S7 Ep.6: The Trial

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So every time you use your favorite Thrive Cosmetics product, you're helping communities you care about too. Complete your fall look. Go to thrivecosmetics.com slash cozy for an exclusive offer of 20% off your first order. That's Thrive Cosmetics, C-A-U-S-E-M-E-T-I-C-S dot com slash cozy. This podcast explores themes of violence, self-harm and murder. Listener discretion is advised.

Please note that some of the voices you hear in this series have been performed by actors. Previously on Mind of a Monster, The Killer Nurse. three explosive devices in building one. You have two hours. Nothing will compare as to what is going to happen tonight. So we had an expert statistician take a look, and he said that the probability of this occurring by chance was 1 in 100 million. They said we think that Kristen Gilbert...

who's the most prolific mass murderer on the East Coast. From ID and Arrow Media, I'm criminal psychologist Dr. Michelle Ward, and this is Mind of a Monster, The Killer Nurse. Chapter 6, The Trial.

It's October 8th, 1996, and Kristen Gilbert has finally been arrested. But it's not for murder. It's for making bomb threats against a federal hospital, which had seen dozens of vulnerable and sick patients evacuated from wards. Kristen is sent to Hampton County Jail while authorities decide what to do with her. A week goes by, she's given an ankle monitor, and the 28-year-old mom and nurse is released into the custody of her parents, who now live in Long Island.

She's forbidden from making contact with anyone in the state of Massachusetts, including her boyfriend James Peralt and Glenn Gilbert, who she's still in the process of divorcing. Crucially, the restriction also means that she's not allowed to see her two young sons. The only way she can communicate with them is through letters that are sent via her attorney and then passed on to the boy's therapist, who decides whether to share the material with them.

A year and a half goes by while preparation for the court case takes place. On January 7th, 1998, Kristen is finally brought to court to stand trial for the bomb threats. William Welch was the federal prosecutor on Kristen Gilbert's case. From our perspective, the case was simple and our proof was very, very strong.

We had, for example, Trooper Kevin Murphy being able to essentially say that he saw one of the bomb pit calls come in. The defense was essentially that she didn't do it, and that even if she did do it... We didn't have enough evidence. And what struck me about Kristen and her persona was she was about as cool of a cucumber I've seen of any defendant. Seemed very confident that she would be found not guilty.

Is Kristen right? Will she be able to manipulate her way out of a prison sentence? The defense's argument is simple. It wasn't her. She's not guilty. But the prosecution provides copious evidence. including a receipt for the purchase of the Talkboy, and eyewitnesses placing her at the phone booth where the calls were made. They also have a star witness, James Perrault.

Testifying on the stand, he describes in vivid detail how the phone calls appeared to target him. It sounded taunting, provocative towards me. The caller sounded like they were hurt and upset.

The trial for the bomb threats lasts a week. Will her defense work? The jury deliberates and delivers its verdict. When she was convicted, there was this bit of a stunned look on her face, which is probably the only time I've seen any semblance of emotion past her face. But it was as if at that time we had pulled the...

appropriate card from the house of cards that she had built, and it was beginning to tumble. What a great description. Before her sentencing, Kristen makes an extraordinary statement to the court. She claims she cannot remember anything that happened in the summer of 1996. I really don't have a very clear memory of that particular time period, except of bits and pieces of really that whole summer, patches here and there. It was a very stressful, hectic.

time of my life. Sometimes it seems the mind chooses to block out things we don't want to remember. A lot of what I remember is what people have told me about my own behavior. And my own behavior was very erratic and whatever. I would never intentionally hurt anyone. But no one is buying it.

Judge Michael Ponser sentences her to 15 months with a three-year supervised release for calling in the fake bond threats. She's sent first to Danbury Federal Prison, where she spends 10 months of her sentence. I've been reviewing the transcripts from Kristin's bomb trial, and there are thousands of pages, but within them are some really interesting findings. Specifically...

