Former Canadian nurse confessed to killing 'mean' patients

A Canadian nurse, Elizabeth Tracey Mae Wettlaufer, who pleaded guilty to killing eight assisted-living facility residents while she was a nurse, told a detective in a video confession on Thursday, that she thought God wanted to use her to cleanse the world.

Wettlaufer said she injected patients ranged in age from 75 to 90, with lethal dosages of insulin when she poisoned residents in two Ontario facilities between 2007 and 2014.

In a video, played during her one-day trial Thursday, Wettlaufer, 49, told an interrogator that she was angry with life, adding that she knew the difference between right and wrong. But she said she would get a "red surging with God telling me this is the one."

She said she also picked some victims because they were "mean."

Some of her victims, James Silcox, 84, Maurice Granat, 84, Gladys Millard, 87, Helen Matheson, 95, Mary Zurawinski, 96, Helen Young, 90 and Maureen Pickering, 79, were residents at Caressant Care Nursing and Retirement Home in Woodstock, where Wettlaufer worked.

Arpad Horvath, 75, resided at Meadow Park Long Term Care in London, Ontario. Horvath died on August 31, 2014.

According to Wettlaufer, who addressed the court on Thursday:

“I had this sense that God wanted her back,” she said of one of her victims. She said she told one of the victims, “I’m sorry, I love you” before injecting him.

She also said that once it was done, “it felt like the pressure was relieved.” She described having a “red surging feeling” when she chose a dementia patient as her next target. After she gave her some blueberry pie she knew “she was the next to go, it was her time.” After she had killed the woman she said she “got that laughing feeling.”

The video also showed Wettlaufer confessing to trying to kill others.

Police in southwestern Ontario said authorities received a tip in September that a nurse had killed multiple patients, which led to Wettlaufer's arrest.

Wettlaufer said after she killed five people she began to doubt God was telling her to kill. Maybe it was the devil, she thought. There were no killings between fall 2011 and July 2013. The former nurse told friends and a pastor what she had done, but that they didn't report her or do anything about it.

"Maybe they didn't believe me," she says. "I don't know. Maybe they just thought I was doing something that the patient wanted."

Wettlaufer will be sentenced later this month and faces life in prison.


Source: CBC News