64 - Killer Nurses

Not every killer hides in the shadows—some wear scrubs.

They weren’t stalking dark alleys—they were standing at your bedside, armed with syringes, IV bags, and your blind trust. Explore the chilling psychology behind nurses who kill.

From Lucy Letby, the neonatal nurse who murdered in silence, to Charles Cullen, who left a body count across 16 hospitals—these killers didn’t wear masks. They wore name badges.

We examine what drives a caregiver to cross the line from healer to harmer, how red flags were ignored, and whether the legal system is equipped to handle murder disguised as medicine. Are they misguided angels of mercy, convinced they’re ending suffering? Or cold-blooded predators exploiting access, authority, and the blind faith of their patients?

Joining us is Shannon Casey, a legal nurse consultant who helps law firms uncover the truth behind suspicious deaths. She brings her clinical expertise to dissect the medical records and patterns left behind by these so-called caregivers turned killers.

Together, we explore some of the darkest cases in medical history:

• Lucy Letby – Neonatal killer with a chilling diary confession
• Charles Cullen – The most prolific healthcare serial killer in U.S. history
• Genene Jones – Created medical emergencies just to “save” her victims
• Kristen Gilbert – Induced fatal heart attacks to play the hero
• Beverley Allitt – Harmed children to feed a need for sympathy
• Orville Lynn Majors – Said he hated old people… and then ensured they died
• Jane Toppan – Admitted she “got pleasure” holding patients as they slipped away

Peel back the sterile curtain of healthcare and uncover what happens when trust turns toxic—and compassion becomes a deadly disguise.

Because sometimes, the most dangerous person in the room… is the one giving you care.



Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Killer Nurses
02:56 The Case of Lucy Letby
05:48 Psychological Profiles of Killer Nurses
08:52 Methods and Motives Behind Nurse Killers
12:03 The Role of Hospitals in Nurse Killings
14:53 Historical Cases of Nurse Killers
18:08 The Insanity Defense in Nursing Cases
21:05 Cultural Issues in Healthcare and Accountability
41:25 The Dilemma of Patient Safety vs. Employee Protection
48:06 The Consequences of Inadequate Reporting in Healthcare
51:00 The Case of Elizabeth Wetloffer: A Canadian Killer Nurse
52:47 The Need for Psychological Evaluations in Healthcare
59:18 The Impact of Stress and Liability on Healthcare Workers
01:01:29 The Case of Beverley Allitt: Attention-Seeking Behavior in Nursing
01:11:47 Understanding Fictitious Disorder and Its Implications


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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Killer Psychologist. I'm Dana Anderson, a forensic psychologist and.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Your host of the show.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Killer Psychologist is for true crime fanatics and anyone intrigued
with the dark side of psychology. Welcome to Killer Psychologists.
Let's talk about nurses who kill. Forget about serial killers
and ski masks. Today we're talking about the ones with

(00:31):
name badges and nursing degrees. They're not lurking in dark alleys.
They're walking hospital corridors. There're the ones that slip through
the system and right into the ICU room, standing next
to your bed, administering your medications. They hold a terrifying

(00:55):
amount of power and we trust them, and I so
like most of us that the nurse at my bedside
wants to help me. So what is the psychology behind
nurses who kill? That's what we're going to talk about today.
How does someone train to save lives end up taking them?

(01:16):
Do they see themselves as the hand of God making
decisions about life and death? Are they self proclaimed angels
of mercy? Or are they just cold blooded opportunists hiding
behind scrubs and institutional trust. So we're going to break
down some of the most disturbing cases, starting with Lucy Ledbee,

(01:40):
the neonatal nurse in the UK convicted of murdering seven
infants and attempting to kill six more. Her methods appear
to be quiet and calculated and deeply unsettling, injecting air
into their or overdosing them on insulin. So what red

(02:05):
flags did the hospital ignore and who should be held responsible?
How is the legal system supposed to respond? Are there
even psychological checkpoints before someone's cleared to return back to
patient care? So to help unpack all this, I'm joined
by two top experts, Doctor Craig Weder, my colleague, forensic

(02:28):
psychologist attorney and legal nurse consultant Shannon Casey. Shannon's the
one the law firms call when a patient dies unexpectedly,
and she reads the medical records like their crime scene.
So doctor Wedder and I are retained for other purposes
and cases like this, like psychological autopsies, and we maybe

(02:52):
look into other things like the mindset, motive, or the
mental state. So let's be clear, most nurses aren't killer.
My own sister is a nurse and she just became
a licensed nurse practitioner and her kill count remains to
be zero. So Shannon, you're a nurse. Before we get

(03:12):
into the killer nurses, what drew you to nursing and
in your experience, what kind of people are drawn to
this type of work. What drew me to nursing was
I had a family full of nurses. My grandmother and
my stepmother were nurses. And I've always liked working and

(03:34):
thinking about medicine and the human.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Body and how it works. And after serving the military,
I was in combat medic for six years, I decided
to use my GI bill and go to nursing school
and I've been a nurse for about sixteen years. I
really once I got into nursing, I really developed a
love for people and for helping them, not just in

(04:01):
saving them, but also when you have, like you have
a demise, you know someone's on palid of care of hospice,
helping them and their families have the best experiences that
they could possibly have, because when you take care of
people in a hospital, not everything's going to be roses
and sunshine. You're going to have some death. I really

(04:21):
like just meeting people, getting to know them. I worked
er for about six years, and I really loved helping
people figure out why they're in so much pain, because
pain is very it makes you afraid, like I'm dying,
Like pain means something's really wrong. And if we can
figure that out, that was just like, that's what I
really loved. And we could alleviate that pain and we

(04:43):
could put their fears to rest or. You know, sometimes
they did receive some pretty bad diagnosis, but we were
able to start them on that journey of getting better,
getting the resources that they need. The er that I
worked for was one that would put them in touch
with the social workers, put them in touch with their
next doctor's visit. I really loved taking care of people

(05:06):
at bedside.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
And so when you look at the case of Lucy
led Be, what are your first thoughts or impression?

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Wow, my first thought was what did the hospital know?
And I found it they knew, probably several years before
they formally charged her, that something was up, and she
had a manager that went to bat for her to
keep her on staff. At one point, even though they

(05:38):
had the Excel spreadsheet that she had more deaths on
her shift than they had the entire year. In the
neonatal unit. There were pediatric medical consultants that we're saying
something's wrong, Please don't let her be on shift. The
hospital still chose to bring her back, and they made

(05:59):
those consults since issue a formal apology to her. When
they had a few more infants that died while she
was on shift, is when they was like, oh, yeah,
so something is wrong here. And it wasn't until after
she was dismissed and several years had gone by they
started the formal criminal case or even contacted the authorities

(06:20):
about it. We're not talking about the hospital, the people
who inspect hospitals. We're talking about local law enforcement. That
to me was like a hospital that was trying to
protect itself, just like we discussed in the Chevnovsky case
about a month or so ago. The hospital was trying
to protect itself, and so they were not pulling her

(06:40):
off shift and putting her on paid administrative leave even
though they had the data in front of them to
show that she had a higher rate of deaths, and
all year they still continue to let her practice. That's
actually a few of the names that you sent me
to look up that actually happened on several occasions where
hospitals knew knew something bad was going on, and they

(07:01):
still continue to let that person work that bedside.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yeah, they don't want that civil liability. And for I've
first hand seen this. I have gone to the hospital
to consult on a case and there's something terribly awry
by licensed medical staff or doctors are doing. It's totally
criminal conduct, total violations of patients rights and a number
of things. I reported it right, and nothing happens. So

(07:28):
it's shocking. But it seems to be a theme of
these institutions, these hospitals covering for them because that is
in fact what's happening. I'm sure Craig has something to
say about that.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
Well, there's you got to think about this from the
perspective of an administrator in a hospital, right, They're all
about risk management, and obviously they don't want nurses that
are killing their patients working in their facilities. But you know,
if there's suspicions that something's going on, an administrator obviously
is going to undertake some or should take some form

(08:01):
of investigation to get to the bottom of what's going on.
I understand in this let be case, and this is
in Great Britain, right in the United Kingdom. This had
been going on for a while and she seemed to
be the common factor of when these infants were dying.
My question for Shannon because when I was researching this case,
I didn't get a lot of detail in terms of
the method that was used, or you know, what they

(08:24):
suspected the method was. But we could talk about, like again,
getting into the psychology of sort of the underlying motivations
of why a nurse would would engage in these types
of behaviors. There's a number of things we can talk about,
fictitious disorders and Muncheshm's syndrome and things like that, the
hero complex as such. But yeah, I'm just curious about her,

(08:47):
the modus and how she was suspected of doing this.
What did she do?

