Inquiry told nurse’s killing spree began early

An Ontario nurse who killed elderly patients in her care was disciplined several times over poor job performance but no one thought she was seriously harming people at the long-term care home where she worked, a former supervisor testified Monday at the public inquiry examining Elizabeth Wettlaufer’s actions.

Wettlaufer has confessed to murdering eight patients and attempting to kill several more by injecting them with overdoses of insulin at long-term care homes and private residences in Ontario for nearly a decade.

Seven of the patients Wettlaufer killed were residents of Caressant Care in Woodstock, Ont., and the inquiry heard the now 51-year-old nurse had committed her first murder not long after starting her job at the facility in June 2007.

“We now know that within weeks of being hired by Caressant Care she assaulted two residents by injecting them with insulin and within six weeks of being hired she had actually killed her first person,” said Paul Scott, lawyer for the family of deceased victim Helen Matheson.

But for years administrators at the facility saw Wettlaufer only as an underperforming employee making minor errors, said Helen Crombez, the former director of nursing at the home.

“Beth had some very good sides that we saw, that’s why (the murder confession) was such a shock,” Crombez said. “She was making some mistakes but doing other things fairly well.”

In 2008, Wettlaufer failed to administer insulin to a pair of patients who needed it, the inquiry heard Monday. Crombez said it was only in the days leading up to the public inquiry that she realized Wettlaufer may have been hoarding the insulin to use for some other purpose.

Wettlaufer’s other disciplinary issues included failing to properly document when a new patient was admitted to the home, failing to properly administer eye drops and generally neglecting her duties, resulting in her colleagues having to do more work, Crombez said.

By August 2012, Caressant administrators had “some concern” for patient safety as a result of Wettlaufer’s job performance and told her they would ask the College of Nurses to review her fitness to practise nursing if she did not improve, Crombez testified.

But, the former supervisor noted, there was no belief Wettlaufer had caused“sustained harm.”

“We wanted her to understand that she needed to perform properly,” Crombez said.

“It was just letting her know (that) if things continued, this could be a consideration.”

Wettlaufer’s crimes went undetected until she confessed them to mental health workers and police in 2016. She went on to plead guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder, four counts of attempted murder and two counts of aggravated assault, and was sentenced last summer to life in prison without parole eligibility for 25 years.