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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…
