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Canadian nurse charged with murders of eight nursing home patients Canadian nurse charged with murders of eight nursing home patients
(about 3 hours later)
A Canadian nurse has been charged with the murders of eight elderly people at nursing homes in south-western Ontario over seven years. Canadian police charged a 49-year-old former nurse on Tuesday with eight counts of first-degree murder over the deaths of elderly residents at long-term care facilities in south-western Ontario.
Woodstock police chief William Renton said on Tuesday that 49-year-old Elizabeth Tracey Mae Wettlaufer was charged with first-degree murder in the killings that took place between 2007 and 2014. Elizabeth Tracey Mae Wettlaufer is accused of administering a drug to at least seven of the eight victims, who ranged in age from 75 to 96, between August 2007 and August 2014, according to Ontario provincial police (OPP) and two municipal Ontario police forces involved in the multi-jurisdictional homicide investigation.
Renton said officers began investigating after receiving a tip. He declined to speculate on a motive. Seven of the alleged murders occurred at a nursing home in Woodstock, Ontario, where Wettlaufer reportedly worked as a registered nurse for two and a half years from 2007, Caressant Care Nursing and Retirement Homes Ltd, which runs the facility.
“This investigation is now being treated as a multiple homicide. Eight victims have been identified to date,” he told a televised news conference. The other death happened at Meadow Park, a long-term care home in London, Ontario, where Wettlaufer was also an employee.
“We are confident at this time that all of the victims have been identified,” he said. Police in Woodstock began the investigation on 29 September after receiving information that “eight people had been murdered over a period of several years”, according to an OPP news release. Given the nature of the allegations, the OPP was brought in to manage the investigation, which involved members of the Woodstock and London police services.
The victims ranged in age from 75 to 96. Wettlaufer appeared in court on Tuesday morning and was remanded into custody.
Police say the victims were administered a drug, but declined to identify which one. A Caressant Care spokesman, Lee Griffi, said in a statement that the company, which runs 15 nursing homes in mainly small towns in Ontario, is “cooperating fully” with police.
Caressant Care Nursing and Retirement Homes, a private nursing home chain, has said one of its former employees is the focus of the investigation. “We deeply regret the additional grief and stress this is imposing on the families involved,” he said.
Caressant, which operates 15 Ontario facilities located mostly in small towns, said the former employee was a registered nurse who left the company two and a half years ago. “We are determined to avoid compromising the police investigation in any way and are therefore unable to provide any additional comment at this time.”
A Meadow Park spokeswoman, Julia King, said in a statement that the facility is also “cooperating fully” with police in their investigation of Wettlaufer, who “left our home’s employ some two years ago.”
She too said the long-term care home would not comment further “to avoid compromising the police investigation in any way”.
Wettlaufer registered as a nurse in Ontario in 1995 and resigned from the Colleges of Nurses of Ontario on 30 September 2016, one day after the police investigation began.
If convicted on all eight counts of first-degree murder, Wettlaufer could spend the rest of her life behind bars.
In Canada, first-degree murder carries a minimum 25-year prison sentence before a convict is eligible for parole. But under legislation enacted under the former Canadian Conservative government in late 2011, a judge could impose consecutive 25-year parole ineligibility periods.