Speaker 2 (08:52):
So I watched several different documentaries and read quite a
few medical articles about this case because it's pretty widely known.
We do know that she did overdose infants on insulin,
and they found that by testing them for their seat
peptide levels, which is high in the case of when
you're giving somebody insulin artificial insulin.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
Yeah, exogenous insulin, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
And then she was also giving regular milk to some
of these premies. She was bullissing them with milk regular milk,
which we both all of us know and anybody who's
familiar with premature infants, you have to be very careful
with what you give them orally down their little ng tubes.
I know that in two cases they suspected she bullish

(09:37):
them with air, like she gave them a syringe full
of air into their ivs. And that is That's just
about the only tree methods that I could find on her.
I would not be surprised if there were more. They
still don't have a full kill count on her. They
have convicted her on seven murders, but with her being

(09:58):
there for several different years, yes, they still don't know
how many. I mean, I would say every death that
she was on shift was probably her responsibility, save maybe
one or two, because they're premies, you know, pretty sick kiddos.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
What's interesting is that you know the modus, in other words,
the method that she used seems to vary, which is
interesting because with serial killers, as we know, oftentimes their
motus tends to be consistent in the way that they
kill people. There seems to be a variation here. I'm
curious about that.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
I think the reason why it varies is not because
is behind the motive. The motive or the psychological issues
that was causing her to want to do these things
would probably dictate how she was doing it. One of
the things they found odd about her and was kind

(10:53):
of helped them build a case against her, is she
was chucking up on family members two three years after
almost observing them in their grief. They also said that
when she was an infant, she almost died herself, and
so there might have been some kind of psychological damage
from that. But I think her methods had more to

(11:14):
do with her ulterior motives, which was observing death, a
fascination with death and grieving almost like a show. She
was enjoying watching the show, or she found the show fascinating,
not actually doing it, but watching the death.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
And the show of the grieving parents like voyeuristic, you know,
like watching it. Yes, I thought the interesting thing she
sent cards, And I was just talking to Craig earlier.
I'm like, I never sent anyone's card, But she went
out of her way to follow up and attend some

(11:52):
of these events with families, connect with them on social
media and Facebook, and send a grieving sympathy card, like
she really wanted to stay in touch with them. That's
just a little above and beyond. So she like, it's
just relational.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
Yeah, it is relational. It's so that's interesting because you know, again,
what what Shannon is saying is that she is she
getting satisfaction in some way out of the observing the
grief process of seeing the parents suffer. And again, if
that's the hypothesis, we're dealing with a psychopath, right, this
is somebody with a psychopathic architecture. They have absolutely no conscience,

(12:31):
they have no capacity for remorse or guilt, write anything
like that. So that's a whole different anal as opposed
to these nurses who have the hero complex. They're inducing
you say, a cardiactus rynir or something and they're causing
a heart attack to then go and you know, be
the rescuer, right, And that's a different sort of thing.
That's it. Obviously, it's still highly perverse. It's not the

(12:54):
same as what this sounds like. This sounds more like
psychopathic personality architecture.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
And she had some obsessive journaling where she expressed her
feelings about this. So she journaled this and writing in
her notebook. And maybe we don't even have all the
pieces of the notebook, but she wrote, I am evil
I did this. And interestingly enough, she's been convicted, so
she's I think she's facing life in prison without the

(13:26):
possibility of release. But now her attorneys are looking to
overturn her conviction and they're appealing it. And there's lots
of media out even in just the last day, having
a whole different narrative, which is very interesting because I know, Shannon,
you did the deep dive as looking into this. It's

(13:46):
pretty incriminating, the timeline and the spike of deaths. You
could go through the timelines.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
And what they're saying, and some even medical experts have
come out saying, it's how do we know she really
did it? You know this All the evidence she was
convicted on was circumstances circumstantial. Yeah, nobody, nobody came out.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah, nobody saw her administering you know error, you know,
in the ballists or anything like that. And there was
no witness to any of these acts, or at least
from what I saw, right, and it live what I
saw in the what I reviewed. That's interesting.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
That's the case with most of the list of nurses
that you sent me. That's the case with most of
them how they were convicted with circumstantial evidence. But I
saw the Excel spreadsheet that they used to show the
mortality rate on her ships was higher and everyone else
had onesies or twosies. She was straight down the line.

(14:46):
So to me, that's more than circumstantial, especially when you
go from only having maybe twenty six deaths in a
certain period of time to almost one hundred and forty
or one hundred and fifty. I don't think that was
the number. I think that was the number on another case.
But the death's got exponentially higher when she was on shift,
And that to me is like, how can you argue

(15:08):
that it's not her doing stuff?

Speaker 3 (15:10):
And that comes into it. And again I don't know
if they had an expert come in and talk about
probability estimations of like, you know, on an average shift
in this type of a neonatal intensive care unit, in
these YIKA units, what's the average mortality turnover, you know,
on a monthly or yearly or even a weekly basis,
et cetera, And then you know, you can look at
it probabilistically and you could say, you know, again, if

(15:33):
these number of deaths are so disproportionate to what the
running mean or running averages are, then that's it's circumstantial evidence,
though it's that the way that the law would view that.
It's still circumstantial, but it is strong evidence because if
we could rule chance out because chances like, okay, there's
going to be random fluctuation in the number of neonates
that do not survive, right, so there's there's going to

(15:54):
be some variation in that. But when it deviates so
far outside of that in terms of the numbers that
we're seeing when she was working, that's pretty strong evidence.
I mean it again, unless there's some other actor that
could be involved here, like some other employee that might
have had access to these infants during these times.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Well, and I think there were actually several pediatricians that
were working that unit way before they really started thinking
about it. They suspected something was up with her. All
of the infant debt. There were a couple of infants
that they spoke about. Yes, they were in the NICKEU,
but they were doing well. They weren't the sickest on

(16:34):
the unit. You know, they weren't, you know, because there's
some babies that are born and you know, at thirty
four weeks and their track records of getting that thirty
six week and discharges smooth sailing, and you know, yeah,
but there was a couple that were like, this child
was just doing really well. Their scans were good, their
labs were good, and all of a sudden, and then

(16:54):
there was a set of triplets and two of them died.
But the ones that died were not having any medical
issues other than being premature. And the third one made it,
but I think even he started to have some trouble,
and they're like, but there was no pre existing issues
with these triplets that would cause them to go downhill

(17:16):
so quickly. I want to back up and say, I
think two that died, one of them actually coded and
they brought him back and then later on he died.
I think that's right. I've read so much about this case.
I'm just like trying to keep up with it all.
I mean, that's just what kind of perversion brings you
to the point where you think it's okay to kill

(17:38):
half a dozen infants.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Takes me back to the issue of the you know again,
the psychological profile, and you know, we can't diagnose her,
and by the way, she hasn't from what I can
see at least what's available in the public space. There's
no evidence that she's undergone any psychological testing, so we
don't know what her psychological profile looks like, right, I mean,
we don't know that. But Dana, you said something about

(18:00):
a journal where she's admitting to being evil. Did she
make a did she confess to any of these? Is
that what you're saying in a journal?

