Original subtitles

- We've had vulnerable military veterans who were given

insulin, which killed them.

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

- There was one employee, Reta Mays,

who was working when all of these hypoglycemic

events occurred.

- We need to examine the bodies.

The problem is they've all been buried for several months.

The medical examiner issues a report that says the cause

of death was homicide.

- So we go to pull her Facebook messages.

And one message, she talks, I could kill this patient.

We know we need a third and maybe final interview.

- This is going to be our best chance of getting

a confession in this case.

- 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.

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

And we're willing to do everything

we can to prove this case.

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

drug busts, mob stings, terrorist takedowns.

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.

- We're starting to put the puzzle pieces together.

Now, we have the medical evidence coming along

with that circumstantial case.

We still need to make it better.

It still has to get better.

So we're going to look at that electronic evidence.

And that's when we started to look

toward her Facebook messages.

- We had talked to several coworkers

who, hey, we sometimes discuss patients on shift.

And looking back, there's some strange messages that you

might be interested in.

So we go to pull her Facebook messages.

None of those are there, which indicate that she

went in and deleted them.

And so we work with Facebook.

We end up recovering those messages.

One message, she talks, I could kill this patient.

I had this other patient calm and resting.

And now, he's got him all wound up.

Innocuous, you could say that facetiously.

But when that patient then dies after that message is sent,

that starts to bring something else into the picture.

- What also raised eyebrows for us as well,

when she would leave shift, she was sending text messages

to employees back on shift.

What happened to this person?

What happened to that person?

She inquired about three room numbers pertaining to three

of our confirmed victims.

- This could be evidence of her checking

to see if what she had done is actually taking effect.

- What else were you learning from her electronic profiles?

- So while she was at work, there

were several times where she had some very

significant and disturbing search terms through the search

engines, through the VA network, one of which

was Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian noblewoman who

is known and recognized by Guinness

World Records as the most prolific female serial killer.

- So we also served a search warrant on Netflix.

So we pulled those records.

We saw not only did she watch Nurses Who Kill,

several of those episodes involved

the administration of insulin.

- And look, from a prosecutor's perspective,

we're not going to be arguing to a jury

that because you watched that show, you are a killer,

but it does show that you have some understanding of the fact

that insulin can be used as a murder weapon.

- So she's down in the mail room keeping busy down there.

The investigation continues.

What are the steps we're taking?

- We tore into Reta's personal life.

We were interviewing her family members, her prior places

of employment, basically just trying

to get any morsel of direct evidence

to be able to bring the case together.

- Reta was married.

She had two children.

And her husband was also a veteran.

- Where's her husband work?

Is he around?

- Her husband's in prison.

He's in federal prison on charges of child pornography.

- Since her husband is serving time for child pornography,

you have access to their phone calls.

- Absolutely.

She basically had a daily recurring phone call with him

when she would get off shift.

- This call is from--

- Gordon Mays.

- An inmate at a federal prison.

This call is being recorded and is subject to monitoring.

- She would not only talk about the prior night shift.

- But she would actually go into detail

regarding the patients that she had to sit with.

- But at one call, in particular,

that she explicitly talks about one of our victims

and essentially says that, had the staff just

let him drift off and go to sleep,

he would not have woken up.

- And then we check and he actually

had a blood sugar of 30, even though she

wasn't the one who tested it.

- We're saying to ourselves from investigators,

how would you know what?

- At this point, we're in it for the long run.

We've had murders of vulnerable military veterans

who just went to the hospital to get medical care,

and they never went home.

- They deserve the best medical care.

And when they didn't get that, they deserved the best of us

to prove it.

- And so at this point, we are willing to do everything

we can to prove this case.

- We're looking at how we might want to go forward with not

just the investigation, but how we approach

Reta Mays specifically.

Now, that we've had one interaction, how can we also

focus on getting her to start talking

and telling us her story?

- So there's really three things we're looking

to address going forward.

The first is that insulin is what killed these patients.

The second is that someone administered

that insulin to them.

And the third is that Reta Mays was that person.

- So really, on that first piece,

we need to start to examine the bodies.

The problem is they've all been buried for several months.

So these investigators had the unenviable task

of knocking on the doors of family members

and asking for that permission.

- On top of that, not only are we asking to exhume their loved

ones body and conduct an autopsy,

we're informing them that we think

their loved one died of unnatural causes done

by someone else.

- And to not only have each of the families a blessing

and their consent to do the autopsy, to do the exhumation,

but to then bring the family members

together for a reburial and to re-initiate

full military rites.

It was absolutely gut wrenching.

However, they knew something was wrong.

The prevailing theme was, we want to help you all figure

this out however we can.

We don't want this to happen to a fellow veteran

and a fellow veteran's family.

- So as a prosecutor, and as investigators, as we all know,

we can suspect, believe, know.

But to prove it is another thing.

We need to have that homicide reading to charge.

- We need the intentionality, of course, to prove murder,

that someone intended to kill.

In this case, we made an arrangement

with the medical examiner at Dover Air Force Base, Paul

Uribe, so they could be treated with the typical respect,

obviously, that the veterans deserve.

- We had special agents who were veterans

themselves actually transporting

the bodies to Dover and back.

- So what's the process once we get to Dover, to

the medical examiner's office?

- First, there's going to be a visual inspection of the body.

And the medical examiner saw bruising on the abdomen

of one of the patients.

That indicated to him that there might

have been an injection point.

He took a tissue sample.

And he found insulin positivity.

And this was a non-diabetic patient.

- So every shot that a patient received in the hospital,

whether it was insulin or it was something else,

is charted by the nurse or the doctor who administers it.

We were seeing other injection sites that were not charted.

- So Dr. Uribe issues a report that

says, the cause of death of this patient

was homicide by exogenous or pharmaceutical insulin.