There was testimony from hospital staff members where Kristen had been admitted for her various suicide attempts. And they reported and testified that there were not toxic levels of drugs in her system. She hadn't taken the drugs that she'd said, which we kind of suspected. And in one case, she even bit the finger of a nurse who was trying to intubate her, explaining she didn't need to be intubated, didn't need her stomach pumped because it was, quote unquote, been too long since she took.

the medication but the reality is she probably didn't because all of the toxicology reports came back with non-toxic levels of medication. And this is kind of what we suspected all along, and it goes along with what we've been entertaining, which is the idea of borderline personality disorder, which is characterized by you know suicide attempts threaten threatening suicide threatening self-harm and the second interesting thing is the

doctor who was hired for the defense to examine Kristen talked about her potentially having borderline personality disorder. And that's what we've been considering all along. And it's nice to know that Even contemporaneously, that was the diagnosis that was being considered at the time. I want to discuss this with forensic psychologist Dr. Katherine Ramsland.

Supposedly, she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. But I know when I was looking at the testimony of the defense psychiatrist, he wasn't buying that.

He'd say, well, if I really could look at all of the data of her whole life, maybe I would say that, but I didn't. I really think she was suffering from an adjustment disorder, which is a temporary condition. But I will also say we're now finding... that many females who've been diagnosed with this disorder actually qualify as psychopaths, but male psychologists and psychiatrists have been reluctant to...

put that label on them or have not even thought of using that label for them. That's right. So it's unclear whether she might qualify as a psychopath, but no one, to my knowledge, use the diagnostic device with her, so I wouldn't say that. But it's interesting at least that we know that psychopathy and borderline personality disorder in females has a lot of overlap.

This is music to my ears to hear somebody as esteemed as you agree that, you know, psychopathy in females looks different than it does in males. And a lot of it is this relational aggression and borderline. I mean. With the exception of like the self-harm and this like fear of abandonment stuff, but the comorbidity of these two, whether they're distinct or not, I don't know anymore.

Well, we don't know that she has self harming behavior. We only know that she has threats of it. That's not the same thing. That's right.

to threaten self-harm is highly manipulative she doesn't have a history of actual suicidal kinds of things so you know or other or other things like gambling disorder or you know alcoholism or she doesn't have that self-destructive side so that's why i i started thinking this could be one of those cases and the overlap is what we call secondary psychopathy which does feature a lot more emotionality than primary psychopathy, which is more of the cold, callous, born psychopath.

The females tend to have that emotionality. And it's really, you're looking at not what did they do, but what did they threaten and for what reason. What manipulation were they achieving? Yeah, exactly. This is all speculation, of course. I've never assessed Kristen Gilbert myself, but like most serial killers, she is likely a psychopath.

While Kristen wallows in prison, William Welch and his team continue to build their case against her for the murders of patients at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northampton. Okay, at this point, what's happening with the murder investigation? So bodies are being exhumed. You know, it takes some time to do the...

Pathology, meaning examining the heart tissues. It takes some time to do toxicological testing. We are continuing to interview witnesses. We are presenting witnesses to the grand jury. We did spend a lot of time on the toxicology element of it because we were. Being told that our expert had a way of distinguishing synthetic versus naturally occurring epinephrine, so we were waiting and relying on.

some of the testing and sampling that that lab was conducting in order for us to have some degree of confidence in the reliability of their testing. And then once they felt confident that they could stand behind their work. then we were really in the stage where we could ultimately present the indictment for charges. The toxicology reports initially bring up more questions than answers. They find that Ed Square, a senior who died on February 18th, 1996, had the drug ketamine in his system.

Ketamine is not something he would have ever had access to himself. In fact, it wasn't even a drug used by hospitals. It was mostly used by veterinarians. The Gilbert family had pets. And investigators discover that Kristen Gilbert had made numerous trips to vets over the course of 1995. There were also receipts for pet medications that had been bought via mail order.

Supposedly, Kristen was buying the medication for her pets to treat the animals herself. I wonder, could this have been how Ed Squira had ketamine in his system too? In the shadows and flames, primals will fall, and from the blood and ash, new gods will rise. Poppy was never meant to awaken, and consequences are devastating. Stirring ancient powers from their slumber, transforming Castile and Kirin in ways the fates couldn't foresee.

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From 1989 to 1996, there have been a staggering 350 deaths at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northampton, Massachusetts. This is a huge number of potential victims. Ultimately, William Welch and his team have to decide which ones to take to trial. So we selected the ones that we felt were most provable in terms of securing convictions.