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yeah, well, let's talk about this admission of guilt in
your journal. I mean, who's keeping journals writing that you're
a killer? I mean, and so it's interesting now that
they're trying to overturn this conviction and say she's innocent,
and they're trying to explain away this journal. I'll read
the journal entry for you.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
Yeah, please do.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
I am evil. I did this. I don't deserve to live.
I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough.
I'm a horrible, evil person. There are no words. I
am an awful person. I pay every day for that.
I haven't done anything wrong and they have no evidence.

(18:53):
So why have I had to hide away like a criminal.
I'll never have children or mary and know what it's
like to have a family.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
I'm evil.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
I did this, but I'll never know why. So these
are like excerpts from her journal.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
Yeah, and they're authenticated, right, they're the I mean, it's
been confirmed that this is her writing and all of this,
and yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
The defense claims she was a woman under extreme pressure.
And they're not confessions. Uh huh. The prosecution argued that
they're exactly what. They're private admissions of guilt. And I
want to go back to what Shannon said about her
having this near death experience as a child or baby.
I heard that too, but I'm not sure where that

(19:35):
information came from because I went to go find it
again today and couldn't find it.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
That was a in several different informational pages about her,
but they didn't go into detail as to exactly what
it happened. I think she said she would frequently say,
I'm so thankful for the nurses that saved me.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
So I want to talk about that. So she had
an her death experience, she was saved, and like if
we want to think, what if she didn't want to
be saved, like the hand of God. Now she's coming
back and intervening with infants and preventing them from having
this life, Like she's not saving them she's letting them die,

(20:20):
people that are chronically depressed or feeling suicide or don't.
What are your thoughts about that she's now in this
position of power and these babies don't need saving, by
the way, they're already living. These are healthy babies, and
she's going back, she's intervening, playing the hand of God
and killing them. Is there some connection there, Craig, what

(20:41):
do you think?

Speaker 3 (20:42):
It's hard to know because we need context about like
how did she almost die? Was it due to the
actions of somebody, you know, like in health care or
someth you know where it's you know, or was this
just something that just happened that no one really is
responsible for, because I could see, like you know, we
can you know, this is not an exact parallel. But

(21:02):
you know, when you look at someone like Ted Bundy,
you know he's a prolific serial killer and a psychopath, right,
we know he's a psychopath because he was assessed and
so forth and all of that, and he even self
admittedly you know, indicated this. Well if you look at
his you know, he had this early really attachment like
deficit with you know, his mother, who essentially rejected him
right and left him, and so a lot of that

(21:23):
later behavior that need to kill and you know that
retribution against women and so on was a product of
that early childhood abandonment of his primary carrier, his mother, right,
And that's that's well documented. So I think, yeah, you
need to know because yes, some of this stuff that
happens to us as children can certainly impact our you know,

(21:46):
our psychological development. We know that right from a number
of you know, theoretical like models to talk about how
certain certain personality disorders have that you know, they have
a genetic vulnerability and then you have the environment that
certainly shapes the development of say a personality disorder. So
that would be important to know. Was someone responsible for

(22:07):
this her near death experience that she had as a child,
and how much of that did she actually remember? And
all of that's going to be important too because it
could have shaped you know, who knows, it could have
shaped some of this, you know, how she views the
healthcare system generally, and so.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, and she had never had I listened to a
documentary about her childhood and her family life. She had
very typical family mom, dad, a few siblings, I think,
and then she had a lot of childhood friends. Even
her childhood friends in the neighborhood have said, this cannot
possibly be the Lucy that we know. There's no way

(22:43):
she could do these things, And to this very day
they still stand behind her. Even her parents do, which
I mean, parents can be kind of wishy washy about
that sort of thing, but they didn't. They seem like
normal people. Yeah, who are being gobsmacked with the fact
their daughter killed a whole bunch of infants. I'd have
a hard time believing that about my own children.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, that would be a tough one, right, I mean obviously,
especially you know, again, she didn't have It doesn't sound
like her adverse child experiences that could have shaped the
development of a severe Surveyanni social personality.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
She was very well liked. She was a typical twenty
year old when she went through school and she's now
in her thirties. But she would go out and have
a good time with her friends, go salsa dancing. The
people at work had a hard time believing that was
her because she was very beloved by her co workers.
She never had a relationships with men or women.

Speaker 3 (23:36):
That's my next question is, so I'm wondering about that
piece because again, did she have did she struggle in
this area in terms of interpersonal relationships and was there
some kind of could that be one of the factors
that drove this.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
Very early on, she made it known she never wanted
to get married, and she was not known to have
boyfriends or any kind of intimate relations with other individuals.
And there was no statements that I can remember from
anybody stating that she had been sexually abused as a
child or been raped or anything like that, any komosexual assaults.

(24:14):
So yeah, that part kind of puzzles me, and not
so much that I want to I think it's maybe
a part of a larger puzzle. You have this otherwise
gregarious person going out and enjoying life and they don't
desire a relationship or an intimate personal relationship with anyone,
and they've said that from the age of like nineteen

(24:36):
or twenty.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Yes, that's there's an incongruence, right, So you know, if
you were to have told me that she doesn't desire
an intimate relationship, which is fun, there are people that don't,
but they also don't have good social relationships and they
and those are what we call those folks eazoid so
they tend to like a solitary lifestyle. They don't want
to be in a relationship, they don't want to get married,

(24:58):
they don't even really want to keep close friends. They
kind of just want to kind of be on their own.
And they're actually okay with it. But this is different.
This tells me there's there's something going on with you
know there, with that lack of wanting an intimate connection
with another person, right, and on an intimate level in
terms of, you know, an actual relationship. So that's curious.
I'm curious about that.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, I am too, And that's why I brought that up,
because it just didn't line up with her social life.
But then also you kind of wonder how much her
parents hid from the larger community. If you work long enough,
and you guys have worked long enough that when you
meet your client or you meet your patient, you're probably
also meeting their family and they rely on one another

(25:44):
to keep the facade going, right, It's like, yeah, they
look normal on the outside, but on the inside, it
is not normal. And I experienced that in healthcare, this
alternative thought process that you see your patient taking. They
would prefer to drink apple side or vinegar instead of
taking their insulin to bring their blood sugar down, and

(26:06):
then the rest of the family walks in and half
of them are missing limbs from diabetes.

