Kathy and Gideon talk about the woman many consider the worst Canadian serial killer - Elizabeth "Bethe" Wettlaufer. Wettlaufer, who grew up near Woodstock, Ontario, fits into the True Crime sub-genre of Nurses Who Kill. She worked at various rehab and medical facilities and administered deadly doses of insulin to many of her older patients, but the horrible things she did didn't come to light until much later. After admitting her crimes to various people, nothing happened to her. Was this an example of "Canadian nice" or was it just that Wettlaufer didn't "look" like a killer, and therefor nobody could believe it.

We also welcome to the show, Charles Graeber, author of the best selling book "The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder" which was made into an award-winning film starring Eddie Redmayne as American Nurse Killer Charles Cullen. Graeber explains how the hospitals ignored whistleblowers, and allowed Cullen to get jobs at other facilities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania where he continued murdering patients. Cullen was quite possibly responsible for as many as 400 killings. And while Cullen did end up behind bars, the hospital administrators were never held accountable. Perhaps there's more than one villain in these stories...

----------------------------------------

Hosted by Gideon Evans & Kathy Egan-Taylor

Producer & Engineer: Will Becton / Executive Producer: Amber Becton

Theme Song Composed by Alexis Cuadrado & Danny Gray

Recorded @ Jett Road Studios

----------------------------------------

SOURCES:

The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder by Charles Graeber

https://a.co/d/81TLJmc

The Good Nurse (film)

https://www.netflix.com/title/81260083

"Living with a Serial Killer: Elizabeth Wettlaufer"

https://www.peacocktv.com/watch-online/tv/living-with-a-serial-killer/8729766680284507112/seasons/2/episodes/elizabeth-wettlaufer-episode-6/06fc97a9-48ee-3cb8-a292-ad141236f59b

"Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer: Elizabeth Wettlaufer"

https://www.primevideo.com/region/na/detail/0SX2ANK3N5DM7AY19FW6I6YXRR?ref_=atv_dp_pb_core

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Jett Road Studios - Website - YouTube - Instagram - Substack

Bad Elizabeth - Instagram - YouTube - Substack

Welcome to Battle Elizabeth.

I'm your host, Gideon Evans.

And I'm your host, Kathy Egan Taylor.

The premise of the show is exactly what it sounds like.

Each episode we profile a different Elizabeth or derivation of that name

like Lisa Eliza with a Z or Elizabeth

who deserves to be called bad.

Yes.

And some of these Elizabeths are lowercase bad.

Some of them are uppercase bad from America or Canada.

Canadians are capable

of bad things.

Oh, that's our producer and engineer will Beton of Jet Road Studios.

Hi guys.

Hi.

Our episode today is about Beth Wet Lauer.

That's Beth with an E.

Welcome to our podcast that Elizabeth.

I'm Gideon Evans.

And I am Kathy Egan Taylor.

And we know people have the freedom to listen to any show about

Notorious Elizabeth, we're happy that you're choosing our show.

There's so many other shows out there about Bad Elizabeth.

Exactly, and I'm gonna qualify the sound of my voice because I just

got back from the lung doctor.

I've been battling with allergies in the past.

Oh no.

Five weeks.

I think I should be fine.

I won't be coughing, but should I be coughing throughout this?

We'll understand

why.

We'll.

Stand.

It's like if there's a car backfiring, we wanna at least

mention what that loud bang is.

Exactly.

We're not shooting on a construction site or anything like

that.

And what, what are you allergic to?

Exactly.

Apparently, which made my allergist laugh.

You're allergic to everything across the board.

Oh my God.

And I

said, what do you mean everything?

And she.

Cackled and said, I mean, everything.

That's allergist humor, I guess.

Yeah.

Which is not, when you're suffering from them, it's, there's no humor.

Right.

Well, the the odd thing was they told me like, I'm allergic,

highly allergic to olive trees.

Oh.

And I live next to a park.

They planted 40 new olive trees.

Two years ago, and apparently they bloom in two years.

Oh, wow.

So I think it might have something to do with that.

Uh, that sucks.

I remember that Portlandia episode.

Do you remember that show?

Of course.

And they had a parade in one episode and the parade floats were honoring

foods that were common allergens.

So they have like a shrimp float and like a peanuts float.

Shellfish, yes, exactly.

