Original subtitles

- We've had vulnerable military veterans

who just went to the hospital to get medical care

and they never went home.

- Ready.

Aim.

- None of them were expected to die when they were

admitted into this hospital.

- Pull.

- The medical examiner saw a bruising on the abdomen

of one of the patients that indicated an injection point.

These patients were given insulin, which killed them.

And so now, we're dealing with a murder case.

- So we're collecting sharps containers,

which include IV lines and IV bags.

- We did not have any surveillance footage.

There was no eyewitness.

We didn't know, was it a staff member?

Was it somebody coming off the street?

- We work with Facebook.

We end up recovering those messages.

One message, "I could kill this patient."

- You have access to their phone calls?

- Absolutely.

- There was one call in particular

that's absolutely gut-wrenching.

- It's tense beyond all belief.

- These were veterans who had served America,

and we don't have the luxury of time.

- Another death could be around the corner, really.

- Exactly.

- In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.

Drug busts,

mob stings,

terrorist takedowns.

- Get down! Get down!

- We understand why people want to tell stories about us.

- Mark it.

- Freeze! - FBI.

- FBI! - Action!

- But they don't know the half of it.

What really goes down,

we save that for each other

when we're talking agent-to-agent.

This is "FBI True."

- On the evening of June 27, 2018,

our duty agent received a call from the director

of the VA Medical Center in Clarksburg, West Virginia,

who wanted to report to CID that the facility

had identified a series of significant

hypoglycemic events, all of which occurred

on the same ward at the hospital

during a six-month time frame.

- When you say several hypoglycemic events,

were they injured?

In a coma?

Like, what's the result of that?

- Kristy Kottis is a 24-year veteran of the FBI.

She worked Gangs, Crimes Against Children,

as well as Human and Drug Trafficking.

- When those low blood sugars were recorded,

they were so low.

Eight of those inpatients had subsequently died.

- In fact, when you look at the medical records for these eight

patients, you see that they were expected to be discharged.

None of them were expected to die when they were

admitted into this hospital.

- We want to know, how did this happen?

Was this an accident, or are we dealing with a murderer?

- Jarod Douglas has worked in the US Attorney's Office

since 2012, prosecuting cases

involving national security, civil rights,

corruption and fraud.

- And these weren't just any patients.

These were veterans who had served America,

been deployed overseas,

and they were seeking treatment at the VA.

- Ashley Archibald joined the FBI in 2016.

She's worked cases involving white-collar crime,

violent crime, and international terrorism.

- There's very strong military ties

for the folks in West Virginia.

- And not only did each of these gentlemen

honorably serve their country, the majority of our veterans

were buried with full military rites and honors.

- All of them were hard-working fathers,

grandfathers, great-grandfathers.

- So we set up a command post in the basement

of the medical center and basically started tasking teams

with our partners, with the FBI here, to initiate interviews.

- Keith Vereb has been with

the Department of Veterans Affairs Office

of the Inspector General since 2008,

investigating violent crimes, drug offenses,

and fraud cases impacting VA personnel

and veterans themselves.

- We didn't know if there was a potential bad actor.

- We also don't have the luxury of time.

At that point, we haven't identified

what is causing these men to die.

- Another death could be around the corner, really.

- Exactly.

- We had a team set up for medical reviews

to determine a plausible medical explanation for this.

What was alarming here was that half of the inpatients

that were referred to CID, they had never had any issues

with blood sugar a day in their lives.

And then, as we started to learn about hypoglycemia,

our focus became a shift onto

what could cause it, which revealed insulin.

- These patients should not have received insulin,

and they were given insulin, which killed them.

And so now we're dealing with a murder case.

- And so number one concern at that point

is loss of more life, and we have to move quickly.

- From the investigative standpoint,

very early on, we learned that

they were going to be tremendous roadblocks

and obstacles in the way.

We did not have any surveillance footage.

There was no eyewitness.

There was not going to be a smoking gun in this case.

That ward, the Med/Surg Ward 3A, was unlocked.

Anybody could come, day or night,

and there was no tracking protocols for insulin

within the facility.

Anybody could have had access to that insulin

at any point in time.

- We really need to identify someone as soon as possible.

- Was it a fellow veteran?

Was it somebody coming off the street?

Was it a staff member?

- We're looking at, where could we collect evidence from?

If you're looking at insulin-related deaths,

where was the insulin administered, right?

So we're collecting sharps containers,

which include IV lines and IV bags.

- We were literally pulling sharps containers

off of the wall to get those to Quantico for analysis.

- We wanted to test for insulin.

Were there insulin present in those IV bags?

There absolutely shouldn't have been.

So we're obviously looking for direct evidence.

And in the absence of that,

you have to start building a circumstantial case.

- We had, first and foremost, wanted to interview the staff.

Had they seen anything?

Was there anything that was out of the norm?

- Not only did we have one of our VA OIG special agents

in the room, we also had a nurse in the room

from our Office of Health Care Inspections.

- And as we started to talk to staff, there was one employee,

and her biggest comment during that interview was,

"Things are being missed."

- Very early on, we didn't know if there was somebody

who had seen something, so we started

around-the-clock interviews.

And there was one employee, a nursing assistant

by the name of Reta Mays.

She was adamant, multiple instances

during that interview, that things were being missed.

- What are you learning about her?