Speaker 3 (26:10):
From diabetes.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Yeah, but you see where the person laying in bed
got the idea that they didn't have to treat their
diabetes with insulin. They could drink apple side or vinegar
or I've seen that on several different occasions that affirmed
that families will cover I wouldn't say cover up, but
it's so normal to them to be as they are.
They've done such a good job of moving in society

(26:33):
like that into appear normal, and then you get underneath
the surface and you're just like young, ain't normal? Normal
is setting on a washing machine? Right? We all have
our issues.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
Yeah, a lot of family secrets are hidden, right. The
outward projection to their friends and coworkers and such might
not reveal what's really going on inside that family behind
those closed doors. So yeah, it's an interesting one. So, yeah,
there's no psychological information available for her because you know, again,
they may have done evaluations, but they certainly haven't come

(27:07):
out in the in the you know, in the public.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
If the defense had her evaluated. They're keeping that under
wraps because they don't want people to know she's a psychopath.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
That's exactly right. And I'm retained by the defense all
the time. I do the psycho val and I see
what I see, and I'm telling you that psychic val
does not see the light of day, and there are
reasons for that. I just consulted on a criminal defense
case and it was like, I am telling you all

(27:36):
the things about this person, but that's never going to
make it out there, and the defense knows that. So
she didn't testify at her trial. She is not speaking,
and I think I understand she didn't even attend her
own sentencing hearing, and so all that tells to me
there are secrets, and I can imagine what some of

(27:59):
those are, but they're not going to be revealed and
maybe not for many, many years. But I can guarantee
you any good criminal defense journey has had her evaluated
by a forensic psychologist, and they are not playing that
hand at that time because it doesn't serve their case.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
If there was.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
Something in there that helped her case anything right, any
mitigating factor like she was on the spectrum, or she
had suffered from depression, or she was abused, well, let's
just say she was abused, or certain things that are
family secrets. We're not going to talk about that. We're
shutting the lid on that.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
Well, they have and this is in the United Kingdom,
and I believe it's still true in the UK that
you have an NJI defense as well. There's no evidence
that they played that, and that would suggest that there
wasn't or is not, any serious mental illness in other words,
not a personality disorder, but a serious male illness present.
But that's something that you know, again, as a forensic psychologist,

(28:59):
we would if say the defense hired us, we would
evaluate that client, and if we identified the presence of
say a severe anti social personality architecture, that's not going
to get disclosed, you know, because we're not going to
use that report. That's going to be considered a you know,
an attorney work product thing. And they wouldn't necessarily offer
that unless the court ordered it. If the court ordered

(29:20):
the evaluation, that's totally different. But if the defense is
doing that independently, which they can do, they're not going
to show that hand right unless it was favorable to
them in terms of mitigation. Okay, there's postpack stress, there's
there's trauma induced, you know, a trauma here, et cetera.
We're offering this as mitigation in some way.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
Can we talk about the insanity defense on another nurse case?

Speaker 3 (29:43):
Sure? Yeah, which one?

Speaker 1 (29:45):
Sure, let's get Jolly Jane Night nurse from Hell shents
to thirty one murders by injecting them with morphine and atrophine.
So this was in massive you said, so, this is
in the eighteen eighties, nineteen oh one.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Listen to this.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
She got off sexually. She was getting sexual pleasure from
what patients die slowly as she held them in her arms,
as they faded away, and she said, just to feel close.
She was declared insane and committed to an asylum for
her life.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
Her goal, she.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
Didn't keep a notebook, by the way, and wasn't documented
to have any remorse. Her goal was to kill more
people than anyone else ever had. Thirty one Night Nurse
from Hell. So I already have trust issues, and now
if I'm ever hospitalized, every one of these nurse profiles

(30:51):
is going to be playing in my head.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
She like Nurse Ratchet. Keep in mind that was eighteen
late eighteen hundreds now in Massachusetts. Yes, the insanity offense
has been around since then. The insanity of defense, just
so the audience knows, has been around for several hundred years.
It actually the mednoton rule, which is the original sort
of legal standard, is a common law doctrine that actually
came from a case out of England. I hope I'm

(31:17):
citing that correctly, but I believe that's where the case
is sourced. But it's you know, the United States adopted
this standard, you know, back in the late eighteen hundreds
is when this kind of came into being. But back
then we didn't have a DSM. We didn't understand or
really know how to classify psychopathy and personality sort so

(31:37):
everything got lumped into insanity, like you know, just personality
pathology was disconsidered insanity. So this woman clearly evidence of
psychopathy here. She got sexual gratification from watching people die.
You know, we see this sexualized connection and a lot
of sexual statists who are serial killers. That's how they

(31:58):
get their satisfaction. They get it's sexually gratified from inflicting
the pain on somebody else, right, or watching somebody die.
We've got several serial killers that have done that. This
is not someone with quote mental illness, And the audience
needs to also know there's a difference between serious mental
illness and serious severe personality pathology. They're two different things.

(32:22):
The personality pathology does not qualify somebody for a not
guilty by reason of insanity defense. So she was tried
today under today's standards, that defense would likely not be successful.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
No, and I think up until the end, she maintained
that she was not mentally ill. She said, no, I
am in my right mind. They sent her to a
mental institution against her will.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
And that's true, She's not mentally You were talking about
this current case, and when we're talking about the eighteen hundreds, yes, yes.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
What's also interesting is that's back around the time they
started being able to test blood samples for levels of opiates,
and that's one of the ways they found her to
be the reason why people died. I thought that was
fascinating because I thought that didn't start happening till like
thirties or forties, But now does started happening around that time.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
Well, let's move forward to the nineties. From nineteen ninety
three to nineteen ninety five, Orville known as the geriatric
grim Reaper. This should be a red flag if you
were hiring him, and he said, quote, old people are sick, grouchy,

(33:34):
and have too many problems. They should be gassed.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
They still do not have a proper count on how
many people he killed. He confessed he was convicted on six,
but when they crossed checked time cards, he was present
for one hundred and thirty deaths out of one hundred
and forty seven between the years of nineteen ninety three
and nineteen ninety five.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Vermilion County Hospital, Indiana. He had potassium chloride to induce
cardiac arrest. So geriatric grim Reaper. His specialty was taking
the old people right across the border to the other side.

(34:16):
He's serving life in prison without parole. That was in
two thousand and he's deceased. He died in custody in
twenty seventeen. I'm sure he was old and grouchy and
had a lot of problems.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
He was actually loved by all of his patients. And
what he would do is if he thought you were
too fussy as an old person, he'd take you out.
He didn't want to have to put up with you.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
Now, that sounds very narcissistic, like as soon as you
don't love me. And he was called the Angel of Death,
and so he may have been an angel to some,
but for the others they got the death. So it's
a very love hate situation. Well, let's talk about another.

Speaker 3 (35:01):
How about the ones where we have got or a
hero conflx where someone is coming in, you know, they
want to save. They're histrionic, right, narcissistic, they want that validation,
They want to be seen as the heroes. I think
we have one of those.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
Oh, the savior with a syringe. That's a good one.
So Janine Jones, the death shift nurse. This is a
pediatric clinic, Texas Pediatric Clinic and hospital. This isn't the
late seventies or eighties. So Janine was convicted of two

(35:37):
murders but suspected in killing sixty infants. And he just
thrived on being a life saver, so he would cause
the emergency and then he knew when.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
That emergency was happening, and then he shows up right well.
And it was interesting that the method by which he
used was did jockson, which is okay, okay, but he
also used heprin heprin had sex and nicoline, which is
a paralytic. I can see the ditch and the sex
and a colin, but hebrid doesn't kill you quickly.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
Hepbred's a bloodthitter, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (36:11):
It is?

Speaker 3 (36:12):
But he would cause a cardiac event, the rest and
then event and then come in and be this because
he would know what he was doing, right, and then
he would come in and he would be there to
you know, revive or you know, stabilize that patient, right,
and then he's then seen as the hero.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
So the sex of colin, that's the paralytics. So tell me, Shannon,
what happens in a paralytic? What happens to their body?
If I'm injected with that.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
Your muscles all the way down to your diaphragm stop working,
you stop breathing, and you're awake. It does not knock
you out. In the process of putting somebody under for intubation,
putting the breeding to you down, or for a surgical procedure,
your first given a sedative like propofol, fentanyl, a few

(36:59):
others that at caesiologists could probably speak more to that,
and then you're given a paralytics so you don't move
so sex Nicoline is one of those deep muscle relaxers
slash paralytics, and you literally you stop breeding and you're awake.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
Okay, this is what my nightmares are made of.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
You're trapped. You're trapped in your own body.

