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Inquiry reveals serial killer nurse Wettlaufer’s firing was concealed after union deal
KELLY GRANT HEALTH REPORTER
TU THANH HA
ST. THOMAS, ONT.
PUBLISHED 1 HOUR AGO
UPDATED JUNE 5, 2018
Despite being fired for making a slew of medication errors, serial killer Elizabeth Wettlaufer was given a $2,000 payout and a positive recommendation letter saying she had resigned for personal reasons from the Woodstock, Ont., nursing home where she had secretly murdered seven patients.
The payout and letter of recommendation were part of a settlement that Caressant Care reached with Ms. Wettlaufer after she grieved her 2014 firing with the support of her union, the Ontario Nurses’ Association.
“When I was fired the union went to bat for me,” Ms. Wettlaufer later told lawyers for a public inquiry who interviewed her at a Kitchener, Ont., prison in February of this year. “Caressant Care, they had to seal my record, they gave me a monetary settlement, they gave me a letter of recommendation.”
Ms. Wettlaufer murdered one more patient at the Meadow Park Long Term Care facility in London, Ont., and attempted to murder two others – at the Telfer Place nursing home in Paris, Ont., and at a patient’s residence in Ingersoll, Ont. – after she was fired from Caressant Care.
The details of Ms. Wettlaufer’s departure from the Woodstock home emerged Tuesday on the first day of a public inquiry exploring how the province’s health-care system failed to stop Ms. Wettlaufer from injecting her patients with lethal doses of insulin.
Ms. Wettlaufer’s crimes went undetected until she confessed to a psychiatrist in 2016.
She later pleaded guilty to eight counts of murder, four counts of attempted murder and two counts of aggravated assault, saying she often felt a “red surge” of rage before she killed.
The public inquiry in a St. Thomas, Ont., courtroom began with Commissioner Eileen Gillese, a justice on the Court of Appeal of Ontario, briefly choking up as she welcomed the families of some of the victims and explained how the testimony would unfold over 10 weeks of hearings.
The co-lead counsel for the inquiry then entered into evidence four overview reports containing the detailed investigations that lawyers for the inquiry conducted into the facilities where Ms. Wettlaufer committed her crimes; the regulator for the nursing profession in Ontario; the coroner’s office; and the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, the government department that funds the provinces 628 long-term care homes.
A transcript of Ms. Wettlaufer’s Feb. 14, 2018, interview with three lawyers for the inquiry was also made public Tuesday.
The 253-page summary of the investigation into the facilities where Ms. Wettlaufer worked begins in 1995, painting a picture of a nurse who was constantly in trouble with her employers.
When she was fired from Caressant Care on March 31, 2014 – nearly seven years after she was first hired at the home – the final straw was an incident in which she gave a resident the wrong medication, resulting in distress for the resident.
The overview report summarizes a meeting that Caressant management held with Ms. Wettlaufer to terminate her employment.
“Letter identifies that EW has had extensive discipline for medication-related errors which includes numerous warnings and 1, 3 and two 5 day suspensions. As a result of the most recent incident, a termination is warranted.”
Ms. Wettlaufer grieved her firing the same day, the report says.
One June 11, 2014, Caressant Care and the union reached a settlement in which Ms. Wettlaufer received a $2,000 payout and a letter of reference that indicated she had left Caressant Care of her own volition to pursue other opportunities.
They agreed the letter would indicate that Ms. Wettlaufer was “a good problem solver and had strong communication skills” and was “punctual and enjoyed sharing her knowledge with others.”
The deal included a provision sealing Ms. Wettlaufer’s file, “except where required by law.”
However, Caressant Care still reported Ms. Wettlaufer’s termination to the College of Nurses of Ontario, which did not formally investigate her firing.
By the time the settlement with Caressant was finalized, Ms. Wettlaufer had already been hired by Meadow Park, a long-term-care home in London.
The overview report says that Ms. Wettlaufer admitted during her April 14, 2014, job interview at Meadow Park that she had been dismissed from Caressant Care for making a medication error with insulin.
Despite that, the report references a form that indicated Ms. Wettlaufer was accepted for employment the very next day.
In August of that year, Ms. Wettlaufer injected her final victim, Arpad Horvath Sr., 75, with a lethal dose of insulin at Meadow Park.
The victim’s son, Arpad Horvath Jr., said he was shocked when he read the documents outlining how Ms. Wettlaufer was hired at Meadow Park.
“It was just a giant cover-up,” he said in an interview outside the courtroom Tuesday. “Really? They’re going to do that? Keep her file sealed and not tell anybody and just pay her out? … My father might still be alive today [if not] for their screw-up. Yet nobody’s taking accountability. Nobody.”
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