- So not only was Reta a nursing assistant,

she herself was a veteran.

She had been deployed to Iraq in mid-2000s,

had worked at the hospital for several years prior

to the investigation starting.

People are saying pretty positive things about her.

Nurses talked about to help out,

she would go above and beyond what her actual duties were.

In 2016, she had won Nursing Assistant of the Year

for her work on the ward.

- So looking at it as a prosecutor at this point,

she's showing some genuine concern.

- Like she really cared about them.

She stressed in that interview.

- The case was in its infancy.

We didn't have any direct evidence.

So one of the things that we wanted to do

was determine who, from the facility standpoint,

could have been working when all these events occurred.

Let's pull time cards.

There's about 1,200 employees that work at that facility.

- That's a lot.

- And what we identified was about four employees

who were working on or around when the events occurred.

- You had the psych ward employee,

and then you had a respiratory therapist

who does roam the hospital.

The other one was in ICU.

And one of the clear-cut, alarming things that we saw

was that there was one 3A employee--

That was working on or around

when all these events occurred--

Reta Mays.

- Just based off of time card data,

there was one employee who was working on 3A--

Reta Mays.

In fact, she was the only 3A employee

that was working when all of these

hypoglycemic events occurred.

- But there weren't reports of her

administering any kind of medications,

which were way outside her bounds.

There weren't reports of her handling medication,

even in the medical room.

- Was there somebody who knew a heck of a lot more

about insulin, about hypoglycemia,

about how to administer it, put it in the IV?

Because here again, she's an uncertified,

untrained nursing assistant.

And as a nursing assistant, if there is a clinical aspect

to the position, the most medical thing

that she would be doing would be taking fingersticks,

which you would use to check blood sugar levels.

We did a blind forensic audit of the blood sugar readings

that were recorded on the glucometer,

which essentially captures the fingerstick readings.

- Right.

- And there's a way to look on the glucometer,

the fingerstick machine, and see the employee ID.

- We received a call saying,

"Are you all taking a look at Reta Mays?

"She takes a very disproportionate amount

"of low blood sugar readings

compared to the other staff on the ward."

But I'm looking back at it, and I'm saying,

"We still have three other people,

staff members, we got to rule out."

We have the person in ICU, the psych ward,

and then the respiratory therapist.

What we're able to do is see the key card access

and the computer access for these employees,

and that would put them in other places

at the hospital at the time

that we believe the insulin was given.

- One of the things that was done

is taking all the medical information,

times and dates and charting that out on timelines.

And when Reta Mays was on shift,

you could start seeing the drop in blood sugar,

and then ultimately, them passing away.

- With all the work of the investigative team

and all of these different facets of intel coming in,

we made a recommendation to have Reta Mays

removed from patient care.

She was actually repositioned or stationed in the mail room

on the opposite end of the basement.

And as soon as she's removed from patient care,

we no longer have any severe hypoglycemic event.

There is no other death.

- But there is a big difference between making a decision

to save patients' lives and move her to the mail room,

versus going to court with the evidence that we have

and proving it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

So our next step is BAU sent Supervisory Special Agent

Cari Robins out to conduct our second interview

with Reta Mays.

- Mm-hmm.

- This is not part of a mass interview,

so she is very specifically asked

to come in and sit down and talk.

She's read her Miranda rights.

- Keith, where were you during the second interview of Reta?

- I, along with the rest of the investigative team

at that point, were in the command post,

which was basically adjacent to the room

that we stationed with audio and video feeds.

- There were multiple times where she would engage

and she would converse with Cari.

- How long is the interview?

- I think upwards of four hours.

- It's tense beyond all belief.

We don't know, at any juncture, is she going to give it up?

Are we going to be able to bring some finality to this?

- We're just waiting for her to say the right thing

to be able to go right across the hall and put the cuffs on.

- As Cari's asking her what happened here

and they're starting to touch on the incidents

of hypoglycemia, Reta starts pulling away.

Right? She mentally, physically

is pulling away from the interviewer.

- The question is, does she have some emotional attachment

to these patients that's normal,

that she just is upset about?

Does she feel shame about something?

This can go either way at this point.

- She's sitting back in her chair.

She's crossing her arms, which is a very defensive gesture.

She has long pauses between her answers.

It becomes a little confrontational on Reta's side.

- This, unlike the first interview, was video recorded.

So now we have what we could possibly show in court.

Yes, we don't have a confession,

but look how she's reacting.

- And at that point, after a very long pause

where she's not making eye contact with Cari,

she tells Cari that she thinks she needs a lawyer.

- And that effectively ends the interview.

- We didn't secure a confession,

but it's all down to Reta Mays at this point.

And we're going to probably

have to prove this case in court.

And because this occurred on federal property,

there could be the federal death penalty imposed.

That heightens the level of evidence

that we need, the pressure that our office is putting

on the investigators to get every piece of evidence

they can to prove that this was Reta Mays.

- We need to examine the bodies.

The medical examiner issues a report that says

the cause of death was homicide.

- Insulin is what killed these patients,

and Reta Mays administered that insulin to them.

So we go to pull her Facebook messages.

In one message, she talks, "I could kill this patient."

- This is going to be our best chance

of getting a confession in this case.

- It's all down to Reta Mays at this point,

and we're willing

to do everything we can to prove this case.