Speaker 3 (37:22):
You're trapped in your body. You can't like call for
help or any healing.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
So he was sentenced to ninety nine years in nineteen
eighty four, and then there was some legal loop hole
where he was eligible for early release, but they filed
new charges against him in twenty seventeen, and in twenty
twenty he got re sentence for killing an eleven month old.

(37:46):
So he deliberately created chaos and then played the hero.
And that's a theme we see in this. You know,
when we hear Munchausen syndrome by proxy, sometimes we'll hear
about that in a minor caregiver to their child, but
this is in the nursing so that caregiver position, so

(38:06):
you know, sometimes he'll poison or make your child sick
and then you help them. And I've seen that. I
do see it more often in females with their children,
and there's a lot of cases about that. There's a
couple other cases here that we could talk about.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
I want to talk about Charles Cullen confessed to killing
forty people, but he was convicted I think only on seventeen.
How he got through the system is he moved through hospitals.
In sixteen years, he was in ten different hospitals and
two different hospitals suspected him of causing deaths, and instead

(38:42):
of addressing it, they just fired him.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
He was a traveling nurse for the worst time.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
That's how often he was getting hired, like permanently positioned higher.
He had a history of harming animals. He also had
a history of and schizophrenia. He used to talk to
cats running down the street naked. His wife ex wife
divorced him because she was scared of him. Like there

(39:12):
wasn't a whole lot of details about the divorce, but
that he was injuring their dogs. Let's see, he was
let go from one hospital for stealing non scheduled drugs,
and these are the drugs that he was suspected of
using of killing people. So hospitals knew and they fired him.
They did not reveal it to local authorities. I don't

(39:33):
remember how they even found out that he was doing this. Oh,
I do know a nurse that he used to work with.
She put two and two together and then did a
shift report on deaths, and it revealed that he had
a higher number of deaths on his shifts than any
other shift in the hospital. And so he was they

(39:54):
have his investigation started based on circumstantial evidence. But then
they I think they actually exhamed a few bodies and
discovered lethal doses.

Speaker 3 (40:02):
No, I because I want to ask you this, because
this is the important Do you think there's a culture,
you know, in the healthcare industry generally, and particularly in
impatient hospital settings where again administrators, instead of say calling
authorities and initiate a formal investigation, they just do what
you said. They either fired the employee or they reassigned them,

(40:22):
you know, in other words, they're not taking responsibility for
you know, what could potentially be criminal conduct. Because again
I worked back in my law enforcement days, I was
assigned to a large healthcare campus, a very large hospital
in the Sacon area. I won't name it, but you
know I worked. I saw how that hospital system operated,

(40:43):
and I saw and particularly in California, the California the
associated called the californ and nurses association, very powerful union
that is very protective of their members and such. And
what I noticed is that very difficult to discipline and
to terminate nurses, at least in California. And I don't

(41:05):
know if that's true, you know, across the country, but
I just wonder about that. You know, It's kind of like,
you know, in law enforcement, there's this code of silence
that goes on where you know, you know, officers don't
report other officers are engaging misconduct that kind of stuff,
And I just wonder how much that's goes on in
the healthcare system, you know, amongst nurses and other healthcare professionals.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
As you can see when these cases, the hospitals were
more afraid of getting in trouble with the nurse they
were trying to fire rather than protecting patients.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
Yes, so in other words, worried about are we going
to get soon because of a rawful termination, are we
going to suffer liability? Or is the union going to
come in and create problems for us? So you know,
these administrators they worry about that's, you know, more than
they worry about patient care patient safety. And I just
wonder about that, you know, are we too protectionistic, you know,

(42:00):
in this context of the employees, and that's what's allowing
you know, some of these serial killers to get away
with what they're getting away with.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
I actually have personal experience with a off balanced reaction
to mistakes versus say, like narcotics abuse. So I'll tell
my own personal story and it's not anything nefarious. There
was a nurse that complained about me about having a

(42:29):
spent vial of adavan in my pocket. So it was empty,
but I had like say one or two micro and
Adavan is notorious for being very thick and you can't
draw the full dose out of the vial, so you're
always going to have like a smidge and leftover. Well,
when I'd given the adavan, it was a seizing patient

(42:50):
and they were like dozens of people in the room,
and so I could not get to the Sharp's container
box to put the Adavan in the Sharp's container bought.
We'd already scanned it, we'd already given it. There was
like a million people who saw me draw it out
of the vial, like I'm not injecting it into my veins, right, Yeah,
I'd put the viol in my pocket to deposit later.

(43:11):
I'd gone to the restroom, and I had all these
tissues in my pocket and I threw away the tissues.
While I accidentally threw away the vial of adaban. Another
nurse saw it in the trash can and turned me
in for it. So I got two weeks of administrative
leave while all of my blood tests and urine tesking

(43:32):
back negative. Of course, because.

Speaker 3 (43:33):
Yeah, yeah, they're having you tested, right.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
They were that quick to like I didn't even finish
the shift. We were in the middle of a very
busy er shift, and they had me go home and
then come back the next day for all this drug testing.
And I'm like, I've never had an off narcotics account.
I've never had any reason. And then they'd come up

(43:58):
with these other circumstances things, and I was just like,
but you know that that was going on, Like my
scan rates were off because I kept getting put in
the back. They were looking at my scan rates of
all medications, and we had a week where our computers
were down, the scanners to scan medications, they were all broken.

(44:20):
So they use that as evidence to bring me in
for drug testing too, and I was just like, okay, whatever,
So they were super quick to put me on administrative
paid administratively. They paid me that money back right for
those two weeks after I came up negative. Obviously, I've
never used a benzo a day in my life, but
I've seen a nurse get into a knockdown, screaming fight

(44:41):
in the middle of an er with another worker in
the er. The same nurse misgendered a trans person deliberately
and told them to their face in front of everybody,
I'm not calling you by your chosen name, this is
your gender. I mean, like screaming at people. And they

(45:03):
put they they thought about it for about a week
and suspended him for like two weeks and then brought
him back. And I was just like, nobody likes working
with him. He's like one of those people that you
see him on shift and you're just like, oh my god,
do they hate me for putting the art? I mean?

(45:23):
And it was knowledge gap was there. It was like
talking to him was like talking to a brand new
grad student, even though he'd been a nurse for a
Really the imbalance the reactions I've seen it be so
way off, Like me being sent on administrative leave the
night someone suspects me of drug use. But you've got
somebody who is creating a personal human resources nightmare with

(45:48):
pissing people off and being rude and hostile work environment,
and it takes an Act of Congress to get him
even put on administrative leave, and they still bring him back.

Speaker 3 (45:57):
And you're just like, yeah, that's by talking about it's like, yeah,
there's a seems like they're missing well obviously, you know,
because we could see from these cases they're actually missing,
you know, not seeing the forest for the trees, or
they're just they're missing like the bigger things. They're focusing
and dwelling on less consequential things, and then they're missing

(46:18):
some of the bigger warning signs.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
Well. In the case of the Chabnosky case, I learned
later on, so I remember we talked about how from
the time he died until the time he went to
the medical examiner's office, it was the medical examiner that
called the family and told him the liver was missing.
It was not the hospital. It was a medical examiner
that called and put in the word for an investigation

(46:45):
to be done. It was not risk management of the hospital.

Speaker 3 (46:47):
The hospital was trying to keep it, you know, keep
it under wraps.

Speaker 2 (46:50):
Wow, But that's how they operate if there is a
mistake made unless it's so egregious. Even when it's egregious,
hospitals going to tell you hospital is not. They don't
have to.

