Elizabeth Tracy Mae "Bethe" Wettlaufer (née Parker; born June 10, 1967) is a convicted Canadian serial killer and former registered nurse who confessed to murdering eight senior citizens and attempting to murder six others in southwestern Ontario between 2007 and 2016. With a total of 14 victims either killed or injured by her actions, she is described as one of the worst serial killers in Canadian history.
Early life
Elizabeth Wettlaufer was born and raised in Zorra Township, a rural community near Woodstock, Ontario. Growing up in a staunchly Baptist household, she went on to earn a bachelor's degree in religious education counseling from London Baptist Bible College after graduating from Huron Park Secondary School in the mid-1980s. Wettlaufer then studied nursing at Conestoga College.
Career
In 2007, Wettlaufer was hired onto the staff at Caressant Care, a long-term care home in Woodstock. She was initially regarded by co-workers as caring and professional. However, throughout her tenure, Wettlaufer struggled with substance abuse and alcoholism. She faced accusations of showing up to work drunk, and at one point was found passed out in the facility's basement during the night shift. Wettlaufer was suspended four times for "medication-related errors", then was finally fired in March 2014 over a "serious" incident in which she gave the wrong medication to a patient.
After leaving Caressant Care, Wettlaufer had difficulty holding down a job. She was hired by the Meadow Park Care Center in London, but lost this job after checking herself into a drug rehab facility in Niagara. She took various temp jobs at other care homes. Wettlaufer admitted to a neighbour that she was fired from one of these jobs for stealing medication, and was fired from another job for making a medication error while high that nearly resulted in the death of a patient. She also wrote poetry about her desire to kill.
Murders and assaults
While she was a nurse at Caressant Care, Wettlaufer began injecting some of the patients she cared for with insulin. In some cases, the amount was not enough to kill the patient; she was charged with, and confessed to, aggravated assault or attempted murder for those cases. Wettlaufer's first assaults occurred sometime between June 25 and December 31, 2007. She confessed that she injected sisters Clotilde Adriano (age 87) and Albina Demedeiros (88) with insulin. While they later died, their deaths were not attributed to Wettlaufer. She confessed to two counts of aggravated assault.
The first case in which Wettlaufer injected a patient with enough insulin to directly cause death was on August 11, 2007, when she murdered James Silcox (84), a World War II veteran and father of six. Through March 2014, Wettlaufer also murdered the following patients at Caressant Care:
Maurice "Moe" Granat (84) Gladys Millard (87) Helen Matheson (95) Mary Zurawinski (96) Helen Young (90) Maureen Pickering (79)
While at Caressant Care, Wettlaufer also injected Michael Priddle (63) and Wayne Hedges (57) "with intent to murder". She confessed to two counts of attempted murder in these cases. She left employment at Caressant Care in 2014, but in part-time work at other facilities and at patients' homes, she injected three more people with insulin:
Killed Arpad Horvath (75) at Meadow Park facility in London, Ontario
Injected Sandra Towler (77) "with intent to murder" at a retirement home in Paris, Ontario Injected Beverly Bertram (68) "with intent to murder" at a private residence in Ingersoll, Ontario