Original subtitles

MAN: Woodstock Police received information that eight people

aged 65 to 96 had

been murdered at area nursing homes over a seven-year span.

They're dealing with a serial killer.

[theme music playing]

MAN: There's this thing inside of me, it's like...

the appetite.

It's like a wolf that's...

filling...the hunger.

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SAHNI: Wettlaufer believes she's the chosen one,

that God has chosen her to do important work,

that God has identified who should die next.

I think what that really is

is just good old-fashioned narcissism.

It's making herself more important

than she is as a person.

BERRILL: We never think of health care professionals

to be the type of individuals

that would consciously kill the people they're in charge of

taking care of, so she's got that as

a kind of interesting cover working for her.

♪♪

So this is an excerpt from notes

that nurse Wettlaufer wrote,

and she says, "James was known for inappropriately touching

"the staff -- that evening,

"I got the urge to overdose James.

I was angry that he was so inappropriate."

It comes across as very sterile clinical.

It's as if James is a problem.

James needs to die.

It might be revenge killing, because Wettlaufer talks

about how James was inappropriate

with the nursing staff.

MORGAN: But she's ignoring the fact of his condition.

If he made a pass at her, that may have been the last straw.

But the step into psychopathy is

deciding to kill him for that behavior.

My guess is what she's feeling relief

about is an internal sense of loathing.

It's a sense of self-hate.

It's a sense of rejection socially -- to kill Silcox

allows her to release that sense of conflict.

BERRILL: Rage usually starts early.

She's probably, slowly but surely since childhood,

been an angry person

and she finally found a place where she could safely enlist

her predatory skills.

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MORGAN: This is about her second victim,

and it says, "I was told by one of the nurses that

"Maurice had a bad habit of grabbing the staff's breasts

"and asses.

One afternoon, I was working, and I felt angry."

There's anger that is triggered by something related

to sex.

It's not specific revenge on this patient.

But he now represents something that she's going

to eliminate,

and so that triggers her psychopathic behavior.

When Wettlaufer says, "I felt a lot of guilt."

It's not over the murder.

She feels guilt because there's a conflict between

the part of her that went into nursing to

help people and the part of her that just took someone's

life because she was angry at them.

BERRILL: It's also interesting that she uses

the term ass -- ass is a vulgar word.

There's a clue there.

She doesn't really seem like she's socially

adapt or skilled with other people.

People reveal themselves through the language they use.

♪♪

Hydromorphone is an opiate.

The choice to use an opiate and get high I think was

a different direction of

trying to get that same stimulation or thrill-seeking

that she got from killing those two patients.

What often happens on narcotics --

your inhibitions

are reduced to the place where some

of those bad thoughts can come back.

The more she does that,

the more likely it is that the rage would re-emerge.

♪♪

She says, "Gladys had severe dementia and no longer talked.

"She was very stubborn and horribly difficult

to give pills to."

So her victim is a woman in this case.

We learn something new.

Women are eligible to be killed.

BERRILL: After laying off killing for about three years,

the bar seems lower for whom she's willing to kill.

She's choosing the weakest and the most vulnerable

to act this rage out on.

These people can't fight back.

They can't hurt her.

Some of them can't even talk.

She celebrates this woman decking another guy.

She laughs, she's invigorated by it.

But then, um, this woman that she can identify with now

becomes a pain in the ass, because she's demented

and giving her a problem.

This is where I think psychopathy becomes even

more prominent.

It doesn't matter now whether you're a man or a woman making

sexual or non-sexual comments.

The common denominator is you're irritating, and if you

irritate her, she decides you got to go.

♪♪

Wettlaufer started to write poetry.

Here is one of those poems.

"She watches some life drain from the notch

"in his neck vein -- as it soothingly pools,

"it smothers her pain.

Sweet stiletto, so sharp, craves another cut."

I really see that as murdering people helps her feel better.

And it makes me really wonder if there is

some sadistic piece of her

that enjoys watching them struggle.

♪♪

On the surface,

it makes her look like the super nurse on the unit.

But what we know is that she also knew that she was

essentially giving her

her last meal, and she had every intention of killing her

later that night.

BERRILL: She didn't have to give her blueberry pie and ice cream.

So she's playing with her.

She delights in killing someone,

and that's a very perverse delight.

To actually state that she laughed out loud after

killing her, I mean...

what kind of person does that?

Person didn't even annoy her.

SAHNI: Wettlaufer's showing us what it is to be a psychopath.

She enjoys the high, she enjoys the power.

This isn't about the patients at all

at this point, uh, Wettlaufer

has discovered something about herself

she didn't know -- she enjoys killing.

♪♪

This is a -- an excerpt from

the confession letter of, uh, Wettlaufer

about Mary Zurawinski.

"Mary bugged me, because she was outspoken

"and resistive to care.

"I was feeling very angry in general.

She died the next afternoon."

She's returned to some of

the old playbook signals -- if patient is annoying,

patient's got to go.

No.

She was fun to work with,

but she's also saying that Mary

essentially gave her permission to kill her.

The impulse control is very poor at this point.

MORGAN: Just because someone says, "I want to die,"

doesn't mean you have permission

to kill them or that you should kill them,

but it enables her psychopathy in the sense that she doesn't

even have to be annoyed.

It's about revenge

writ large -- revenge about whatever happened to me in

the past -- I'm gonna bite the world back.

She's plotting everybody's murder

while being sweet to them and taking care of them

and then ushers them right off to their death.

[knocking noises]

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This is what she has to say about Maureen and killing her.

"Maureen had a lot of behaviors.

"She would hit other residents or pull their hair.

"Then I got the idea that if I could cause her some

brain damage, she wouldn't be such a handful."

Wettlaufer is changing her motivations for killing.

Now, she's dealing with

patients where she doesn't even feel the urge necessarily

to kill them -- she just wants to control the situation.

SAHNI: It's terrifying to think about a nurse doing that.

Wettlaufer is making the decision to

handle these patients as if they're objects.

You really see an arrogance coming over Wettlaufer -- now,

it's just about making sure she doesn't experience stress.

MORGAN: She's not even saying, "It's a sign from God.

I should kill her."

She's going, "I just want to mutilate her brain

so she stops being such a pain in the ass,"

which is hostile and aggressive.

We are seeing this progression from killing men who are

sexually aggressive and abusive, and then it progresses

to general irritability.

She then picks on a victim who is defenseless.

This is psychopathy.

It's important to note that she turned herself in,

because she had an opportunity to work with children.

She says it's because she wanted to stop killing,

but it's not as easy to kill children without people

asking questions.

Even the pretense that this is driven by God is off the table.

She's mastered the art of being a nice person.

So she covers very skillfully how malignant she is.

She really is an angel of death,

and she's highly psychopathic.

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