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Listener discretion is advised, this episode features discussions of addiction and murder that may be upsetting. We advise extreme caution for listeners under 13.

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In recent years, assisted living facilities have become a standard form of care for elderly people whose loved ones are unable to tend to their daily needs.

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And while for some families, placing a parent or grandparent in a home can deliver relief, for others, it can be extremely challenging to accept that their elder is in good hands. Typically, such skepticism is unwarranted. After all, teams of medical professionals provide excellent care across the world, but understaffed facilities can lead to lapses in care and even neglect.

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Unfortunately, many patients relatives wouldn't even realize it due to an implicit trust they've placed in the nurses.

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Elizabeth Wet Lofa was one nurse who repeatedly abused this trust, but she was guilty of more than neglect during her employment.

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At one nursing home alone, more than 180 people died, but no one suspected that at least seven of those deaths were murders. This is Medical Murders, a Spotify original from podcast, every year, thousands of medical students take the Hippocratic Oath. It boils down to do no harm. But a closer look reveals a phrase much more interesting. I must not play at God. However, some doctors break that oath.

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They choose to play God with their patients, deciding who lives and who dies each week on medical murders. We'll investigate these doctors, nurses and medical professionals. We'll explore the specifics of how medical killers operate not just on their patients but within their own minds, examining the psychology and neurology behind heartless medical killers.

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I'm Alistair Madden and I'm joined by Dr. David Kipa, M.D..

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Hello, everyone. I'm Dr. Kipper and excited to be here to assist Allaster to offer medical insight into part one of our story about Elizabeth Wet offer a very malevolent nurse who just couldn't stay out of trouble.

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You can find episodes of medical murders and all other PARCA shows for free on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to stream medical murders for free on Spotify, just open the app and type medical murders in the search bar. This is our first episode on Elizabeth Westlaw for a Canadian serial killer who injected elderly patients with lethal insulin overdoses. It was this inconspicuous murder method that allowed her to harm and often kill her patients for nearly 10 years between 2007 and 2016.

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Today, we'll examine Elizabeth's early struggles with religion, sexuality and addiction that led her to poison her first victim.

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Next week, we'll revisit Elizabeth's series of lethal injections, the burdens of her guilt and the psychiatric stay that led her to come clean.

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All this and more coming up.

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Stay with us. On the night of August 11th, 2007, 84 year old James Silcox wandered his room at Crescent Care Nursing Home, confused for the life of him. He couldn't place where he was. He stared at the photographs on his nightstand, but he struggled to recognize the people smiling back at him.

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His Alzheimer's was acting up, and when he finally came to, he felt angry about his memory lapse. So when his attending nurse walked into his room, he wasn't feeling up to a warm welcome. He resisted his evening medications and tried to shoo her off. But Elizabeth welfare wasn't one to give in to resident demands, especially not this evening. A particularly rough day at home had left Elizabeth feeling stressed and unprepared for the long double shift that lay ahead of her.

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It was then that she felt the red surge deep in the pit of her stomach, a rising pressure followed by a voice. Elizabeth felt God talking to her, telling her it was time for James Silcox to die. Fueled by this feeling, she retrieved an insulin pen, dialed it up with 50 units of fast acting insulin and administered a lethal overdose to James, this wasn't the first time she'd maliciously injected a resident, but it did mark a turning point for the struggling nurse because by the next morning, Elizabeth would officially be a cold blooded killer.

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Now, nothing justifies Elizabeth's murderous actions, but a look at her past may just reveal what motivated them.

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Elizabeth West Lawford was born Elizabeth Parker on June 10th, 1967. For many, the swinging 60s were an era of youth driven cultural upheaval marked by newfound freedoms in modern life. But the years that followed her birth hardly made her feel liberated.

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She grew up entrenched in a series of religious rules imposed by her father, Doug.

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He dominated their devout Baptist home in Ontario, Canada, seemingly forcing his wife to be subservient and his two children to honor him with the same obedience. After all, as a lay pastor for their local church, Doug wanted his progeny to serve as an example for the community as a result.

