Nurse accused of killing seniors tended to them ‘just prior to their deaths,’ police allege
Nursing home patient records show former nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer, accused of killing eight seniors in southwestern Ontario, tended to them “at or just prior to the time of their deaths,” according to police allegations filed in court last fall but kept confidential until today.
Officers say they came to that conclusion after parsing records obtained from long-term care homes in Woodstock, Paris and London where Wettlaufer worked between 2007 and 2016, often as the nurse in charge on the night shift.
“It was confirmed that Beth Wettlaufer had direct care of each of the victims … at or just prior to the time of their deaths,” says the police filing, a sworn statement investigators submitted to a judge in October to get a court order to obtain her education records.
Sections of the heavily censored statement offer a glimpse of how officers looking into Wettlaufer arrived at the decision to charge her with eight counts of first-degree murder, in an investigation that has largely remained cloaked in mystery and innuendo.
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- Watch “The Unravelling of Nurse Wettlaufer” on CBC’s The Fifth Estate Friday at 9 p.m.
New snippets of the document, which contains unproven allegations yet to be tested in court, were made public Thursday morning following an Ontario Superior Court judge’s ruling. The Postmedia newspaper chain had been fighting to get the entire file unsealed.
The newly released portions show police homed in on “insulin overdose” as a possible cause in the deaths of the eight seniors early in their investigation, questioning managers at two nursing homes where Wettlaufer worked about how they stored and tracked the medicine.
Details of why police arrested and charged Wettlaufer, contained in an application for a production order, have been heavily redacted. (Amanda Margison/CBC)
A manager at Caressant Care in Woodstock, where Wettlaufer was employed from 2007 to 2014 and where it’s alleged she killed seven seniors, said the nursing home doesn’t secure or monitor its stocks of insulin.
She added that it would “never be looked at as a cause of death” in a patient, according to a summary of her remarks revealed in the police statement.
Another nursing home, Telfer Place in Paris, told investigators it doesn’t track or control insulin either, the police statement says.
Disciplined for medication errors
Wettlaufer was fired from Caressant Care on March 31, 2014, but the police filing says she had been suspended four times before that for “medication-related errors.”
Quoted portions of a dismissal letter from Wettlaufer’s boss, Brenda Van Quaethem, say she was terminated because of a “serious” incident where she gave the wrong medication to an elderly patient.
“Although you have acknowledged this latest error, this is another incident in a pattern of behaviours that are placing residents at risk,” Van Quaethem is quoted as writing.
Police say a manager at Caressant Care in Woodstock, where Wettlaufer worked from 2007 to 2014 and where it’s alleged she killed seven seniors, told them the nursing home doesn’t secure or monitor its stocks of insulin. (Simon Dingley.CBC)
“You have an extensive disciplinary record for medication-related errors, which includes numerous warnings as well as one-, three- and two five-day suspensions.”
The newly uncensored police material suggests Wettlaufer struggled to hold down jobs after that.
In April 2016, she was “asked not to return” to one nursing home because of “her behaviour towards other staff members,” the police document alleges.
Quit job at home-care agency
Then in August, she quit a job at a home-care agency and sent an email stating she “can no longer function as a registered nurse,” the allegations say.
CBC’s The Fifth Estate has learned Wettlaufer told a pair of acquaintances she was dismissed from two other jobs as well — one because she got caught stealing medication and another because she was high at work one day and gave a patient the wrong medicine.
Wettlaufer often worked as the nurse in charge on the night shift at long-term care homes in Woodstock, Paris and London between 2007 and 2016. (Facebook)
Wettlaufer faces 14 criminal counts: the eight charges of first-degree murder involving seniors at Caressant Care in Woodstock and Meadow Park long-term care in London, four of attempted murder involving four other patients, and two of aggravated assault against two sisters who lived at Caressant Care.
The murder charges drove headlines around the world when they were announced Oct. 25.
None of the allegations have been tested in court and Wettlaufer has yet to enter a plea. If convicted of the murder charges, she would be one of Canada’s worst serial killers.
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