Kristen Gilbert: A Nurse Who Kills
As a nurse myself, it always boggles my brains any time I hear about violent crimes committed by other nurses or in fact ANY medical personnel as we belong to what’s considered a helping profession… we’re supposed to be helping others, not hurting them. It’s scary to think there are these people out there who just don’t care. So with that said, the first true crime case I’d like to talk to you about is that of Kristen Gilbert.
Kristen Gilbert had started working at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) in North Hampton, MA when she was 21 years old in March 1989 and continued to work there up until February of 1996 as a Registered Nurse. Kristen was known among her coworkers to always make sure there was a secret Santa activity at Christmas, she would participate in gift drives for the needy with her peers and she even ran the Sunshine fund which sent flowers to colleagues on special occasions. But pretty soon, those colleagues would start to notice that more and more patients were dying on Kristen’s shifts and would later refer to her as the “Angel of Death”.
According to the Boston Globe, “Prosecutors say Gilbert was on duty for half of the 350 deaths that occurred on her ward for the seven years she worked at the hospital from March 1989 through February 1996. The chance of that being a coincidence, they calculate, is 1 in 100 million.”
Over time, it was also noted that there would be missing epinephrine ampules that could not be accounted for on Kristen’s unit, Ward C, which also housed an intensive care unit (ICU). Epinephrine (adrenaline) is a medication that is used by injection to treat severe (anaphylaxis) allergic reactions or to treat low blood pressure caused by septic shock. It was believed that Kristen was poisoning her patients with the epinephrine by injection resulting in a cardiac emergency. Some patients they were able to revive, and others they were not. Many think she was doing this in part to “show off” to a man she was having an affair with at work, a hospital security officer- James G. Perrault.
James G. Perrault was aware that Kristen was married with 2 young sons but she had led him to believe their marriage was on the fritz at the time. So, not only was Kristen playing with the lives of her patient’s to flaunt her medical skills but she was also cheating on her husband, Glenn Gilbert.
Soon, some of her co-workers finally started speaking up about what they were noticing, in turn sparking an investigation as more and more of their patients were dying. As reported by Boston Globe, in one instance, a co-worker had reported seeing Kristen go into a patients room with a syringe even though they were only prescribed oral medications. The patient, Stanley Jagodowski, died 3 hours later following cardiac arrest.
At one point during these death investigations, an anonymous bomb threat was called in to the VAMC. It was thought that Kristen may haven been trying to create a diversion to derail the investigation. Later it is learned that Kristen would be convicted of the bomb threat and serve 15 months.
Kristen, at the age of 33, was now being accused of killing 4 of her patients as well as attempting to kill 3 others. Those innocent victims are Stanley Jagodowski, Henry Hudson, Kenneth Cutting and Edward Skwira, all veterans. They all had been under her care at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center at the time of their deaths.
James G. Perrault had also become increasingly aware that Kristen had been up to no good and eventually made the decision to end their affair. This did not go well as Kristen then attempted an overdose on pills, landing her in a psychiatric hospital for mental health treatment. As quoted in the Boston Globe, James later explained to the federal jury that Kristen had called him from the hospital and said, “You know I did it. I did it. You wanted to know. I killed those guys.”
On March 14, 2001, Kristen Gilbert was convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of 3 VAMC patients in 1995 and 1996. She was also convicted of second-degree murder in the death of a 4th patient and trying to kill two of the three other patients.
There’s no state death penalty in Massachusetts, but because the murders took place on federal property it’s deemed eligible under federal law. Kristen Gilbert could have been the only woman on federal death row sentenced to lethal injection; but instead, the federal jury sentenced her to life in prison.
On March 27, 2001 Kristen Gilbert was sentenced to 4 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole, plus 20 years. She was initially sent to a state prison for women in Framingham, Massachusetts but was later transferred to a federal prison, the Federal Medical Center in Texas- where she remains today.
If you would like to learn more about this American serial killer ( & believe me- there is A LOT more to the case of Kristen Gilbert) than what I covered here, I suggest starting with the references listed below.
If you have any opinions or thoughts on this case that you’d like to share, please comment below!
Former Nurse On Trial Patients’ Deaths
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