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Elizabeth learned early on that to receive love, she must belong to her father's idea of the perfect family, which looked a lot like the squeaky clean Leave it to Beaver clan.

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Unfortunately, belonging wasn't Elizabeth's strongest skill, and she was nothing like the shiny faced actors in the wholesome TV sitcom A short and Stocky Girl, Elizabeth was bullied from a young age.

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Classmates tormented her with the name Little Buffi Parker, so Elizabeth added an E to the end of her name, hoping kids would call her Beth instead of Betty.

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To her dismay, they didn't. And Elizabeth, a sense of identity was undermined. This denial of Elizabeth's true self continued as she grew older, especially in high school, when she began exploring her sexuality, adolescence or dealing with major sexual and social changes simultaneously, which, as we all know, is often overwhelming and tough to cope with.

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The first noticeable signs of puberty take place during early adolescence and are the result of activating a communication loop connecting the hypothalamus and pituitary gland with the male and female reproductive centres, the testes and ovaries. The stimulation and development and turn creates large surges of testosterone in males and estrogen and females. And this is one sex drive really starts to ramp up. Because of these changes, the psychological and social need for comfort, safety and belonging emerges. We see this play out in high schools with peer groups or friend clicks.

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Now consider an adolescent who feels their newfound sexual identity is something to be ashamed of or something that will ostracize them from friends and family. Not only are they experiencing major hormonal and cognitive shifts, but they're also feeling that their sense of safety and belonging hinges on the maintenance of a secret. This creates immense stress, but they may feel secrecy is their only option. Repressing sexual identity is protective against stress, but this is only a means to minimize the stress and not completely eliminate it.

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Healthy psychosocial and physical development are deeply tied to an acceptance of one's sexual identity. And though it may be uncomfortable, embracing your personal sexual impulse is very crucial in developing a compassionate understanding of ourselves.

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But for Elizabeth, discovering her sexuality wasn't empowering because she found herself attracted to girls and according to the religious doctrine, she'd been raised under same sex relationships were a sin.

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Her moral dilemma grew when she began to have feelings for a girl in her neighborhood with a homophobic father hovering over her.

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Elizabeth knew she wouldn't be able to date the girl, but she decided to share her feelings, hoping they were requited.

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Sadly for Elizabeth, they were not. And when the girl rejected her, Elizabeth appeared to give up on her romantic impulses, throwing herself into school activities. Instead, she became the goalkeeper for her high school's field hockey team and a member of multiple school bands.

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But somehow, through it all, she remained an outsider. Her childhood friend, Glen Hart, later recalled that Elizabeth was usually the odd one out as much as she wanted to be understood. Elizabeth was unable to make friends because of the shame she likely felt about who she really was. Elizabeth probably felt that she was not allowed to be anything but the good Christian girl her father had always wanted her to be.

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And this belief seemed to follow her into higher education, too.

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She told high school friends she wanted to pursue drama, then went on to study journalism.

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But after a year, she transferred to London Baptist Bible College to become a religious counselor. It's unclear exactly what motivated this drastic pivot, but Elizabeth's father certainly supported the decision. In fact, some accounts claim that he even enrolled in classes of his own at her school, perhaps to keep a watchful eye on his daughter.

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Despite his vigilance, it was around that time that Elizabeth had her first girlfriend who attended a gay friendly church with her, of course, this upset Elizabeth's father when he caught wind of it. He sent Elizabeth home and pushed her towards a controversial treatment known as reparative therapy, reparative therapy and conversion therapy.

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Both relate to the attempt to change her temper, the expression of a person's sexual orientation. These therapies have also been used in hopes of eliminating gender dysphoria or the mismatch of a person's body and their identity. Generally speaking, conversion therapy is grounded in the debunked assumption that homosexuality and gender dysphoria are reversible mental illnesses curable through psychological and spiritual intervention.

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While forms of conversion therapy still exist today, they're recognized as nonsense by the medical community.