And then we picked cases that complemented each other in terms of how one case brought a particular element to it that maybe another didn't, and then another one, you know.

brought something to the entirety of the case that another one didn't. And for each one of them, we also needed all of the testifying witnesses to have that level of confidence that the death was very, very unusual because if I think you had any one witness that expressed reservations about the death being not natural, that would have been, you know, a very debilitating setback for us.

Absolutely, the case can fall apart on even losing control of a single witness and having them say that, I'm not totally sure, then it's over, because that's reasonable doubt. On November 24, 1998, Kristen Gilbert is in Hampton County Jail when the news breaks. A 31-year-old former nurse has been indicted on charges of murdering three patients and attempting to murder two others at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Massachusetts.

Federal prosecutors allege today that Kristen Gilbert injected a heart stimulant known as epinephrine into the patients. She is indicted for the murders of Ed Squira, Kenny Cutting, and Henry Hudon. as well as the attempted murders of Thomas Callahan and Angelo Vela. Six months later, more indictments are added to her charge sheet, the murder of Stanley Jagodowski and the attempted murder of Francis Marrier.

It's going to trial, and prosecutor William Welch will lead the government's case. It took about two years for the case to go to trial. A lot of that has to do with discovery. A lot of that has to do with... a lot of the pre-trial motions and jockeying that goes on to exclude evidence. We had a very strong case. Each victim had their own set of facts that they brought to the table.

And each one of the strongest pieces of the case complemented all of the others. And so from my perspective, we had a very tight, very interwoven, circumstantial case that was very, very compelling.

The trial finally takes place beginning on November 20, 2000. Ms. Gilbert denies each and every fact that's essential to prove a claim of homicide. She didn't do it, is what she says. There's been a lot of talk and a lot of allegations over the past several years and it's time now to see whether the government can prove what they've been accusing her of all these years. Adam Gorlick is a young reporter working for the Associated Press.

I talked to him about covering this sensational trial. One of my biggest memories of covering the trial was the families themselves and getting to know the families. I mean, the trauma of this is incredible. Obviously, they were patients in a VA hospital. They weren't in perfect health, but they weren't expected to die.

motivation that she had to create these emergencies so she could create a thrill for herself. I mean, it's just nuts. It's a hard thing to wrap your head around. You can't lose sight of the people that this affected. And that's something that I always tried to hold on to as a reporter.

shows you the worst of humanity but you you remember that there's the best of humanity embedded in the victims and these people are just people and dealing with these these unthinkable crimes and the kindnesses that They showed the reporters and me, made a big impression on me that people could have a ton of grace under horrible, horrible circumstances.

This comment from Adam reminds me how important it is to keep the families of the victims at the forefront of the trial. I can't imagine how it must feel to go into such a long-awaited trial. and actually face the woman accused of murdering your loved one. Nearly five years after the murder of 35-year-old veteran Henry Houdon, his sister Christine Duquette attends the trial.

My best chance of knowing what happened to my brother, every little thing and why it happened, was to sit in that courtroom every day. And it was almost a six-month trial. What was it like for you to see her? Well, the first time I saw her was in the Northampton. This is before it got to the federal level. I did go to the Northampton courthouse and she was very, very attractive.

Very young. The hair, she had bleach blonde hair. The style of the haircut was really sassy. Minimal, but professional makeup. Very professionally. casual dress and I just looked at her and it based on how she looked it was very hard to believe that she could do this but sitting in the courtroom she looked completely different Hair was longer. It was no longer bleached. There was no makeup. She definitely had gained weight. She looked very plain, simple.

I'm fascinated to hear more about Kristen's demeanor in the courtroom. How does Kristen react hearing the testimonies from the victim's families? And what does she do when her own family takes the stand?

or her former lover, James Peralt. I go back to prosecutor Bill Welch to learn more. During the course of the trial, Kristen was markedly different than when I saw her at the bomb threat trial.

was not confident, was not self-assured, showed no emotion throughout the course of the guilt phase. So even when we had to call, for example, a potential family member or one of her co-workers, it was like she... had a blank mask on her face she always had this kind of grayish color to her face which you know could be as a result of just being in prison but there was just never any emotion no matter

who the individual was that she was either watching or interacting with, including her family. Yikes. What was it like to hear from the families of the victims? You know, it was heart-wrenching. We had been working, interacting with the victim families for two years, and we had a real sense of who all of the victims were. We knew.

their strengths, their weaknesses, their foibles, you know, kind of all of it. And then to hear them get up on the stand and talk about them with, you know, that warmth, it was difficult for me. On the one hand, it surprised me. On the other hand, it didn't surprise me. I see no emotion from Kristen Gilbert. That's so interesting. Dr. Greg Blackman, who had been the doctor on duty when Henry Houdon was killed, is called to testify.

