn't do it." She said she was trying to get close to God during that time and trying to read the Bible and go to church. But, she admitted, she was also using hydromorphone and alcohol, and that did not help her in her quest to stay on the straight and narrow. The talk with detectives would continue as Wettlaufer explained her thought processes.
statements which make your blood run cold or peppered throughout the conversation. And one can only imagine what it must have felt like sitting in that room right across from her. One thing seemed clear with each killing and attempted murder. Nobody distrusted Wettlaufer as she injected them with insulin. They all believed her and allowed her to do it, trusting her when she said it was only vitamins and not to be concerned. She was a nurse after all, and people trust nurses.
In a 2022 annual Gallup rating poll, nurses were found to be ranked first place in honesty and ethics for the 20th consecutive year. And for good reason. Almost all nurses care about the well-being of their patients, and many put their own health secondary to their responsibilities. But Elizabeth Wettlaufer proves that the worst can happen when the most trusted among us are left to run amok. Part 5. Capping the Needle
The interview with Elizabeth Wettlaufer was especially chilling, in that very few times does someone speak in such lucid, thoughtful detail about their serial killing spree. Wettlaufer describes how she felt before, during, and after each attack with horrifying clarity. Even she doesn't fully understand it herself. The details are all there for anyone who is interested to read and to try and comprehend the mind of a serial killer. One after another,
Wettlaufer described her victims, telling police how she killed them, down to the exact dose of medication at times. She was formally charged with eight murders and four counts of attempted murder. In addition, she was charged with two counts of aggravated assault,
Wettlaufer waived her rights to any sort of preliminary hearing and instead chose to plead guilty. She was sentenced to eight concurrent life sentences with no possibility of parole for 25 years, the longest possible sentence in Canada. Although it is feasible that she could get out within her lifetime, chances are slim that Wettlaufer will taste freedom again.
she will likely spend the rest of her remaining days in prison, until she becomes old and requires medical care herself. By the sounds of it, this is already happening, as in 2018, Wettlaufer was transferred from Grand Valley Institute for Women in Kitchener to an unspecified secure facility in Montreal to receive medical treatment.
The tables have turned as the once killer nurse is now reliant on others to treat her, to give her the proper dose of medication, and to make sure her wounds are tended to. We don't know for sure, but Wettlaufer herself might even be diabetic, and while in hospital, she may need a nurse to draw up the insulin which her aging eyes cannot accurately judge so well anymore. And as a gloved hand cleanses her skin with alcohol and says in a kind voice,
Just a little pinch. It'll only sting for a moment. Elizabeth Wettlaufer will likely think back to the days when she did this herself for her own patients.