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Unfortunately, this nonsense is often very damaging from a psychological perspective. Forcing people to suppress and repress can lead to anger, depression and even suicide. Those who claim conversion therapy work for them may still be harboring some real inner turmoil, but not show this on the outside. Elizabeth certainly didn't when she returned to London Baptist Bible College after her hiatus, she told friends, I send I'm never going to do this again, most likely referring to the brief relationship she'd had with a woman.

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But while she assured others she'd found God during her academic break, Elizabeth seemed to be more lost than ever. As much as she wanted to believe reparative therapy had made her straight. Elizabeth knew it hadn't worked. Her consequent resentment snowballed into outright self-loathing, and she even admitted to her childhood friend, Glen Hart, that she was suffering from depression. To make matters worse. Elizabeth didn't envision herself working in a religious field, while her father may have wanted her to be a Baptist counsellor.

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Elizabeth began to feel angry about the fact that she was living her life for him, and it was potentially this budding rage that would one day lead Elizabeth to kill. Coming up, Elizabeth's fraught relationship with drugs begins. Hi, listeners. I'm thrilled to tell you about a new Spotify original from podcast that I think you'll really enjoy.

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It's called Our Love Story. Every Tuesday, our love story celebrates the ups, downs and pivotal moments that turn complete strangers into perfect pairs. Each episode offers an intimate glimpse inside a real life romance, with couples recounting the highlights and hardships that define their love. Whether it's a chance encounter, a form of friendship or even a former enemy, our love story proves that love can begin and blossom in the most unexpected ways. Ready to hear more, follow our love story free on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Now back to the story. In the late 1980s, Elizabeth went, Lawford decided to become a religious counselor at London Baptist Bible College, but beneath the facade, Elizabeth questioned her own identity. Reparative therapy had forced Elizabeth to repress her desire for women and graduating from her deeply religious college with a focus in counseling only compounded her frustration that her life didn't align with her identity. So she retaliated against the path her father wanted for her and pursued nursing. She attended Conestoga College in Stratford, Ontario, for three years and became a registered nurse in 1995 for the first time.

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Elizabeth succeeded at something that she chose for herself. But her humble beginnings in the medical field immediately brought challenges.

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Working her first job at Geraldton General Hospital, Elizabeth regularly transported a trolley cart of drugs that may have peaked her interest. On several occasions, Elizabeth stole a powerful narcotic known as hydromorphone, but it was Ativan that hooked her, otherwise known as lorazepam. Ativan is a sedative used to treat anxiety and seizure disorders. It was kept in the bedroom where Elizabeth worked, so she enjoyed relatively easy access to it.

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Ativan belongs to a family of drugs known as benzodiazepines. These drugs are commonly referred to as Spenser's and are primarily used to treat depression, anxiety and sleep disorders. This type of medication works by raising the brain's levels of gabapentin and inhibitory neurotransmitter that calms or depresses the central nervous system. Elizabeth was likely attracted to these benthos because of their ability to mitigate her constant anxiety. The sedating effect of benthos is commonly accompanied by poor motor functioning and loss of coordination, along with impaired memory and compromised judgment.

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Paranoia and suicidal ideation are also side effects, but they're less common.

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As Elizabeth's addiction overtook her, her overall functions were dulled and she struggled to get clean. Subtle shifts in her demeanor at work were noticeable, but Elizabeth's colleagues had no idea what was really going on with the new nurse. In truth, Elizabeth herself didn't even really understand what was happening to her. On the one hand, she coped with residual anger from her repressed sexuality. But she also suffered intense mood swings that seemed to come out of nowhere.

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So she self medicated to lessen the emotional intensity of her daily life, increasing her drug tolerance in the process. That meant that she had to take even more Ativan pills to reach the high she'd originally enjoyed, and sometimes she even took them with alcohol. This toxic mixture sent her spiraling into rehab twice, but the hospital where she worked remained unaware that a member of their staff was struggling. That was until one night in 1995 at 28 years old, when Elizabeth reportedly took a lethal dose of Ativan pills.

