Coroner declined to do autopsy, nurse tells Wettlaufer inquiry

A coroner declined to perform an autopsy on one of the victims of an Ontario nurse who killed elderly patients in her care, despite the recommendations of other health professionals, a public inquiry heard Monday.

Elizabeth Wettlaufer, 51, has confessed to murdering eight patients, and attempting to kill several more, for nearly a decade by injecting them with overdoses of insulin at long-term care homes and private residences across Ontario.

The public inquiry into her actions began its third week at the courthouse in St. Thomas, Ont., on Monday with testimony from a nurse who works at Caressant Care, in Woodstock, Ont., where Wettlaufer killed seven residents.

Laura Long testified that staff at the home were confused when 79-year-old resident Maureen Pickering died in March 2014. Pickering had Alzheimer’s, Long said, but was physically active. Then, just days before her death, her blood sugar plummeted.

Caressant nurse Karen Routledge testified last week that Pickering was taken to hospital, where a doctor who could not determine the cause of her extremely low blood sugar suggested an autopsy be conducted if Pickering died.

Routledge called the coroner’s office when Pickering died and was told it “did not feel this was a coroner’s case,” she said.

Deaths must be sudden or unexpected to warrant an autopsy, and coroners have told Caressant staff that no death in a care home is unexpected, Long told the inquiry on Monday.

“We can’t tell the (coroners) what to do,” she said. “We can suggest things, but we can’t tell them what to do.”

Long said she wrote Wettlaufer up several times for unprofessional, sloppy behaviour.

“She was messy in her work and didn’t complete things — I want to call it just plain laziness.”

Wettlaufer made other staff uncomfortable by “carrying on” about her romantic relationships and being disowned by her family, but at times she was also very generous, Long said.

“Seniors, they always like to see pets, so she would bring in her dog, she’d bring in food, she’d sit with the residents, and this was on her own time,” Long told the inquiry.

“She was a Sunday school teacher at one time and she took all the kids to Canada’s Wonderland (amusement park) one time and paid for everything because the parents couldn’t afford it,” she said.

In April 2013, however, Long overheard Wettlaufer taunting an elderly man at Caressant who had complained about a fellow resident’s disruptive behaviour.

“She was being sarcastic and mean,” she testified.

Long said she told management but did not know whether Caressant followed up.