Speaker 3 (47:05):
Yeah, that's that's the risk management strategy.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
So and I've seen this actually a couple of times
in medical charts I reviewed, Guy walks out, he can't
use his arm. I've found so many mistakes in that chart,
but the family had no idea. The hospital never told
on what actually happened. It was me investigating, doing my
own forensic analysis and criminal investigation of that chart to

(47:29):
find million and a half million and a half is
what he got. And I was just like, and then
and then the case of these cases where these nurses
were immediately anytime a person in a hospital is suspected
of doing anything, what is the harm of putting them
on paid leave for a couple of weeks while you

(47:49):
check into it. I think it would create more trust
in the hospital system, right, I mean that's just to me,
is like, but because of that, you know, we've got
notes of nurse after nurse after nurse of physicians who
cause serious issues, and the hospital is like, well, we

(48:09):
just won't tell people.

Speaker 3 (48:11):
We're gonna sweep another.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
Charles Colin worked in nine hospitals from New Jersey to Pennsylvania.
He was the death commuter. He was a traveling nurse.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
So how did that not make it way on his
nursing license. These are state run boards that give nurses
permission to work in those states. None of those complaints
made it on his license.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
So he actually got letters of recommendation, so despite suspicion,
spikes and deaths, and then he was allowed to resign
and then quietly move on being recommended. So he's serving
eleven consecutive life sentences. He was sentenced in two thousand

(48:56):
and six. So it looks like this inspired some systematic
reform in the hospital reporting and nurse background checks. And
I have somebody I went to school with. I won't
name them. They became a nurse, but they're an absolute alcoholic.
The number of DUIs is three or four, a few

(49:20):
assaults in out of jail, has a drinking problem. Traveling nurse,
by the way, got in a wreck on the way
to a morning shift.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
Drinking in the morning.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Yeah, ran away like I don't know how he was.
He kept continuing to work and I just every.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
Well, that's he's in California, right, He's in California. That's
your answer. Luck getting someone's license suspended in California. Seriously,
any professional license, it's very difficult.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
So he's drunk on his way to work every day.
And I'd always talked to his ex wife and I go,
how does he still have a nursing license a year
after year? And I go, because he was just he
wasn't even fit to parent. He you know, that was
all gone, everything dissolved. So he he's just so traveling nurse,
watch out traveling nurses. So he just went to different places.

(50:08):
And so you could do a short stint and be like,
you can.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
Keep it together for those six weeks you're at those places. Yeah,
because that's usually how long contracts used to be.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
Short term loocom's contracts, Yeah, the short term ones.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
And all they do is if you have issues at
the hospital, they just ask you to not come in
for your next chef. There's no formal firing process. They
just call your agency and said, don't send that nurse
back to us.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
So let's talk about the Canadian killer.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
Which one was that Elizabeth wet law Fer.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
Convicted of eight murderers plus four attempted murders and two
aggravated assaults. This is from two thousand and seven to
twenty sixteen in Ontario, Canada. She was working in long
term care homes and private residents and her method was

(51:02):
insulin overdoses to elderly patients. And she says her hands
were guided by God, and she said she was only
relieving their suffering. And she confessed to a pastor. So
she was very religiously preoccupied. And her diagnosis so she

(51:29):
had some substance use problem, not shocking. I don't know
what it was. But she was in rehab in and
out and she was diagnosed with border line personality disorder
and she was psychiatrically hospitalized. So she was arrested in
twenty sixteen and she pleaded guilty. She's serving a life

(51:49):
sentence in prison twenty five years with no possibility of parole.
So this triggered some inquiry into the oversight of nurses
in Ontario, like how did we get here? So it
took cases where many people are dying. You know what
systems are in place? And if we look at private residences, right,

(52:14):
what are the checks and balances? Not really much?

Speaker 3 (52:17):
I mean they do a background check right in terms
of a criminal history check, and they do drug screenings
and all of that stuff, and they might check a
couple of your references. But one of the things that
they don't do this is for any healthcare professionals, they
don't do a psychological evaluation. And that's something that you know,
We've talked about this for other professions as well, in
terms of like, for example, for psychologists, should there be
some psychological screening? And there's lots of sort of arguments

(52:41):
for and against this, but I'm curious about what you
think about that, about whether should there be some type
of psychological you know, the screening process just to ensure
that someone is not experiencing a serious substance use problem
or other major psychiatric or psychological or emotional in ternal
like some problem, because you know the difficulty for them

(53:03):
in their work.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
I think, just like we do pilots. I mean, you're
flying a million dollar pieces of equipment, you need to
have a psychological screening because not only will you kill yourself,
it waste that there's millions of dollars and you could
potentially kill others. You know, if they demand it for them,
why not we as nurses are handling potentially lethal medications
if not used properly, or if you've got a psychiatric problem,

(53:27):
you use them improperly.

Speaker 3 (53:29):
Right, yeah, I mean the doctors. Yes, they can have
access to the medicines, but who's administering the medicines? Right,
Generally it's the nurse.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
It's nurses and antithesiologists, and in some other cases you've
got other specialties that are using them. But I personally
wouldn't oppose for my own psychological screening just to prove
that I am a safe person to practice.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
We've already evaluated you, Shanton.

Speaker 3 (53:51):
You just didn't know it.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
But keep talking, and I'm diagnosing right, Well, I give
you the results.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
Actually, everybody listening has already diagnosed all three of us.
They've like forms about us.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
I have suspicions about myself, but you know it. I'm
in therapy. It's it's good. We're good. Nobody's called on
mind Baker acted. I think a yearly psychological examination of
any healthcare worker that has access to the means to
seriously harm someone, whether it be with a scalpel or medications,

(54:27):
should receive psychiatric screening, and not just because there might
be an undiagnosed issue. But look at all of us
who went through COVID. That was traumatic. It was very
traumatic for a lot of us to experience. There are
a lot of nurses who have stepped away from bedside

(54:47):
because of the level of mental strain that we experienced.

Speaker 3 (54:55):
A lot of physicians I'm left too.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
Yeah, that we've had some nurses and physicians commit suicide
over it. I know that working in the er. I've
gone from a room where I just coded a patient
and they passed away and I had to go next
door and take care of a sore throat. There is
no downtime between death and taking care of otherwise healthy patients.

(55:23):
That's a lot.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
And Craig, let's talk about the shit storm you had
the other day at the psych facility.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
So just another day inside you know, an acute care
psychiatric facility. Well, so, yeah, you're talking about the patient
that isn't mentally ill necessarily but has a probably some
severe personality pathology. Is that what you're referring to, or
the staff.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
I'm talking about the one that had a handful of shit.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
Yes, the inappropriate behaviors that again, sometimes it's psychiatric. Sometimes
someone's decompensated to the point where you know, they're not
in touch with reality and do play with their bodily
fluids and throw things and that kind of stuff. And
that happens more in correctional in forensic settings where we
see this happen frequently. So that's a setting where you know,

(56:11):
healthcare workers are getting exposed to you know, there's nurses
and there's other you know, support staff in these facilities
like where I work, who are being assaulted, okay and
who and I just got into an interaction that resulted
in the assault as well this last week in this facility.
So that causes a lot of stress, you know, particularly
for the nursing staff that are working in these facilities.