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When their effects began to lull Elizabeth into a lucid twilight, a fellow nurse on duty took notice and called in emergency services.

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By a stroke of luck, Elizabeth lived, but while she'd escaped a tragic death, Elizabeth did not feel fortune shining down upon her.

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On the contrary, she felt shorted because when the hospital discovered that the pills she'd overdosed on came from their patient supply, they promptly fired her.

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In addition, the Ontario Nurses Association reviewed the incident and sent Elizabeth to a substance abuse specialist for evaluation.

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There, Elizabeth admitted that she had also stolen hydromorphone from the hospital. These incidents led to a restriction on Elizabeth's nursing license, which required Elizabeth to stay sober, submit regular urine tests, inform all employers about her restriction, see an addiction specialist and attend support meetings. And if that wasn't enough, by 1998, the information about her overdose and addiction recovery would become available to the public and remain so for six years.

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This may seem like an intense list of constraints, but such scrupulous measures are actually quite common with substance abuse incidents in the medical field today, medication staffed by health care providers can result in incarceration and a permanent revocation of a medical license. These punitive measures are very effective in deterring the pilfering of controlled substances and also in curbing unethical prescribing.

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Despite the risks, some medical professionals still try to steal controlled substances to support their own addictions, and if caught, their licenses are immediately suspended. Whether it be medication theft, personal drug abuse or both, these transgressions become a permanent part of a health care professionals public record. This is very serious and can have major implications for future employment for convicted doctors and nurses. It's understandable why a doctor or nurse would hesitate in revealing a problem with drug addiction. The cost can be detrimental to a medical career.

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Like many nurses, Elizabeth feared losing her job if she came clean about her addiction. So even though she was compelled to seek help multiple times during her first nursing jobs, she failed to communicate her problems to her employer. Ultimately, the intense parameters placed on Elizabeth positively influenced her life. She seemingly got sober and returned to her faith while taking up work at a social service agency and a retirement home.

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It was during this time as she searched for God and meaning in her life, that Elizabeth met Donny Wet Loafer, a local truck driver. Both were regular attendees at a local Baptist church. And after less than a year of dating, the two married in 1997 around Elizabeth's 30th birthday. Shortly after, they moved into a bungalow and began their life as husband and wife. Elizabeth's parents were thrilled, though their daughter had strayed from the faith and face the evils of addiction.

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She had settled down with a man of religious virtue.

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To them, nothing was more important. But even though Elizabeth had succeeded in the eyes of her parents, she felt something lacking in her marriage to Donnie in attempts to fill the void. Elizabeth succumbed to addiction once more in the years to come.

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This time, Elizabeth wasn't alone in facing her addiction.

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Donnie Webb Lawford tried his best to help his wife cope. But soon the two began to fight regularly. The intense mood swings that had plagued Elizabeth when she'd first become a nurse returned in full force, and sometimes she experienced fits of rage that left her confused and depleted in search of answers. Elizabeth eventually sought psychiatric care and spoke with mental health professionals who attributed Elizabeth's addictions and behavioral problems to borderline personality disorder, or BPD.

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Borderline personality disorder is ultimately characterized by a chronic overproduction of cortisol or the stress hormone that causes us to feel anxious and in danger, people with borderline personality disorder have an overactive hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis or HP axis. Put simply, the axis functions like this. The hypothalamus stimulates the pituitary gland, which then signals the adrenal gland to create cortisol as an overactive HPA axis fuels the overproduction of cortisol. An individual experiencing this undergoes a severe stress reaction, which in turn creates an intense dopamine response.

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Dopamine not only makes people feel good, but it also disinhibits them, which can produce aggressive and antisocial behaviors. People with borderline personality disorders will often begin a relationship as your best friend and tell you that you are their best friend or the best doctor they've ever had. As soon as you disappoint these people on any level that immediately changes and you become their worst enemy because of this, it makes sense that this condition is characterized by a long pattern of unstable relationships and a distorted sense of self, which are issues Elizabeth was all too familiar with.