Uh, poor shellfish.

Sorry to make light, but.

No, no.

I like the fact

that the allergist still laughs at her own material because that's gotta be like

basically the only joke that's right.

Available to her.

It's like my grandfather, he would always greet me and touch me in

the back and go, guess who's back?

I was like, that wasn't funny when I was three.

Oh my God.

And of course the voice you just heard was Will Beckton, the wonderful

producer engineer with his wife Amber, who runs Jet Road Studios.

I'm excited about this episode.

Yeah, so let's get in it.

Introduce our Elizabeth.

It is Elizabeth Weer.

She spells Elizabeth the regular way with a Z, unlike Elizabeth Finch,

who spelled it with an S and weer.

I did look it up.

It's one of those names that probably was derived from.

A profession like messengers, it's kind of like sort of what it means.

My last name is also a profession.

Is that right?

Egan?

No, Taylor.

Oh, right.

Scott's name.

Sorry, I keep forgetting E.

That's fine.

I don't think Egan means anything.

Egan outta living.

That's right.

And also this, Elizabeth is referred to as a Beth and she has a unique thing in

that her, she's Beth with an E at the end.

And why?

Why would you add an E?

I don't know.

Does that change the pronunciation of the TH?

It kind of softens it a little bit.

Bev.

Bev.

Bev.

Bev.

So Elizabeth Lauer was born in 1967.

She's Canadian, which is kind of a new thing for our podcast.

She grew up in a Woodstock.

Canada or near Woodstock Canada.

And I knew there was a Woodstock in Vermont and one in New York

obviously, but I didn't know there was a Woodstock Canada.

Yeah, it's in uh, on Ontario, right?

Correct.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Woodstock sounds good until you hear on Ontario and then Exactly.

Oh, maybe she's got a Axe grind.

This, maybe actually look at a map of Canada for the first time.

I only know like sort of Vancouver.

Toronto, Montreal.

Right.

But there's a whole vast middle.

Well, my wife was born in Winnipeg.

Exactly.

Which is the capital of Manitoba.

Manitoba

ta.

Toba,

Manitoba.

Manitoba, yes.

Manitoba.

So, yeah.

So she grew up in Woodstock, Ontario, and she was born into

a devout Baptist household.

Everyone was concerned about whether they were going to hell or not, and there

were certain behaviors that you could not do, or certain ways of living that was.

What's that term?

Verboten I'm thinking of?

Yes.

Yeah.

Where you're boarded into that you have to accept it.

You don't really

make

choices of

your own.

Exactly, and and it sounds like the town or maybe just her community of

religious people, it was really almost like the town in Footloose where.

Apparently they couldn't watch movies.

No dancing.

No drinking.

And yeah, so it was kind of like the Canadian Footloose.

I've never seen that movie.

I don't know that I have either.

That's really sad.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've

seen Footloose

a bunch.

Is it one of those movies?

That's great.

Will.

You can live a full life without having seen Footloose.

You have the reference available to you, so you're, you're good to go.

Exactly.

That's all you need.

No dancing.

It's also wanted a very large, I don't know if you call them

Cannon of Movies that have the theme song scored by Kenny Logs.

Oh, yep.

So whereas Footloose ended with the joy of dancing, this story

unfortunately ends with murder Most foul.

Yes.

Apart from growing up like this in this very constricting environment.

She also, uh, was bullied.

Apparently her maiden name was Parker, and the kids would call her poorer.

She was sort of a large woman or kid.

When I read that detail, that really broke my heart because children

are very cruel to her wake up every day knowing that she's gonna be

called Porker on the schoolyard.

Yeah, it's just awful.

It is.

And I do think there is a correlation between people that are bullied and you

know, people that are violent often.

And, and I think the other thing too, she had another strike

against her is that she was gay.

Her parents were also active in gay conversions in their church.

Right.

She got put into one of those gay conversions, which we know they

always turn out well.

Always work

99% of the time

because people could be turd

and there's sarcasm in our voices 'cause it's basically torture and

it's just like, it's horrible.

Well my uncle, this is not a story about him going to gay conversion, but he

was left-handed and they always decided that was like an aberration with kids.

So they decided to like make him become a right-handed person.

That was very common.

The sinister

comes from left.

Ooh.

Really?

Yeah, so it means city.