(56:33):
And yeah, that's certainly you know, not doesn't happen in
all settings, right, you know that you're probably not going
to encounter or people working healthcare workers may not encounter
that to that degree, like working in a hospital in
a regular community hospital. But yeah, when you start working
correctional and you work forensic, you're going to see all
kinds of you know, behaviors like that that are directed

(56:54):
at a staff that are sometimes volitional, meaning they're just
it's due to a person disorder, not necessarily a mental illness,
and that burns people out. You know, there's so much
turnover in the facility where they're constantly bringing in new
people because you know, the staff they don't stay because

(57:14):
they burn out. They just get stressed out. Same thing
in the correctional setting. You know, in the prison systems.
You know, like even in I don't know about in
Florida and other states, but I know in California there
are constantly, you know, nursing physician and psychologists positions constantly
open in these places because they can't keep people even
though the pay it's some of the top pay you

(57:36):
can get. They offer incentives to get people in and
then you know, they get in there and you go, oh,
this isn't what I thought it was going to be.
It's like I got people like, you know, they're throwing
bodily fluids at you know, at you, they're trying to
assault you, this kind of stuff. So you can see.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
So my role is, you know, I don't want to
be involved in those high risk, high liability situations. And
you know, my sister's traveling nurse. She just graduated with
her nurse practitioner license and she's going to start her
two year residency here in a couple of weeks. So

(58:13):
in between the two weeks, she's taken some shifts traveling nurse.
And interestingly, so she comes in and they just after
a day of training, they're like, can you work night
shift all by yourself, all alone in a big building
with the risk is so high? In course, she declined,
you can decline those situations that I decline them when

(58:37):
you're saying this succeeds what I could do.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
There's not enough staff.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
They need your license, they need to check the box
that they have this license, whether you're a psychologist, nurse, whatever,
to run this thin skeleton crew. But you're like, no,
it's all on my license. If anything happens, if anyone
dies and I can't get to them, it's on me.
It's on me. It's on my license. So when you

(59:03):
see that, you just say no. And a lot of
nurses like you're pressed for money and you just take
the shift, and you're like and then something tragic happens, Well,
you definitely can say no. And that's why I don't
take some of those jobs, because I evaluate the risk
and I'm like, it's not it's not worth my license.

Speaker 3 (59:23):
Well, it's also not worth getting sued by you know,
and again in these frivolous lawsuits to get filed again,
and depending on the setting, if you're working forensically, right,
I'm talking forensic settings. I got sued when I worked
in the print and doctors get sued all the time,
and majority of the time these are frivolous lawsuits. The
inmates file these because they get to file them for free,
they get access to you know, legal help to do that.

(59:46):
They tie these cases up for years. The state then
has to hire, you know, they have to have the
attorney general then represent you the state, and the employee
now has to be represented, and you get drugged through
a lawsuit, you know, and that can involve in irrogatories, depositions,
and you know, in my case, the suit got dismissed
with pretches, meaning that it had no merit warranting you know,

(01:00:09):
further progression. But it took three years for that to happen.
That's a lot of stress and knowing that this was
completely frivolous. It doesn't matter because anybody could sue anybody basically.
So there's all these different things that I think healthcare
professionals I have to think about with the setting they
work in can create a lot of stress for them,

(01:00:31):
you know, and that can cause people to go over
the you know, go over the edge unfortunately and start
to do things, you know, cut corners or do things
that get them in trouble.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
I've seen a few that developed drug and alcohol addictions. Absolutely, yeah,
it's their only way of coping. Alcohol is a legal drug, right,
I know you're if you have problems going to sleep
after a shift, let me knock back one or two,
you know, when it turns into six twelve. Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
I worked at a place and that nurse was totally
under the influence. As evidence by she was a fall risk,
Like put a sticker on her fall risk. Like you're
walking down the hallway weird, ma'am, and I need you
to go home. You're not safe. You sit down and
it's obvious, Guys, get her out of here. For all
the liability reasons we can think of. She's not safe

(01:01:22):
for herself. She's not safe to drive home, Like someone
call her taxi under the influence and she's slurring words.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
I'm like, is anyone else see this? Like, so let's
talk about.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
We have one more nurse. We got to give her
attention because she she certainly needed to gain attention and
praise from staff and grieving patients. Right Beverly allt So
she worked in Grantham in Kesteven Hospital in England. She
murdered for patients and seriously harmed nine. This was a

(01:01:59):
nineteen ninety one one and another angel of death.

Speaker 3 (01:02:03):
Wonder why a lot of these cases are happening in England.
That's interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
It's like, are you noticing that I.

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
Have a theory about England?

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
Oh? Do tell?

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Do tell? So I've always gotten in a medical documentary
since I was a kid, and the most interesting birth
defects come out of England that I have ever, Like
they don't happen very commonly in other parts of the world.
And I will say I love people from England. I'm

(01:02:31):
not bashing them at all. But if you think about it,
you know, like Queen Victoria was the mother of the
Empress of Russia that was murdered. She was also married
to her cousin like they did a lot of consanguinity
in English royalty, French and Spanish royalty.

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):
A lot of the DNA diversity is what I'm hearing here,
there's one not enough, No, too close. The family trees,
they're a little too close together.

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
And with England being such a small island, yes, and
the twenty three and me, you know, all the DNA
testing that's coming out, there's stories of people getting their
twenty three and me's back and finding out that their
father was really their uncle, or they're really married to
a cousin.

Speaker 3 (01:03:21):
Yeah, this goes back to the days are for real.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
I was just gonna do twenty three in me and
my family's all into it. Everyone's done it. There's like
hundreds of profiles in there.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
I feel pretty safe at this point.

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
But like a serial killer because they'll track you with
them well.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
And it's also an incredibly small island with a lot
of very high population count and so you know, per
per square mile, you're probably going to have more psychopaths.
I just understanding genealogy, understanding how intermarriage was normal up
until like nineteen fifty. Queen Elizabeth with married to her

(01:03:57):
own cousin. He was a cousin, yeah, a first cousin,
so that was not unusual. And the hemophilia that was
in Russia that came from Queen Victoria.

Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
Yeah, that's my theory. They also like to sensationalize things
over there. They're tabloids are We have the National Inquirer.
They have like twelve publications over there that will I mean,
you burp the wrong way. They're going to write about it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:26):
Lots of historic sort of personality stuff going on over
there like this.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
Yeah, they got nothing else better to do over there.

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
Well, I wonder if this Beverly alet made the front page.
So she is being held in a secure psychiatric facility.
So she's the one that killed four people, injured or
harm nine, So psychologically, let's talk about her. So she

(01:04:56):
wanted attention and praise from staff and from grieving parents,
and she wore a special Teddy Bear pin on her
uniform while injecting toddlers with lethal doses of insulin and
sometimes potassium injections and sometimes Shannon suffocation wearing her Teddy

(01:05:18):
Bear pin. Okay, so people thought she had fictitious disorder,
and Craig, you want to talk about that.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
So faicticus disorder is the newest way of the way
we classify what used to be called Munchezm's syndrome or
and then munchezm's quite proxy, so it's now facticus disorder.
And so generally what that just means is and again
you're correct that women tend to be more likely to
get this diagnosis than men, although it can be both.

(01:05:47):
But in this case, or in the case of fictious disorder,
the primary aim is attention seeking through inducing some sickness
in somebody that you're closely connected to. And usually that
would be a child, but it could be also an
adult as well, but it's generally somebody that's under your care.
You're usually a caregiver or in some caregiving role, and

(01:06:11):
your need for that reinforcement validation is achieved through making
the child sick and then taking the child to get
care in most cases, and then that's kind of how
that generally will develop. Now, in her case, she caused
the death of at least four correct, So even though

(01:06:33):
that's from what I see from when I looked at
this case, is that that was the diagnosis she got.
She got a fectitious disorder diagnosis. That was my understanding.
But I'm wondering about if that was all she should
have gotten.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
Well, I wonder if with those medications as she gave
she was intending for them to survive, so she intervened
knowing or hoping that they would survive, and it was
really not something she intended on doing. But I mean,
that's just what stands out to me.

