MAN: Woodstock Police received information that eight people
aged 65 to 96 had
been murdered at area nursing homes over a seven-year span.
They're dealing with a serial killer.
[theme music playing]
MAN: There's this thing inside of me, it's like...
the appetite.
It's like a wolf that's...
filling... the hunger.
♪♪
SAHNI: Wettlaufer believes she's the chosen one,
that God has chosen her to do important work,
that God has identified who should die next.
I think what that really is
is just good old-fashioned narcissism.
It's making herself more important
than she is as a person.
BERRILL: We never think of health care professionals
to be the type of individuals
that would consciously kill the people they're in charge of
taking care of, so she's got that as
a kind of interesting cover working for her.
♪♪
So this is an excerpt from notes
that nurse Wettlaufer wrote,
and she says, "James was known for inappropriately touching
"the staff -- that evening,
"I got the urge to overdose James.
I was angry that he was so inappropriate."
It comes across as very sterile clinical.
It's as if James is a problem.
James needs to die.
It might be revenge killing, because Wettlaufer talks
about how James was inappropriate
with the nursing staff.
MORGAN: But she's ignoring the fact of his condition.
If he made a pass at her, that may have been the last straw.
But the step into psychopathy is
deciding to kill him for that behavior.
My guess is what she's feeling relief
about is an internal sense of loathing.
It's a sense of self-hate.
It's a sense of rejection socially -- to kill Silcox
allows her to release that sense of conflict.
BERRILL: Rage usually starts early.
She's probably, slowly but surely since childhood,
been an angry person
and she finally found a place where she could safely enlist
her predatory skills.
♪♪
MORGAN: This is about her second victim,
and it says, "I was told by one of the nurses that
"Maurice had a bad habit of grabbing the staff's breasts
"and asses.
One afternoon, I was working, and I felt angry."
There's anger that is triggered by something related
to sex.
It's not specific revenge on this patient.
But he now represents something that she's going
to eliminate,
and so that triggers her psychopathic behavior.
When Wettlaufer says, "I felt a lot of guilt."
It's not over the murder.
She feels guilt because there's a conflict between
the part of her that went into nursing to
help people and the part of her that just took someone's
life because she was angry at them.
BERRILL: It's also interesting that she uses
the term ass -- Ass is a vulgar word.
There's a clue there.
She doesn't really seem like she's socially
adapt or skilled with other people.
People reveal themselves through the language they use.
♪♪
Hydromorphone is an opiate.
The choice to use an opiate and get high I think was
a different direction of
trying to get that same stimulation or thrill-seeking
that she got from killing those two patients.
What often happens on narcotics --
Your inhibitions
are reduced to the place where some
of those bad thoughts can come back.
The more she does that,
the more likely it is that the rage would re-emerge.
♪♪
She says, "Gladys had severe dementia and no longer talked.
"She was very stubborn and horribly difficult
to give pills to."
So her victim is a woman in this case.
We learn something new.
Women are eligible to be killed.
BERRILL: After laying off killing for about three years,
the bar seems lower for whom she's willing to kill.
She's choosing the weakest and the most vulnerable
to act this rage out on.
These people can't fight back.
They can't hurt her.
Some of them can't even talk.
She celebrates this woman decking another guy.
She laughs, she's invigorated by it.
But then, um, this woman that she can identify with now
becomes a pain in the ass, because she's demented
and giving her a problem.
This is where I think psychopathy becomes even
more prominent.
It doesn't matter now whether you're a man or a woman making
sexual or non-sexual comments.
The common denominator is you're irritating, and if you
irritate her, she decides you got to go.
♪♪
Wettlaufer started to write poetry.
Here is one of those poems.
"She watches some life drain from the notch
"in his neck vein -- As it soothingly pools,
"it smothers her pain.
Sweet stiletto, so sharp, craves another cut."
I really see that as murdering people helps her feel better.
And it makes me really wonder if there is
some sadistic piece of her
that enjoys watching them struggle.
♪♪
On the surface,
it makes her look like the super nurse on the unit.
But what we know is that she also knew that she was
essentially giving her
her last meal, and she had every intention of killing her
later that night.
BERRILL: She didn't have to give her blueberry pie and ice cream.
So she's playing with her.
She delights in killing someone,
and that's a very perverse delight.
To actually state that she laughed out loud after
killing her, I mean...
what kind of person does that?
Person didn't even annoy her.
SAHNI: Wettlaufer's showing us what it is to be a psychopath.
She enjoys the high, she enjoys the power.
This isn't about the patients at all
at this point, uh, Wettlaufer
has discovered something about herself
she didn't know -- She enjoys killing.
♪♪
This is a -- an excerpt from
the confession letter of, uh, Wettlaufer
about Mary Zurawinski.
"Mary bugged me, because she was outspoken
"and resistive to care.
"I was feeling very angry in general.
She died the next afternoon."
She's returned to some of
the old playbook signals -- If patient is annoying,
patient's got to go.
No.
She was fun to work with,
but she's also saying that Mary
essentially gave her permission to kill her.
The impulse control is very poor at this point.
MORGAN: Just because someone says, "I want to die,"
doesn't mean you have permission
to kill them or that you should kill them,
but it enables her psychopathy in the sense that she doesn't
even have to be annoyed.
It's about revenge
writ large -- revenge about whatever happened to me in
the past -- I'm gonna bite the world back.
She's plotting everybody's murder
while being sweet to them and taking care of them
and then ushers them right off to their death.
[knocking noises]
♪♪
This is what she has to say about Maureen and killing her.
"Maureen had a lot of behaviors.
"She would hit other residents or pull their hair.
"Then I got the idea that if I could cause her some
brain damage, she wouldn't be such a handful."
Wettlaufer is changing her motivations for killing.
Now, she's dealing with
patients where she doesn't even feel the urge necessarily
to kill them -- she just wants to control the situation.
SAHNI: It's terrifying to think about a nurse doing that.
Wettlaufer is making the decision to
handle these patients as if they're objects.
You really see an arrogance coming over Wettlaufer -- now,
it's just about making sure she doesn't experience stress.
MORGAN: She's not even saying, "It's a sign from God.
I should kill her."
She's going, "I just want to mutilate her brain
so she stops being such a pain in the ass,"
which is hostile and aggressive.
We are seeing this progression from killing men who are
sexually aggressive and abusive, and then it progresses
to general irritability.
She then picks on a victim who is defenseless.
This is psychopathy.
It's important to note that she turned herself in,
because she had an opportunity to work with children.
She says it's because she wanted to stop killing,
but it's not as easy to kill children without people
asking questions.
Even the pretense that this is driven by God is off the table.
She's mastered the art of being a nice person.
So she covers very skillfully how malignant she is.
She really is an angel of death,
and she's highly psychopathic.
♪♪