Killer nurse faced discipline at care home, inquiry hears

ST. THOMAS — A 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 and the inquiry heard the now 51year-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 relatively 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.