When it did go to trial, I remembered the details very clearly and was happy to testify. Wow. And you must have been pissed, as you said. I was beyond angry. It remains so. Absolutely. I hadn't thought about it so much from your perspective, kind of steeped in talking to victims' families, but as a professional whose job is, you know, to avoid that.

that would be life-altering. I mean, you know that you're going to lose patience. You know that, but to that frustration of not knowing why. Tell me, what was it like to testify against Kristen in her murder trial? What was interesting, she had kind of a relatively stoic look on her face, and so she didn't seem emotional at all during the trial. I think we locked eyes once, but this certainly wasn't like a friendly interaction or anything. You know, I was just looking at a mannequin.

I knew that the statistics were pretty overwhelming. And the... circumstantial evidence that the fact that i mean more than circumstantial you know epi in her pocket you know the guy with the arm burning all that i mean it really connected the dots well and so To me, there's just zero doubt, zero doubt that she did it and did it over and over again.

The prosecution calls up many of Kristen's colleagues to testify, including the three whistleblowers, Kathy Ricks, John Wall, and Renee Walsh. The case is very strong, and while there are no eyewitnesses to Kristen's killings, the testimonies are pretty compelling. However, the defense team is also ready and willing to put up their fight to prove that Kristen did not murder any of her patients.

William Welch. So the defense was basically all of the individuals were really sick, really old, and these are all individuals that died from natural causes. that we became focused upon her as the perpetrator and didn't look to either other natural causes of death or non-natural causes of death. There was a theory that perhaps

Overall, there could have been just gross negligence by all of the medical professionals, but that really was the defense. It was a bit of a scattershot defense, which I think was problematic. They should have just picked one and gone with it. And it certainly doesn't cover Henry Hudon, who didn't have any of those underlying conditions. That's right. And I think that's when that goes to the strength of our case.

For example, if we go back to Stanley Jagadowski, the eyewitness account of her leaving the room is incredibly compelling, particularly for a registered nurse to be leaving someone in distress. We didn't have that for any of the other victims. Suddenly, all these become interconnected and people can begin to see. how each one of the cases on their own had strengths. They may have had weaknesses, but together they told a compelling story.

The courtroom is full of drama as both sides present strong arguments to try to convince the jury. Even Judge Ponser admits he has no clue which way the verdict will go. Journalist Adam Gorlick tells me more. I remember Bill Welch. He was a very, very passionate prosecutor. Very, very good. Amazing. Super smart. Really good guy. He's very smart.

was David Hoose, right? The two of them were beautiful to watch in a courtroom. Beautiful. Because they were just so good. They played off each other. But, you know, they're like... Bitter enemies in the courtroom. But you could tell that there was always like that sense of respect. The trial concludes on February 21st, 2001.

After four months of emotional testimony, heart-wrenching toxicology report findings, even photos of exhumed bodies being presented to the court, the jury is finally dismissed to decide on a verdict. Jury deliberation timing is unpredictable, so waiting for the verdict is incredibly intense for everyone. Bill Welch, the victim's families, the defense, especially Kristen Gilbert, who will learn her fate.

Quoting Judge Michael Ponser, the 12 days of deliberation were the longest by far I have ever waited through. Finally, on March 14, 2001, the jury is ready to come back. William Welch. When the verdicts came down, meaning when the jury announced that they had verdicts, the courtroom was packed. We had an overflow room for other individuals who didn't make it into the...

main courtroom. And the first verdict that was read was the first-degree murder for Stanley Jagodowski. And that came back not guilty. And I can still feel, actually, when I talk about it, sort of the pins and needles of hearing the not guilty and suddenly thinking, what's to follow? And you could hear a...

pin drop when that not guilty verdict came down. But then the second count for which we had charged her for Stanley Jagadowski's death was second degree murder and they found her guilty of that. And as soon as I heard that, I knew that thereafter we would get guilty verdicts on virtually all of the other counts. And I give the jury a lot of credit. I think they gave her the benefit of the doubt on the very first one and said,

Maybe this wasn't intentional. Maybe there really was some sort of accident. But you can't explain everything else that followed. To me, that was sort of brilliant on that part. They deliberated properly. I can see a change in your face. You're red. Like all these years later, tremendous, tremendous stress and anticipation. Assistant U.S. Attorney William Welch has been building Kristen's case since it first landed on his desk in 1996.