It's like the number 13 or something like the entomology of

sinister derives from being left-handed more or less.

Oh, wow.

Are any of us left-handed Cado?

No.

Me neither.

Not that I know of.

Thank goodness my son is though.

Oh geez.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there, but my uncle, they made

him right-handed, and even that is kind of harmful for your brain.

It's just

Oh, very good.

So not good for you.

So you can imagine what it's like if you're gay.

And all these religious people are telling you?

Well, she's,

she's in this very sort of lonely environment in a very strict

household, in a very lonely town in the middle of Canada.

So she ended up, uh, going to college and she went to a school

called Coniston College, where she got a nursing degree in 1995.

Mm-hmm.

She became a nurse.

To give a picture of her when we see her, you know the current pictures

of her, she looks like someone who could be manning a bank sale table.

Yeah.

She might steal a couple rice crispy treats, but she's

gonna pay for them at the end.

Yeah.

She looks like a very kind, lovely person.

And she did maybe to make her parents proud or whatever.

She did end up marrying a guy, a truck driver, Daniel Wet Laffer, and so she

got to get rid of that Parker, the park.

David took his, she kept wet Laffer.

Would you take Wet Laffer over Parker?

Not as a kid, no.

Well, she was married by the time she did.

But I guess early

on there's a lot of nicknames that could come outta Wet Lauer.

That's true.

So Wet Laffer was a truck driver, which is also another interesting profession

where you think of a nursing profession provided it's a crime of opportunity.

Right, right.

And truck drivers are kind of the same way in that they're going

up and down the same highways.

And they live sort of transient lives.

Did you know that truckers sometimes have trouble conceiving children

because their legs are together?

Male truckers, their legs are together and your semen is supposed to be.

A little lower than your body temperature, but because you're sitting with your

legs together, you're cooking them, you're cooking them, and they're no good.

Wow.

So anyway, she worked at some nursing places.

One was called Cent Care.

Yes, in Woodstock, she had some issues with her colleagues, but nothing like

crazy where she was accused of anything.

It was mostly, she drank a lot.

Well,

she struggled with substance abuse, depression.

Yeah.

And she had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that she was a lesbian.

So she started working there.

Had some issues when fellow workers found her drunk.

Right?

She was suspended four times.

You could.

Return after being suspended for being drunk on the job.

Well, they still kept her off.

Well, as

a nurse, you're right.

Administering medicine.

Yeah, that's problematic.

And there's always terrifying.

You know, air bubbles alone would scare me being a nurse

and she was fired for that job.

Eventually she gave someone the wrong medication, but she's not actually

killing anyone just yet that we know of.

She started working at this place.

Care Cent Care.

Yeah.

And it's such a dumb name for a care facility.

'cause they're trying to obviously do like a play on words of like.

Caress and care.

Yeah, that's a train wreck of a word.

Did you see the, and who wants your nurses to caress you?

Caress is a peculiar word.

So she started working there 2007.

Maybe we should go to the end in a weird way.

After she ended up leaving some of these nursing jobs, she was having all these

problems with mental health and drugs.

She went to the Center for Addiction and Mental Health.

It's, I guess, a Canadian agency.

They call it like Cam H or something?

Yeah.

And she starts telling them that she's killed all these

patients while she was a nurse.

The reason why we kind of jumped to the end is that nobody even really knew that

this was going on because people die all the time at these nursing homes.

So she starts listing these patients and how in like 2007 there were these

sisters Clot, Adriano and Albina.

Deeros, Jesus Christ.

Seven.

These are like sobriety test names.

It's true.

And wet.

Er what the hell?

What she used was she used insulin.

Normally what she would do at the end of the shift, she would

shoot 'em up with insulin.

So she would leave.

So she would be the nurse on duty.

And she gave them

like an overdose.

Exactly.

And so they would die through the night.

And usually, or the next day.

Or the next day.

Usually there were older patients, right.

In their nineties.

No one's gonna question that.

Yeah.

Right.

And some of these, these patients have been cremated

and also apparently the body makes.

Insulin on its own.

So finding insulin in your body isn't gonna be any like red flag.

Exactly.

So I mean, I think what we could say is yes, she ended up killing eight people.

Right.

And then there was other people that she almost killed.

Yeah.

And one of the interesting things about this one too is that you

figure that a killer who's a nurse.