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This diagnosis may have been somewhat calming for Elizabeth, who had only ever faced her mental demons with substance abuse, now under the guidance of psychiatrists, she was prescribed Seroquel and antipsychotic and she took it. But it wasn't enough to save her marriage with or without the drug. Her condition made Elizabeth highly sensitive to abandonment. It's likely that any time Tony expressed disapproval or frustration with her, Elizabeth pulled away. Eventually, she began seeking romantic attention elsewhere, which was made easier after she stumbled across a site called Gay Canada.

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Soon, Elizabeth is said to have set her sights on just one woman who she called Maureen. As Elizabeth's feelings for Maureen intensified, she began indulging in frequent late night chat sessions and withdrew from her marriage. It didn't take long for her husband to notice when Donny discovered his wife was engaged in an illicit online affair with a woman. He was furious.

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But Elizabeth didn't seem to mind that she had hurt him. She wasn't willing to fix things with her husband. She'd apparently found a new high in Maureen. So after nearly 10 years of marriage in January 2007, Elizabeth and Donny split much to the dismay of Elizabeth's parents. Perhaps they just saw their daughter as a struggling addict and blamed Elizabeth's psychological problems for the dissolution of the marriage. Donny didn't want a sick wife, Elizabeth's mother later explained, but there was more to it than that.

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While Elizabeth may have withheld the truth of her divorce from her parents, she didn't hesitate to move in with her new lover. In the months that followed her split from Donnie, restless and unable to be alone. Elizabeth sought solace outside of herself with Maureen. Still, their new life together was no walk in the park.

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It turned out that Maureen had no income, so when Elizabeth moved them into a two bedroom apartment, she felt pressured to be the sole supporter in the relationship. Of course, Elizabeth's job at a nonprofit organization for people with disabilities wouldn't cut it. Not to mention Elizabeth grappled with the fact that her life didn't reflect the facility's orthodox values since she was now in a same sex relationship. So she submitted her resignation and searched for work elsewhere. And in June 2007, 40 year old Elizabeth Laufer interviewed at Crescent Care, a nursing home for the elderly.

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Though Elizabeth's past drug use had been made publicly accessible on her record for all employees to see, it was only available for six years following 1998. So Helen Crombie, the home's director, was not informed as she took Elizabeth through the 163 bed facility, giving her the grand tour.

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She didn't think much about the nurse's qualifications or prior transgressions. Her resume spoke for itself, and Elizabeth seemed nice enough. So that same day, Crescent Care extended Elizabeth a full time offer of 60000 dollars a year. Elizabeth couldn't refuse, but the understaffed facility came with its fair share of work, all while Elizabeth was filing for divorce and supporting a new relationship. The life transition would have been a lot for anyone to handle for Elizabeth. It was simply too much.

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As her stress is compounded, Elizabeth felt a red surge radiating in her stomach. She had a sense that God was telling her everything was all right and that he was going to use her, and while she wasn't clear yet on exactly what this call from the Divine meant, less than a month into her time, a crescent care Elizabeth would find out.

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Coming up, Elizabeth poisons her first victim. Now back to the story.

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In June 2007, less than half a year after Elizabeth left her marriage for a woman named Maureen, she joined the staff at Crescent Care Nursing Home. Around this time, Elizabeth's mental state weakened as she cracked beneath the stress of her divorce, her new relationship and her full time job, and well before Elizabeth found solace in her affair with Maureen. Now she saw her new partner as another person she had to support without an outlet to stave off her rapid mood swings.

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Elizabeth began feeling a rage she described as the red surge, which told her it wanted to use her. It's possible that this was Elizabeth's way of personifying or rationalizing her anger by assigning it to a part of herself that wasn't truly her. Regardless, she found herself needing a source of release and she didn't take long to find it.

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Just days into her time at Crescent Care, Elizabeth noticed the storage refrigerators of insulin since according to records at the time, nurses in the care home weren't required to log when they taken the new cartridge of insulin from the fridge, it would have been essentially impossible to track if one was stolen.