These guilty verdicts must bring a great feeling of satisfaction and confirmation that he did the best he could in that courtroom to get those verdicts, but most importantly, to bring some justice for the families. For the victim's families, the guilty verdict can bring a lot of emotion. As they leave the courtroom, they are greeted by lots of press waiting to record their responses to the verdict. All my feelings altogether for the five years, what she put us through.

You know, I mean, what she's done to us. She took away something from us that was very precious and that, you know, was hard to let go. I'm going to go to cemetery tonight. And I'm going to say, Henry, you finally got do what's due you. The truth has come out and that's all that we wanted. I go back to Edward Squira Jr. to hear what he has to say about Kristen Gilbert.

finally being found guilty of murdering his father. When I heard Christian was convicted, I was relieved. I communicated through the prison sentence system that I wanted to. gain access to conversing with her and it was she turned it down so i was interested to get some insight into what she did and why she did the things she did, because it just defied logic. Why anybody who would go in the healthcare field would seek to harm people.

I couldn't see it as a health care provider myself. There is something about the nature of Kristen Gilbert's crimes that elevates this already sensational trial to a whole different level. In the shadows and flames, primals will fall and from the blood and ash, new gods will rise. Poppy was never meant to awaken and consequences are devastating. Stirring ancient powers from their slumber, transforming Castile and Kirin in ways the fates couldn't foresee.

The Conspirator has returned to stop the primal of death. The gods have awakened harboring blood-soaked secrets, and every choice can undo everything. The primal of blood and bone, perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yaros. Available in print, e-book, and audiobook.

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The case has been made by lead prosecutor William Welch and his team on a total of 10 charges, including four counts of murder. One first-degree murder conviction requires a penalty phase trial. where the jury will decide if Gilbert lives or dies. Massachusetts does not have the death penalty. However, the fact that the VAMC is a federal building changes everything.

Prosecutor William Welch describes how it came into play in Kristen's case. Explain to us how this being a federal case changes that. Yeah, the federal system is different and if you charge a... Capital murder case in federal court, depending upon the nature of the crime, then the death penalty is a potentially eligible sentence. And that's what happened in this case. And her criminal case is federal.

simply because she works at a VA hospital. Exactly. That was federal property. So the nature of the case certainly attracted a lot of media attention. But to add the death penalty in a state where the death penalty has been outlawed in state cases added another level of attention as well as complexity to the case. And so therefore, we knew for sure that if she was going to be found guilty of any of the eligible first-degree murder counts, she would also face the death penalty.

The last woman to be executed in Massachusetts was Rachel Wall, all the way back in 1789. She was executed for piracy in the same year that George Washington became the first president of the United States. In other words, to have a woman facing the death penalty in Massachusetts in the year 2001 is nothing short of extraordinary.

Adam Gorlick is just one of the many members of the media to write about this traumatic penalty phase to an already gripping trial. Well, that was very odd to have a death penalty case in Massachusetts. Prosecutors, I think, made it clear from the get-go that they wanted that option to press this. And it was fair to say socially it was an awkward thing.

to have in Massachusetts because politically you had people who felt very strongly against the death penalty. You also had people who felt very strongly for it. I asked Christine Duquette about her thoughts on the death penalty. What were your thoughts about her facing the death penalty? What did you want to see? I definitely wanted to see it, especially seeing on the federal level the death penalty is lethal injection. And I thought you couldn't ask for anything more fitting.

Did you receive any pushback for your position on that? Oh, yes. I lost friends. What happened? I didn't realize that most people in Massachusetts feel that strongly about it. It's a whole nother ballgame when it hits you to your immediate family. And especially the circumstances of how and why she did it. It's like, you don't deserve.

any leniency from anybody, anywhere. And the whole thing was because the affair she was carrying on with with the security guard, it was so they could beat one another.

