Ex-nurse felt ‘urge to kill’ seniors in her care
A former Ontario nurse angry with her career and personal life believed she was an instrument of God as she used insulin to kill vulnerable seniors in her care over the course of nearly a decade.
About seven months after her arrest last fall, Elizabeth Wettlaufer pleaded guilty Thursday to eight counts of firstdegree murder, four counts of attempted murder and two counts of aggravated assault.
The crimes — which took place in three Ontario longterm care facilities and at a private home — make Wettlaufer one of Canada's most prolific serial killers.
Emotional family and friends of her victims packed a Woodstock, Ont., courtroom as the 49-year-old quietly said the word “guilty” 14 times and admitted to a judge that she used insulin in every case.
“There was always that red surging that I identified with God talking to me,” Wettlaufer told a detective calmly in a confession video played in court. “Then I’d go get the insulin.”
Prosecutors laid out the details of each incident in an agreed statement of facts that included chilling revelations Wettlaufer made to authorities. Later, the crowded courtroom watched the video of the former nurse confessing to Woodstock police last October, saying she had told others about some of her crimes more than three years earlier.
In many cases, a growing rage over her job and her life built up until Wettlaufer felt an “urge to kill,” believing she was helping God, court heard. She said the feeling would only abate after she overdosed her victims.
“Then I’d get that laughing fit, like a cackle,” she told police.
Court heard that Wettlaufer was not intoxicated on drugs or alcohol when she killed or tried to kill. Many of her victims lived with dementia.
She told police she knew that “if your blood sugar goes low enough, you can die.” She also told police she refrained from logging her use of insulin in order to avoid detection, court heard.
In Aug. 11, 2007, Wettlaufer deliberately injected James Silcox, an 84year-old man with diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease, with insulin, “hoping he would die,” the Crown said.
“It was his time to go because of the way he acted,” she told police, according to the agreed statement of facts.
Silcox was later found without vital signs by a personal support worker, court heard. That was Wettlaufer’s first “successful” kill after two previous attempts failed.
Wettlaufer told investigators that afterwards, she felt “like a pressure had been relieved from me, like pressure had been relieved from my emotions.”
There were religious undertones to many of the killings, court heard, and in some cases, there was no motive other than “returning them to God.”
“I honestly felt that God wanted to use me,” Wettlaufer told investigators at one point.
Wettlaufer would even comfort some of her victims’ families after her crimes. In one incident, court heard that she hugged the niece of a 90-year-old woman she had murdered.