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
I guess you could, Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
The suffocation. You can bring people back from anaxia, but
then if the patient dies on your care, you're still
getting a lot of oh you poor thing, blah blah,
you know, give me a hug.

Speaker 3 (01:07:17):
Oh you're getting this sympathy and all that kind of
So that's again, that's in the validation, and that the caregiver,
that's what they're getting out of it. So I mean, obviously,
if it may not be that the intention is, is
that that that child or that the person under their
care actually pass away, And so that goes to the
issue of intent right too. It's like, so if the
prosecution is prosecuting a case like this, you know, in

(01:07:39):
order to prosecute someone from murder, you have to prove
intent to kill, intend to kill, the specific intent. So
again this could be something that you know, defense could use.
So you see where I'm going with that. As mitigation.
If if it's fectious disorder, then they could try to
get the intent to kill removed and then it becomes
a voluntary manslaughter that that would be the the crime

(01:08:02):
that she could be found guilty of if in fact
there was no intent to kill. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (01:08:07):
So?

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
I have read though of people with fictitious or Munchausen
where the child died and the sibling starts getting sick.
So maybe that's like their intention was to cause the
slow death or the quick death and then they just
move on to the next patient.

Speaker 3 (01:08:26):
Yeah, I mean, it's not doesn't doesn't mean that that
there isn't some intent there possibly too, because again, they're
getting their internal needs met by engaging in this caregiver
role where you know, they're seen as hey, I'm poor me,
you know, I'm look at what I'm dealing with, right,
I've got this sick child all the time, and I
you know, and they're looking for validation, they're looking for support,

(01:08:47):
they're looking for the you know, that's those are the
psychological needs that they're trying to satisfy and by putting
and of course you know, they're poisoning their child or
doing whatever they're doing to garner that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
And anybody else noticed how many of these cases are
with children, Like you would think that attacking children would
be like the unspeakable thing to do because old people, Yeah,
they get on your nerves sometimes. I'm not condoning what
he did, obviously, but children are innocent and just asn't

(01:09:22):
like it makes no sense to me, like why would
you attack or kill a child other than the fictitious disorder?
And then a levels like but that's a leveles psychop
I mean, that's like, what is the name of the
movie that had Bruce Willison it the sixth sense. Yeah,
point was putting pine sal in like soup. So I
always think of that and just think of the facade

(01:09:43):
that she presented at the funeral and this really narcissistic
facade of just how people perceived her and grieving and
the tension she got. But really really think about it,
what kind of person they need that attack and they're
willing to do anything to get that. Really really think

(01:10:04):
about what it takes for those ingredients for that type
of person to go so far where you're spiking your
kids soup and they're sick in bed and you're playing
this victim. And I've worked in the psych hospital for
many years and I've had many sick patients and their
caregiver was sus and their labs were showing up crazy,

(01:10:29):
And I would never put too much faith in your
caregiver alone, like there should be checks and balances, but
like obviously I have trust issues and thank you for all.

Speaker 3 (01:10:37):
Well, yeah, I mean that's because again it's not just spectitious.
There's other personality like architecture involved. There's historyonic, narcissistic. So
it's the cluster be stuff, right, we see again because
in the cluster b stuff, that's the erratic romatic cluster
in people. Attention seeking you know, behaviors is use you know,
primary historyonic, but the narcissistic is that sort of that

(01:10:59):
entitlement right in that grandiosity. It's like you want, you know,
your feeling, like I want sympathy, Give me sympathy now
because look at what I'm going through right now, right
with this sick child, et cetera. So it's a complex interplay.
It's not just you know, strictly sort of like we
call it fictitious disorder, but there's an underlying personality pathology
that drives it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
I've actually experienced. She was not diagnosed with fictitious disorder.
But I took care of a patient where we suspected
mom was, and it was interesting to see the family
dynamic because here is a patient who is in the
bed and who is very close to passing away because
of how sick she is. But the family was orbiting
the mother. It was like they were orbiting all around

(01:11:43):
her and trying to keep her okay, and the patient
was awake. The patient was awake and watching all of
this stuff going on, and we were just like to
be around her. Made my skin crawl. And when the
patient did eventually pass away, mother blamed it on us.
She threatened me, and then the rest of the family

(01:12:03):
came after me and a few other nurses. I'd only
taken care of the patient for like two hours, but
because I was there when she declined, which we were
not surprised she did. I just want to put that
out there, because I was there when they took her
to surgery and everything happened in surgery, and then the

(01:12:24):
rest of the hospital we had to put a what
do you call it, a no trespass were on her
and the rest of the family, and we had guards that
would walk us out to the car. A couple of
nurses found their cars vandalized.

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
Suh wow, okay, wow, Well shall we recap on the
killer nurses? So I think we covered all not Shannon. There,
you did not make the killer nurse Ross or Shannon.
Thank you so thank you for this important topic today,

(01:13:01):
Thank you for your time. Any final closing comments about
killer nurses today.

Speaker 3 (01:13:08):
Well, only that we didn't we're not diagnosing any of
these nurses are either alive or deceased with any disorder
because well, we didn't formally evaluate that. We're merely speculating
about what might be going on with them psychologically, you know,
based on publicly available information.

Speaker 1 (01:13:25):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:13:26):
That's my little disclaimer on that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:28):
Well, and I'd also like to say is we're not
saying that nurses shouldn't be trusted. I think there's many
of us out there who work really hard to take
the very best care of our patients and will put
ourselves in harm's way to do that on occasion, but
that it should be in the best interest of every
healthcare person who has the potential to cause somebody harm,

(01:13:49):
not deliberately, but to get a psychological evaluation. Why is
that an issue? Why should people who have that much
power over life and death not receive that kind of
a valuation.

Speaker 3 (01:14:01):
I agree. I think, like you said, in these sensitive
positions like this, the ones who are directly involved in
you know, the delivery of medications and it's the geology
and specific specialty areas, there should be perhaps you know,
some carve out for that right. And again that's a
regulatory thing and all this. You know that trust me
is going to be hard to get implemented, ever, because
there's going to be a lot of pushback from like

(01:14:23):
nursing associations or other medical associations because it's privacy violation
and all this other you know, people are going to
argue it's not necessary and all that stuff. But I
think it's somebody should start the conversation. That's a very
good point that pilots, police officers, people in sensitive positions
who have the public trust, you know, they all have

(01:14:44):
to be evaluated psychologically and they have to be cleared
before they can work be in their work.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
So and guests who can clear you psychologically, So doctor
Water and I can't we do that and we know
the risks as we discussed her today. So if you
need a psychological evaluation, and we do plenty of court
ordered ones, and I even do them for licensed professionals,
from pilots to psychologists to whoever you know use this resource,

(01:15:17):
contact us or have a plan in place. And of
course Shannon is amazing. She's a legal nurse console. She
can deep dive into those records. And I have a
case I want to talk to you about after we
get off today, but like using that specific expertise to
deep dive into the medication records in civil lawsuits where

(01:15:42):
there's a wrongful death and certain protocols and things in place,
So really looking closely at it. But thank you so
much for your time today. It was so insightful. Shannon.
I love talking with you, and of course Craig, thank
you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:15:58):
Thank you for having me on. It's all always fun
with you guys.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
Thank you for listening to Killer Psychologist. To watch full
video episodes or if you want to interact with me,
you can find Killer Psychologists on YouTube. You can also
get notified of new episodes by signing up in my
stand store. Now if you want to work with me,
you can book a console. My website is psychologydoctor dot com.

(01:16:26):
That's psychologydr dot com.