The penalty phase gives families a chance to describe the impact that losing their loved ones has had on them. Nancy Cutting, Kenny's wife, gets up and shares what she remembers about visiting Kenny at the Veterans Hospital. If you did go see him there, we tried to walk in to uplift him, but he'd end up uplifting us by the time we left. I mean, he was the sweetest person there. Nothing bothered him. He didn't let the disease get to him.

This also invites members of Kristen's family to say what it would mean to them if Kristen were to be sentenced to death. One of the most emotional statements comes from Kristen's grandmother, who tells the jury what Kristen was like as a young girl. and what they would do together when she babysat her granddaughter. She always used to like the fudge I made, and she'd want me to make some fudge, and she wanted me to teach her how to make it, and I did. Listening to her grandmother in court...

Kristen becomes emotional for the first time. She breaks down in tears, possibly feeling nostalgic for her time spent with her grandmother, but probably also fearful for her future. The next person to speak from Kristen's family is Glenn Gilbert. However, Glenn doesn't speak in person.

Instead, he delivers a statement in the form of a letter through a child psychologist who's been seeing the Gilbert's boys, now 10 and 7, to help them deal with their trauma. The psychologist reads Glenn's powerful statement to the jury. Glenn Gilbert believes that when the children are emotionally and developmentally ready, it will be critically important for them for their mother to be alive, that she be physically available so that they can contact and speak.

and connect with her as part of the process of their healing. He believes that the execution of their mother, Kristen Gilbert, would have a profound and profoundly detrimental impact on his children and their well-being, including causing harm to his relationship with his children. Once the jurors hear from all of the family members on both sides, they are dismissed to make their final decision.

I chat with Adam Gorlick, the journalist from the AP News, about this considerable task in front of the jury to decide whether Kristen lives or dies. A certain qualification that defense attorneys need to have if they're going to be defending a capital case. The same is true for jurors. You don't just get a regular jury to decide the penalty phase when death penalty is on the line. It has to be a death penalty qualified jury.

There is a lot of research indicating those jurors, those who are willing to invoke the death penalty, are more punitive. Yeah. So there's an argument that it should be a different jury, and often it is. to decide the guilt and innocence phase versus the penalty phase. Yeah, yeah. And that's, you know, when you think of the jurors, what... those people went through is just tremendous and again Michael Ponzer the judge he was very very aware of that he was so concerned about his jury

and making sure that those people were okay. I mean, so the trial started in November, and it ended in March. Wow, that's incredibly long. Judge Michael Ponser was also the judge presiding over Kristen's bomb threat trial. At this stage, sidebar conversations between the prosecution, the defense, and the judge go into minute detail.

With stakes this high, the responsibility is huge, and the meaning and impact of single words can hold tremendous power. Judge Michael Ponser speaks to the jury ahead of the verdict decision. They have to find that the sentence of death is justified. And there isn't much help on what is meant by the word justified. But to me, the word justified means that they have to find

that that's the only penalty that is appropriate and sufficient to do justice in this case. That's the approach I've taken in the instructions. After the penalty phase deliberation, the jury is unable to reach a unanimous decision about Kristen's sentence. The final result... is 8 to 4 in favor of her receiving the lethal injection. This means the death penalty, which requires unanimity, is now off the table.

Judge Ponser sentences Kristen to four consecutive life sentences in federal prison without the possibility of parole. Kristen Gilbert is currently serving her life sentences in Carswell, Texas, a maximum security prison. Only Kristen knows the answer, and we may never learn how many patients she's killed. But we do know that statistically, it's most likely she has killed a lot more than the four for which she was convicted.

Dr. Katherine Ramsland tells me her thoughts. We really don't know how extensive her murders are. We know only the ones... for which she was convicted. But the hard thing about healthcare serial killers is nailing them with evidence. We have a lot of cases where they certainly committed more murders, but we can't bring forward any kind of indictment or conviction for a number of factors. That's right. I wouldn't say...

She's responsible for 300 murders, like I've seen some predictions. But I think that there are more in her background that she just wasn't caught for. The trial may be over and justice has been served in the form of a life imprisonment for Kristen. But the impact of her killings will have lifelong consequences on those affected. It doesn't just stop with the victim's families. The nurses and doctors who worked with Kristen have been so deeply affected by her callous behavior.