These are gonna kind of be mercy crimes.

Some were

mercy,

right?

And

some were like, uh, this guy's grabby.

Most of them were like that.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh man.

James Oxx.

Yeah.

84. Another tough name was a World War II vet, and she blamed, he

grabbed women's breasts and butts.

She didn't like him.

And she was like, time for James to go.

Fair enough.

Although I think he probably had dementia.

Ah, so he probably thought he was grabbing his wife.

He

was a World War II vet. Come on.

Exactly.

He

deserves that.

He's allowed to at 84.

It's a little grab

bass at 84.

Something to look forward to.

He like, look what

he did for our country or for Canada.

One thing that's interesting about the insulin thing, and I'm

not sure if this was findable in the research, was she diabetic?

That's a good question.

I wouldn't doubt, doubt it as far as putting it on her radar as as a thing.

I mean, it sounds like a large woman, smart

thing to use also.

She was not, she was an alcoholic, but she was also addicted to other things.

I think.

There's other sort of nurse serial killers as well.

Like there's Howard Shipman out of England in the late nineties.

He was addicted to heroin.

He ended up killing 15 patients, but they think he had over 250 victims.

Oh, wow.

As a young boy, he watched his mother die of lung cancer when he was seven.

And he, he saw that they would administer morphine to alleviate Oh, wow.

Pain.

Oh wow.

So that was planted in his head.

But he must have felt like I'm helping these people.

Maybe, yes.

But then it, it also became an ego thing where I'm playing God, he's

just controlling them.

Well, this is almost a sub genre, and we have a guest actually on this episode.

You wanna,

yeah.

Later on we're gonna talk to Charles Grabber, who wrote a book, the Good

Nurse, which is the story of Charles Collette, who was apparently the most.

Prolific serial killer in the United States.

And there was a movie about, and there was a movie, Eddie

Redman and Eddie Redman and Jessica Chastain.

And that's the other thing that's interesting is that with Colin

himself, he was killing between Pennsylvania and New Jersey hospitals.

And when you have incidents like this, when a nurse kills,

this is from my researches.

They don't really write you up, they just send you on to the next hospital.

'cause they don't wanna deal it.

The paperwork and the potential lawsuits.

It's like the kind of scandals with the Catholic church a little bit.

Exactly.

Some of those

just move them to a different parish.

Didn't happen yet.

Move it around.

So her first victim, James Ox Yeah.

Was 84.

He was a grab ass guy.

Said she murdered another guy, Maurice Granite, he's 84.

He's also a

grabber.

Also a grabber.

And she said, time for you to go.

And then she paused in her killing after the first two.

Oh, she had some relationship.

She had a girlfriend

named Sheila, Sheila Edwards, who lived in Saskatchewan.

So she had a respite from killing because she found some love.

But that said, she'd said she got this red surge in her head before killing.

It was this rush, this addiction, which is curious because she was

also a big scratch off person.

Mm-hmm.

And they've likened serial killer killing.

You

think it's the same vibe?

They have done studies where addictions like addiction to gambling

Mm.

Is similar to addiction, to serial killing.

Oh, interesting.

Because once you do it once.

Do it again.

Especially if they're old and they're easy to kill and they're

right there in front of you.

Exactly.

And you've got insulin.

Totally.

And if they're grab asses, why not?

I know.

So is that, that's like a dopamine

phenomenon, I think's.

A dopamine rush.

Exactly.

I wonder if Charlie will know about that too.

Oh, Charlie

would know all about that, I'm sure.

And she said there was a laughter in her belly or something?

Yes.

It just

brought her joy.

So she had a little bit of a respite, and then back in 2011, we also have

to realize this is not that long ago.

She killed Gladys Miller, who was 87.

These people are all up there, so to speak.

Helen Matheson, Mary Zinsky, who was 96, who told Beth.

I'm going to die tonight.

And so Beth's like, I'm gonna make it happen.

Yeah.

She's like, yes, you her.

So

she's just like, she's on deck.

She's the next one.

She killed Mary.

And then there was Helen Young.

Mm-hmm.

Who was 90, but she gave her pie and ice cream first, and then the insulin shot.

This was sort of uncharacteristic.

She seemed kinder to the female patients.

Mm. Then there was MRE Pickering who she did not like.

Right.