That's a major turning point in this case.

And it's followed up with three total reports that

are homicide at that time.

But the other ones are undetermined.

And so now, Dr. Uribe is going to have

to consult with another professional endocrinologist

that deals with diabetes, Diane Krieger out of Miami.

We need her to look at what caused the crashes.

- When you experience hypoglycemia,

you're given this dextrose solution, which brings

your blood sugar back up.

But these poor victims, even after receiving dextrose,

their blood sugar was not stabilizing.

- And you could chart it out and see

the hills and the valleys.

And that told her insulin is the only thing

that could have caused this.

So Dr. Uribe changed his opinion

from undetermined to homicide in four additional cases.

And now, it's official.

There's a murderer.

- We've now got these official rulings

from the medical examiner's office

that these are homicides.

So what happens next in this process?

- We're closing in on a third interview.

- How is it that we get her to have a chat?

- By this time, Reta's husband had been released from prison

and was out on probation.

- Totally separate from our case,

state search warrant had been executed

following her husband's violation of his probation.

They went in and seized electronic devices

to include Reta's cell phone.

Local police actually had her cell phone.

And so they were releasing it back to her.

The circumstances are right.

Reta Mays would be entering a police station.

And we could be there to see if she was curious enough to sit

with us for a third interview.

There is an agent in Virginia, Special Agent Liza Ludovico.

She's a veteran who is a former Army nurse.

She has done interviews similar to this.

She has this skill set.

Let's bring her over.

We can at least talk to her about what the case is,

make sure we're not missing anything obvious

that maybe she understands from a nursing perspective,

a medical perspective, and, ultimately, because of all

the similarities, we make the decision

that Liza will be there to conduct the interview.

Liza was able to approach her, introduce

herself, and why she was here.

Hey, I'm taking a look at the case of what's

happening up at the VA.

Would you like to come see what we got?

Reta Mays ultimately makes that decision to walk into that room

and sit down.

- This is going to be our best chance of getting

a confession in this case.

We have an interviewer who checks all the boxes.

We have the opportunity to lay out the case against her.

- We have positioned this room to look like our war room.

We have our charts on the wall.

We have all the pictures of Reta and of her husband,

the hospital.

Front and center, we have all the victims' pictures.

- This is a voluntary interview.

She doesn't have to talk to us.

She could have just said, I'm not interested.

I don't want to participate.

- It wasn't intimidating in any way.

It was just like, hey, I'm going to explain it to you.

- Is she affable?

Is she distant?

Is she-- like, what's her demeanor?

- For the first several hours, she's fully engaged.

She's sitting up in her seat.

- There was a warmth there.

There were a lot of complimentary things

said about Reta.

And that was a good way to start off the interview.

- Was there ever a point where she is actually

processing the evidence in front of her,

where Reta became animated?

- Yeah.

She got very adamant that she had never

injected any of these men.

- Liza immediately came back and said, well,

maybe you administered insulin in another way.

Maybe you pushed it through the IV line.

She says, maybe you put insulin in these IV syringes

called flushes.

Reta went from being very adamant to really stepping

back like, oh, my gosh.

- We want her to understand that we

know everything there is to know

and here is proof on the walls.

- Liza asked her at one point during the interview,

what would you say if you were the prosecutor

seeing all this evidence?

- So she's saying, if I tell you, I killed people,

I don't see how you can help me with that.

- Now you're seeing all the cards on the table.

This is why we know not only is it you,

but it couldn't have been anybody else.

And as much as I think she wanted to say it,

and it was on the tip of her tongue,

I think reality kicked in.

Hey, if I just keep my mouth shut,

I'm able to get up and walk out of here.

- She doesn't confess, but she's clearly

contemplating confessing.

- We were like, we actually think she needs legal advice

to get her over that hurdle.

She doesn't know what's good for her at this point.

- Now, what happens?

- So we're going to the grand jury.

We're putting witnesses into the grand jury.

And we are going to indict by the end of this month.

And the indictment would be for the death penalty.

That's the elephant in the room.

I'm told by the attorney, she is ready to enter

into plea discussions.

We know we've had a long investigation.

And if we go death penalty, long process there.

We've already had a widow who died during the investigation.

We have another widow who is in poor health, a son

of a victim in poor health.

All these things are going into play deciding how the best

way is to resolve this case.

I was very open with the defense counsel,

but said, look, we're going to be

willing to offer a plea agreement that does not

result in the death penalty.

- So, Jared, when does this finally get completed?

- After a full day at the grand jury,

I got this voicemail from one of the attorneys.

This thing is going to result in a plea.

You have eight cases.

She's going to prison for life.

- Did she ever talk about a motive at any point?

- She tried to claim some sense of mercy killing.

But on the other hand, said that part of it

was for control that her life, both at home and at work,

were out of control.

- It was all about her problems.

She's hyper focused on her issues.

And so the killings likely had nothing to do with the victims

and had everything to do with Reta Mays.

- Did Reta Mays show any remorse at any point?

- I think her remorse came from the fact she got caught.

It wasn't remorse necessarily, for the things she did

and the men that were no longer here.

It was the fact that her life was now impacted, again,

by what we had discovered.

- None of us could have done this

from an individual standpoint.

So bringing all of the law enforcement, DOJ,

the community, the families, the experts.

Had any one of those components not been there,

I shudder to think where we'd be.

- Coming into the bureau, you hope bad things don't happen,

but knowing that they do and getting

to a resolution that at least brings some closure,

it means a lot.

- If I'm fortunate to be a federal prosecutor

for another three decades, I'll never

have a case like this again, one that is at the same time

emotionally challenging but also the most rewarding

when you can tell those families that this is

the person who did your family wrong,

and we've put it as right as we can.