Elizabeth Wettlaufer pleads guilty: A former home nurse confesses to killing her victims after struggling with whether she was God or the Devil.
Elizabeth Wettlaufer a former Ontario, Canadian home nurse has confessed to killing former patients as a coping mechanism when she became angry or frustrated with the rigors of life.
The claim comes as Elizabeth Tracey Mae Wettlaufer, 49, pled guilty to killing eight seniors in her care and attempting to kill or assault six others on Thursday reported cbc.ca.
The murders and attempted murders occurred between 2007 and 2014, with Wettlaufer in each case killing her victims with the administration of insulin by injection.
The eight patients who died ranged in age from 75 to 96. Seven of them lived at a nursing home in Woodstock, a farming and manufacturing city of 37,000, where Wettlaufer worked until 2014. The eighth patient died about an hour’s drive away, at a home in London, Ontario, that had briefly employed Ms. Wettlaufer.
Appearing in court on Thursday, Wettlaufer said she had felt angry about her career and her life’s responsibilities, noted The Associated Press. The rage would build until she felt an ‘urge to kill,’ prosecutors said — and subside only after she did so.
During her court appearance, the woman also acknowledged how the recent breakdown of her marriage leading to a void in her life and her ‘seeking new purpose with God’.
At one point, Wettlaufer said she ‘honestly thought God wanted to use me’ only to later wonder ‘if it was God or if it was the Devil.’
Nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer’s Facebook page. She faces 8 counts of first degree murder in Woodstock, Ont. pic.twitter.com/SNaQxIPoQY
— Simon Dingley (@SimonDingleyCBC) October 25, 2016
In a recorded interview at the time of her arrest, in what has since been billed as one of Canada’s worst offenses of serial killing, Wettlaufer told investigators in October, 2016, that she always knew the difference between right and wrong.
Instead the former trusted nurse worker said she believed that either God or the devil wanted her to kill her victims and that she would be provoked by ‘surges’ that she could not control.
Told Wettlaufer: ‘I knew the difference between right and wrong, but I thought this was something God, or whoever, wanted me to do it,’
Adding, ‘But I was starting at that point to doubt that it was God.’
When it came time to picking out her victims, Wettlaufersaid selected those who were mean and difficult to look after.
During the police interview, Wettlaufer confesses to having tried to stop killing sooner, becoming aware by then that she had become addicted to killing.
By now seeking treatment for ‘her illness’, Wettlaufer would be eventually arrested after telling staff at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health psychiatric hospital in Toronto what she had done.
During her confession with police, the former home nurse said she already had told friends, a former partner and her pastor about the killings, saying she wished she’d ‘gotten help sooner.’
‘Maybe they didn’t believe me,’ she said in her interview with police. ‘I don’t know. Maybe they just thought I was doing something that the patient wanted.’
At one point, Wettlaufer who had been struggling with alcoholism posted on her Facebook wall that she had gone 365 days sober.
Wrote the woman on September 28, 2015: ‘My own voice called to me in the darkness,’
‘Others hands lifted me when I chose the light/ One year ago today I woke up not dead/ 365 days clean and sober.’
Adding to conjecture and the extent of the former nurse’s illness and willful desire to kill a report via cbc told of Wettlaufer’s mother saying her daughter has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Wettlaufer tells the detective that she feels both guilt and shame. When asked by the detective what she might say to her victims’ families, Wettlaufer exhales.
‘What can you say to them that would matter? I’m sorry isn’t enough,’ she said. ‘I should have gotten help sooner. I took something from you that was precious and was taken too soon.’
Wettlaufer is scheduled to be sentenced in late June.
The judge handling Elizabeth Wettlaufer’s case says he wants to keep the proceedings moving along. https://t.co/DJBwFNWeIJ
— CTV News Barrie (@CTVBarrieNews) April 22, 2017
Elizabeth Wettlaufer’s handwritten confession. She wrote this at a psychiatric hospital in Toronto last fall. pic.twitter.com/8uiNQlsERv
— Liam Casey (@liamdevlincasey) June 2, 2017