And MRE was miserable and she wanted to die.

She kept saying, help me, help me.

And then she'd said, get outta here.

And she also would probably has dementia.

Yeah.

She would pull her hair and Beth didn't like her.

So Beth's like, you're next lady.

Then the next one she went after was Michael Priddle.

Mm-hmm.

He was 63 and then Wayne Hedges 57, he was schizophrenic and

I think that annoyed her,

I guess,

after she left Care ca. Cent car that, that agency, whatever, it's, yeah.

It's

hard to even look at that word.

I know

Cent

Caron croissant join

us in Caron CROs where you Caron dignified death by insulin.

So she, her eighth murder was Arpa Horvath, uh, and she really hated him.

Yeah.

And he grabbed nurses and he twisted arms.

He would like pull hair, I think.

And she couldn't get the needle into him 'cause he fought her.

But then also you have to look, you think about the patients there suffering

from dementia, not with their family.

Yeah.

They're terrified.

Yeah.

And it's not a nice place in life to be.

No, no.

My grandmother, my mom's mother had Alzheimer's.

Yeah.

And she was put in a home that was run by Pennsylvania Touch.

Oh boy.

'cause it was

So Did they have electricity?

Yeah, they did have electricity.

No,

but apparently Alzheimer's very common in that community.

Yeah.

And the one thing that's Oh, interest.

Odd is also they say that a lot of them have been kicked in the head by horses.

Oh boy.

Which my grandmother had

been.

Oh my God.

So

there was like these weird sort of control experiences.

Why

does that happen?

Are the horses?

Horses

are dicks when you get behind

them.

They can be.

I don't trust them.

I don't neither.

I've been bitten by a horse.

But anyways, so you're dealing with a lot of just sadness.

Totally.

But,

but she did believe that God sent her on a mission to kill.

So some of it was God talking to her.

It was

a combination of God.

Meanwhile she still using drugs and drinking.

She ended up telling some people, like the pastor and friends and like nobody really

called the police on her, which is maybe that is like kind of a Canadian thing.

They were like,

like, would we cover Lizzie port?

Yeah.

A lot of people just assumed she doesn't look like someone who could kill.

Right.

So the other thing that was interesting on the side, she published a lot of poetry.

Online, dark topics about death, power, having control.

So she was also expressing her frustration through her art, which is poetry.

Maybe

a frustrated artist.

Exactly.

I was trying to look for it online, but then I thought

like, I don't wanna go there.

'cause it's probably for sale.

Yeah.

That's for Johnny De to buy, not me.

Speaking of sub genres, the whole serial killer art.

Yeah.

That's awful.

John Wayne Gacy.

Exactly.

Drew Clowns or something?

Yes.

Well he, he performed as a clown and he also, okay.

Did you know that our friend Kent almost got into a car with him.

Oh, you're kidding.

Where?

Yes.

I think he was in Chicago.

Oh my

God.

It was what?

He was a teenager and he was hitchhiking.

Oh my God.

Which is how a lot of serial killers worked in the seventies, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

It's like the drive through window.

Yeah.

The guy stopped, he opened, they opened the back door and they just

said it was full of cans of beer and all that, and they kind of

looked and said, not a good idea.

Oh, wow.

Smart move.

Smart

move.

So anyway, so she told friends about this.

She went to the Canadian Health Service and

they didn't even like really act on it right away.

They let her out.

Well, they

consider that she's working at the same place and has been suspended four times.

Yeah.

For being drunk on the job.

They still took her back.

I know.

So she's

going and saying, I killed eight people.

And people are like, well

yeah, these people, like you said, they were long dead.

So, so she ended up going to her pastor, and then her pastor told her,

said, turn yourself into the police.

So now people start paying attention to it.

Yeah.

So overall she confessed to eight murders and six attempted murders.

So that's 14 victims.

And this is what she's telling.

As we said earlier, she said she experienced a red surge.

Prior to inducting her victims, right?

And she said, followed by an uncontrollable, as you wrote,

Gideon, quote unquote cackling from the pit of hell in her belly.

And she said she did know the difference between right and

wrong, but felt compelled to kill.

You brought up an interesting point in your notes here.

Do you think this is the anger she had from her parents?

Well, I think one of the documentaries I watched mentioned that maybe she was

so angry at her parents, but she didn't want to kill them, so she just killed

these other older people who kind of

told her what to do.