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Insulin isn't considered a controlled substance because it doesn't have an addictive quality or the potential for abuse. Insulin is naturally produced in the pancreas, but can also be manufactured in a laboratory. This hormone regulates the amount of glucose or sugar in the blood. It's used for treating diabetic patients who are unable to produce their own insulin.

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Although insulin theft in any care setting is very rare, it should still be highly regulated due to its potential dangers. An insulin overdose can easily result in coma or death. With the years of nursing under her belt, Elizabeth knew an insulin overdose could lead to a coma and even death. But this knowledge did nothing to quell her erratic emotions. Armed with ample access to the synthetic hormone, Elizabeth was a walking time bomb.

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And by early August 2007, Elizabeth had dialed up an insulin pen with a dangerous dosage and administered it to Clotilda. Adriano, the 86 year old dementia patient with diabetes, was administered dangerously high doses of insulin. In the hours that followed, Clotilda suffered the effects of dangerously low blood sugar. Elizabeth felt an overwhelming sense of peace. She was pleased with herself. When the next nurse on duty came around, Elizabeth failed to inform her that Clotilda seemed to be exhibiting strange symptoms.

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She let Clotilda his fate rest in the hands of those who knew nothing about the lethal injection. It took hours before a doctor tended to Clotilda and realized there was a problem with her insulin levels. Luckily, Clotilda lived, but no one ever reported the incident, probably because no one suspected that the overdose had been deliberate.

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As Elizabeth carried on unnoticed, she kept her dark secrets beneath sealed lips, smiling pleasantly at elderly residents and their families. Many found the new nurse to be cheerful and friendly. But Elizabeth's life told a darker story. At home, her relationship with Maureen fell to shambles, and when her girlfriend left for good, Elizabeth retreated into the coping mechanism. She knew best drug use.

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Elizabeth turned to substances as she had in the past. But this time she had karasin cares ready supply of hydromorphone to assist her. It was the same drug that she had stolen from the hospital trolley back in 1995 before she'd gotten hooked on Ativan and later sought help. It's possible she took hydromorphone rather than Ativan because it's a narcotic, not a sedative, giving its high a different feeling. Although both Ativan and hydromorphone have sedating effects, narcotics produce a feeling of euphoria that sedatives don't provide.

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This is the primary reason that narcotics are more enticing for addicts than sedatives. Elizabeth probably went for the hydromorphone rather than the Ativan because she was seeking a different type of high or more blissful feeling.

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On the other hand, it's possible Elizabeth selected this drug because more nursing home residents were taking it, making it more readily accessible. Indeed, stealing it was easier than ever before. Elizabeth didn't have to worry about reports of a missing medication. She would find which patients took the drug, give them a laxative instead, then take the narcotic for herself. Given her neurochemistry, it's no surprise that hydromorphone became irresistible to her or that she would take extreme measures to chase its high opiates work by stimulating the nucleus accumbens, the part of the brain's limbic system that activates the pleasure response.

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The stimulation then creates a surge in dopamine that equates strong feelings of euphoria, and people with underlying dopamine imbalances are far more vulnerable to becoming addicted. Looking at Elizabeth's behavior specifically, the mood swings, aggression, impulsivity and risk taking identifies her as having a dopamine imbalance. For these people, the flood of dopamine delivered by the drug feels even more amazing because it's the neurotransmitter their brain is naturally craving. On top of this, hydromorphone is an incredibly strong opiate, about two to eight times stronger than morphine.

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This makes it even more enticing and addictive.

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Later, when Elizabeth explained her reasoning for stealing hydromorphone pills, she blamed the stress of her work life. In reality, her typical workload was likely exacerbated by her borderline personality disorder and failed relationships.

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Unable to take correction from fellow staff members, she sometimes got into verbal altercations with other nurses and struggled to hold back resentment she felt toward patients who were particularly difficult. Elizabeth chose to act out her animosity on a second victim during that first summer at Crescent Care. It was 88 year old Albina de Medeiros who had diabetes and cognition issues. Elizabeth overdosed Albina on more than one occasion. It wasn't hard because Albeniz Conditions made her an easy target since her cognition had been steadily declining.

