Canadian Nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer Blames Job Stress In Murder Of Eight Elderly Patients
Elizabeth Wettlaufer was a nurse in Canada who was charged with murdering eight of her patients. She now says that job stress was a factor in those killings. Wettlaufer called it a “red surge” when she made her confession.
As Inquisitr previous reported, Elizabeth Wettlaufer was 49-years-old when she was charged with the murder of eight of her patients. They were all between the ages of 75- and 96-years-old, and they died from lethal injections of drugs.
Seven months later, Wettlaufer is in court and has pled guilty to all eight murders. On Thursday, court exhibits, “detail how she had been in trouble since the start of her nursing career,” reported the Globe and Mail. She admits that she calmed her anxiety that came about from job stress by stealing prescription drugs from her patients and killing them.
Elizabeth Wettlaufer was in the care of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto when she started to speak out about the homicides in her past. These confessions contributed to her arrest. In a summary of her discharge file, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health said that she released pressure and felt more powerful when she gave lethal doses of insulin to vulnerable patients.
The summary continued to say that Wettlaufer was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, major depressive disorder, and antisocial adult behavior. She also had a mild opioid and alcohol use disorder. She admits that she was a binge user that had a hydromorphone addition. Hydromorphone is a painkiller.
Elizabeth Wettlaufer said she gave patients a laxative instead of giving them the hydromorphone painkillers that she kept for herself. They never knew the difference, Elizabeth said.
A four-page confession by Elizabeth Wettlaufer was released. In this confession, she expressed her frustration at having to deal with patients who were physically abusive or uncooperative because of their dementia. She first turned to opioids and alcohol to relieve the stress, but it was not enough. Elizabeth then began to give her patients intentional overdoses of prescription medications.
When Wettlaufer spoke to Det. Constable Hergott, she told him that stress was definitely a factor. She said that there was part of her that thought God had something to do with it all and another part that thought it was the Devil.
Elizabeth had a 20-month streak between 2011 and 2013 where she did not kill anyone. She was “trying to get close to God” by immersing herself in the Bible. In July, she went back to killing her patients.
Elizabeth Wettlaufer did seek help several times. She spoke to a lawyer, a priest, and a sponsor from Alcoholics Anonymous. She told them about the things that she had done. She did not want to do those things. She wanted to stop killing people. She was told not to kill again and to take the secret to her grave. One of them dismissed her a pathological liar.
Wettlaufer also so a girlfriend what she had done in 2008 after she had murdered two of her patients. The woman did not go to the police. She just told Elizabeth that she would turn her in if she did it again.
CBC reported that Elizabeth Wettlaufer went for psychiatric treatment before she admitted herself to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. She admitted herself to a psychiatric unite and saw a psychiatrist in Woodstock. She did not find either of these to be helpful, and there is no documentation that suggests that told them about the murders.
What do you think about this? Is the public health care system to blame for the murders committed after Elizabeth Wettlaufer confessed to killing elderly people in her care? Could she have been stopped sooner?
[Featured Image by filipfoto/iStock]
