When a family member has to go into assisted living, or “end of life” care, you trust that the caregivers looking after your loved ones have their best interests at heart. Chances are if your end of life caregiver was Elizabeth Wettlaufer, your end of life would come sooner than expected.

Elizabeth Wettlaufer was a registered nurse in Southern Ontario that admitted to murdering 8 seniors and attempting to murder 6 others during the years of 2007 and 2016. She would inject lethal doses of insulin into her victims, ensuring a prolonged complicated death.

Her first known crimes began when she worked as a nurse at Caressant Care in Woodstock, Ontario. She would admit to injecting two of the patients, Clotilde Adriano and Albina Demedeiros with insulin but at this point, she didn’t know the correct amount for a lethal dosage. They would later pass, but it was not connected to the overdose of insulin.

It would be in August of 2007 when Elizabeth Wettlaufer would inject someone with enough insulin to kill her victim. The unfortunate soul was James Silcox, an 84-year-old World War II veteran. Elizabeth would go on to murder 6 more people at the Caressant Care facility; Maurice Granat, Gladys Millard, Helen Matheson, Mary Zurawinski, Helen Young, and Maureen Pickering. Elizabeth also attempted to murder two other people at this facility but was unsuccessful.

After she left her job at Caressant Care, Elizabeth would kill one other person, Arpad Horvath, at the Meadow Park facility in Ontario, and attempt 2 more murders; one at a private residence and one at a retirement home.

In 2016 Elizabeth sought treatment for drug addiction at Toronto’s Center for Addiction and Mental Health and admitted to staff about her murders and attempted murders, who forwarded the information to the Toronto police.

Elizabeth Wettlaufer would confess to 8 counts of first-degree murder, 4 counts of attempted murder, and 2 counts of aggravated assault. On June 26, 2017, Elizabeth was sentenced to eight concurrent life terms in prison, with no possibility of parole for 25 years.

Elizabeth would also be charged with professional misconduct by the College of Nurses in Ontario. Elizabeth had given up her nursing license voluntarily, but the move by the College of Nurses was needed to officially bar her from ever practicing again.

Even though Elizabeth turned herself in and admitted to her crimes, she had excuses at every turn. She blamed her actions on God, or the Devil, saying she heard voices urging her to kill. She said that at a young age she discovered she was gay and came out to her parents. According to Elizabeth, her family didn’t accept that and being strict Baptists, they sent her to conversion therapy. The actions by her family and the conversion therapy contributed to the dark thoughts that caused her to kill, according to her.

Elizabeth made a list of things that could have stopped her murders or at least limited the number of victims, once again deflecting the responsibility from herself. She said that if the care facilities that she worked at had stricter controls on insulin then she wouldn’t have been able to get the overdoses she needed to kill.

As well as monitoring the amount of insulin that was being administered to the patients, Elizabeth said that there should have been tighter security on the medication room where are the prescriptions were stored. There were no cameras or security personnel keeping an eye on things, so there was no proof of anyone’s comings and goings in that room.

Another point on the list Elizabeth made was that health care professionals should have regular mental health check-ins. She had a history of mental health issues and drug abuse that could have been a red flag and at least prevented her access to the medication room at the very least.

She said that if there was an advocate for dementia patients then she would have gotten caught. One of her criteria for choosing her victims was that they had dementia. If they said anything, no one would believe them.

Finally, Elizabeth said that she confessed her crimes to a number of people that did nothing. Including family members and her pastor and his wife. If someone had said something to the authorities, she would have been caught after her first or second victim.

Care facilities in Ontario faced criticism for not dealing with Elizabeth Wettlaufer sooner. Before she was first fired from one of her jobs, she had 130 complaints against her, from eating patient's food to medication errors. She was even paid a $2000 settlement and given a recommendation after being fired from Caressant Care. She was fired from her first position after stealing drugs from her employer and overdosing. Yet she still was allowed to work as a nurse.

Recently the government of Canada has come under fire again due to the transfer of Elizabeth Wettlaufer from a maximum-security prison to a mental health facility. She was only in jail for about a year before being transferred to a place with no traditional prison bars. She has access to personal development programs in music and theatre, art and sports and also has internet access.

Elizabeth Wettlaufer is probably one of the most despicable serial killers ever in Canadian history, and the government tries for rehabilitation rather than retribution when it comes to criminals, but it sure seems like a truly horrible person is leading a fairly comfortable life as a guest of the Canadian criminal justice system.

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