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Any potential accusations she made against Elizabeth could be discredited. She also readily received insulin injections as a diabetic, so it would never appear suspicious when Elizabeth injected her.

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After considering these factors, Elizabeth pounced, she dialed up the insulin pen with far more than Alpina needed and overdosed her on several occasions. Each time, Albeniz Body responded with almost immediate symptoms and nurses rushed to being assigned to elevate and stabilize her blood sugar levels. So like Clotilda, Albina lived, but Elizabeth's next victim wouldn't be so lucky. The summer continued on lifelessly for Elizabeth, who felt lonelier than ever, it was easy to slip into the world of the nursing home, making friends and enemies of the elderly patients.

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Elizabeth wouldn't always vocalize when she didn't like a resident, but her contempt was sometimes palpable as she gave some preferential treatment, while sometimes ignoring others completely. Meanwhile, Crescent Care's management had no idea that someone on their staff was dangerous, so they didn't think twice when they added James Silcox to Elizabeth's daily docket. 84 year old James had suffered a stroke early in 2007, which landed him in the hospital for four months before finally being admitted to Crescent Care.

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The man's Alzheimer's made him lucid at times, but he was also a war veteran and maintained a no nonsense pride about him.

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Unfortunately, this personality type didn't mesh with Elizabeth's. She revealed the sternness James showed towards staff, which may very well have reminded her of her own father. In addition, Elizabeth resented the notes in James's file, which reported several inappropriate comments he'd made to nurses. Now, none of this information substantiated an attack on James's life. But Elizabeth didn't care. The anger she felt about her own circumstances had only grown as the summer sailed. By August 2007, she felt a need to relieve the mounting pressure within her.

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So one night during a double shift, Elizabeth did just that. At approximately nine thirty pm, Elizabeth went to the medical storage room and prepared an insulin needle with 50 units of short acting insulin.

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An hour later, she injected James with a much higher dose than she had given her other two victims. Hours later, it seemed the man could tell he was dying. He called out, I'm sorry and I love you, perhaps in the hope that his family members would hear him, but only Elizabeth was around to listen.

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At approximately three fifty five a.m., a personal support worker pronounced James Silcox dead when the doctors assessed the dead man. They claimed he had died from, quote, complications of a fractured right hip.

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Behind a feigned glum expression, Elizabeth felt extreme relief from within. She had successfully carried out a callous and cold blooded murder.

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As Elizabeth Sweat loafer walked into the fresh morning air after a long night shift, she felt the glory of God in her veins.

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Next time on medical matters, Elizabeth's red serge strikes again, imploring her to dial up her dangerous injections of insulin. And while no one at the nursing home suspects her of murder, Elizabeth risks her own demise when she confesses her crimes for religious absolution. Thanks for listening to medical murders and thanks again to Dr. Kipa for joining me today. Thank you, Allaster. Look forward to next week for more information on Elizabeth Went Lawfare.

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Among the many sources we used, we found the book Lethal Injections by Lloyd Billingsley. Extremely helpful to our research. You can find all episodes of medical murders and all other PARCA shows for free on Spotify, not only to Spotify. Already have all of your favorite music, but now Spotify is making it easy for you to enjoy all of your favorite podcast originals like medical murders for free from your phone, desktop or smart speaker to stream medical notes on Spotify.

[00:41:32]

Just open the app and type medical murders in the search bar. We'll see you next time. Medical murders is a Spotify original from past. It is executive produced by Max Cutler, Sound Design by Trent Williamson with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden, Kristen Acevedo, Jonathan Cohen, Alexandra Trick Fidelity and Erin Larson. This episode of Medical Murders was written by Lauren Dalil with Writing Assistants by Maggie Admire and stars Dr. David Kepa and Alistair Madden. Listeners, don't forget to check out our love story, the newest Spotify original from podcast every Tuesday discovered the many pathways to love as told by the actual couples who found them.

[00:42:24]

Listen to our love story.

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Free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.