I had heard an interview with a neurosurgeon, and so they're more life and death than the average physician, of course. But they said that you had this little graveyard in your mind. Oh, I wouldn't like that. It stays with you. It stays with you. And so anyway, yeah, so Henry's in there. Henry's in there. Christine Duquette. He didn't stand there with a gun in his hand with an enemy soldier in front of him. But hopefully, maybe he helped save some people by lying there.

getting injections. Wow, Christine. And that's why it bothers me so much that there isn't any kind of monument for these people. They went through what they went through. It took their life. Where is that any different than any other soldier? Just to see something that says, in remembrance for the victims of Kristen Gilbert, who served our country.

The subject of healthcare serial killers has become important to me because it's an area I had not fully explored before. It seems there's a lot more that could and needs to be done to help protect more patients in hospital settings. In this case, if it weren't for Kathy Ricks, Renee Walsh, and John Wall having the courage to report their suspicions and follow through with them, who knows how long Kristen would have gotten away with murdering patients.

Beatrice Yorker has a lot more to say on this subject. In your experience, what do you think happens when people suspect there's a killer in the hospital? Rather than report to the authorities or go to law enforcement, they just fire the nurse and let them go to the next place, which is what both Bruce Sackman and I want to change. We want to say to...

hospitals and the healthcare system, please do the right thing. Go to law enforcement, get an investigation going, start doing toxicology screens, pull the license. of this person if there are increased deaths when they're on duty. You pull them from duty. If the death rate goes back down to normal, you've got the separation test. You've got...

strong circumstantial evidence that the presence of this care provider caused an increase of codes, that's probable cause. Pull them from practice, do your investigation, and don't let them go back to practice. All you have to do is get them away from patients. While analyzing Kristen Gilbert and talking about other healthcare serial killers out there, it's important we remember those whose lives have been taken.

They're not just names of Kristen's victims. They're men who have families who had lives before they were sick and had to go to the hospital. And they were all dedicated to serving their country. Christine Duquette, Henry Houdon's sister, still has a lot of emotion about how her brother was taken too soon. If you could say anything to Kristen Gilbert, what would you say? It would be a lot. The bottom line is you have a window you can look out of.

You have an outside you can go out to. You can exercise. You have a choice of a couple things of what you want to eat. You can chew your food. You can drink your water. And the worst thing of all, you can sit there like you are right now, taking one damn stinking breath after another. My brother hasn't been able to do that. For 30 years. And never will. That was so beautifully said. So as far as I'm concerned, she can't suffer enough.

The sheer impact of healthcare serial killers has left me more shocked than I've been in a long time. It is a type of killing with incredible volume, and the opportunity is constantly there. And there's such a paucity of ways to even be aware it's happening. I'm floored by the lack of mathematical algorithms that, in my mind, should have already been set up.

To catch even the slightest outliers of a normal expected death rate at any given facility. I'm gobsmacked by this. The place you go to rely on the hands of others while you are most vulnerable. is also the most fertile ground for a person who aims just to kill. That is a terrifying reality that as patients, we can't totally prevent. Thankfully, the systems are improving and healthcare professionals are more aware, so that when there are irregularities, attention is brought to it much quicker.

And at the end of the day, the vast majority of people who choose to go into healthcare professions are there to help others and save lives. Kristen Gilbert, the killer nurse, was thankfully caught and is behind bars for the crimes for which she was convicted. But the tragedy remains that the true number of victims that this monster took may never be known.

Mind of a Monster, the Killer Nurse is produced by Aeromedia, a Fremantle company for ID. The network executive producer is Meredith Russell. Aeromedia's producer is Rebecca Radiel. Editor is Holly Griffin. Audio engineering by Mahoney Audio Post. Line producer is Sarah Tucker. Production coordinator is Katie Whittington. Senior Assistant Producer is Maddie Delaney. Senior Researcher is Yasmin Bowen. Archive Producer is Ryan Hogan.

Arrow Media series producer is Linda McCarthy and executive producer is Stuart Pender. Kristen Gilbert voiceover by Sharon DeFronzo. Glenn Gilbert voiceover by Ben Parks. James Prault voiceover by Carter Bellamy. I'm your host, Dr. Michelle Ward. You can follow our show wherever you get your podcasts, and we'd love it if you could take a second to leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.

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