Yeah.

And were dicks.

I think one of the things we're gonna keep coming back to this podcast

is what is the meaning of bad?

Yeah.

Also, who are we to judge?

We have a podcast.

That's why we can judge.

Right.

Well that's why.

That's why.

That's what the mics are for.

It's really interesting that she had, because she's dealing

with the elderly, right?

Yeah.

So Mercy, she had the out of mercy killing and then just didn't wanna claim that out.

Yeah,

she could have easily said, I felt so bad for them, and they'd

said, oh, you're compassionate.

Yeah, that's why you did it.

She's like, no, this was, this gave me a search.

It gave me a

rush.

Well, also, I wonder if them being grabby and stuff was kind of like,

when we work in an office, I'm like, the printer is broken, and

it's like, oh, this is so annoying.

Let's just get a new printer.

You know, she was kind of like that about the patients.

Oh, let's get a different person in this bed.

This is making my job annoying.

But the big thing is that there really wasn't any murder weapon.

They didn't really know the motive a hundred percent.

The people were dead, so there weren't really even witnesses.

She admitted all this to the police and to that health and drug place.

She also, she Googled how to kill patients.

Yeah.

They found her Google searches.

Oh good.

So that's what I say is, and she also Googled other nurse killers, I think.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Like who are my colleagues here?

Who's the club?

And they

did, um, I think they did exhume.

'cause most of the people were cremated, but there were.

Two of the, that

they did exhume.

They did exhume them and they didn't really, 'cause I guess there was

something in the brain if you found it, you could say, oh, it was a drug

overdose, but it was not that conclusive.

And the other thing I wanted to add is always erase your Google search history.

I'd never do and I should.

I think it's an important thing to do.

Definitely.

I, I think now that the part two of this is she came forward, they, it all tracks.

She did kill these people.

Then you have to deal with the families, the loved ones.

Yeah.

Who thought they went quietly into the night.

Right.

And now you have this new rage.

My father was murdered.

You're reliving what happened?

And it's like, oh.

You've made peace with this or not, but, but now, now you have

something worse to make peace with.

Right.

And you're kind of imagining the horror of it when you probably originally

were like, oh, he died in sleep.

He was fine.

And you have guilt for having put your relative there.

Exactly, yeah.

You might have been like, oh, I should have advocated more.

I should have been around more.

Right.

Totally.

I'm sure some of these people didn't visit.

Hey, I

can't find an allergist, so I can't even imagine.

One

interesting thing is there was no

trial, right?

Well, there was gonna be one.

Apparently they released her to her parents.

Well, that was the originally.

Originally, okay.

When she did the confession, but then they were kind of moving

towards a trial and the cops, that's when they exhume the bodies.

And they were also afraid that maybe she was like mental illness

would get her off the hook.

And the other thing too is this is a very small community.

Totally too.

So people knew each other

well, her friend, this guy, it was a documentary called Living

with a Serial Killer on glad.

He was also grew up in that community, gay and did the conversion thing, and

he came to terms with being gay and he ended up kind of not testifying,

but being a potential witness against her or character witness.

Well, he didn't kill anybody.

No,

the judge called her the shadow of death.

She did end up pleading guilty, right?

She pled

guilty, but I just thought shadow of death with her face on and on a t-shirt

wasn't there like a a coolio song?

That mentions the shadow of death or Gangsters Paradise.

Gangsters Paradise, yeah.

But it's from the Bible.

Like it's from the Bible and Valley of Death of Death and

Valley of Death are pretty

different.

It's all deaf.

If you, yeah, if you plucked those lyrics from that line, you

could make that other sentence.

So she ended up at the Grand Valley Institution for women in Kitchener.

She had diabetes problems, so she went to, she was

diabetic, so

she ended up having how many

Oh, so you were right.

Well, no, I was wondering if that put it on her radar, but she also

researched other nurses, so you know.

Exactly.

So she's now living in this, uh, women's facility.

She's in a hospital now, essentially.

It would be weird to be her nurse.

What are you doing with that?

Or know,

but I guess what we hear is, is she bad?

Do we think Beth Wet Lauer deserves to be called bad?

I, I think she does.

Yeah.

I do too.

I think like, especially like preying on the vulnerable, that's always a bad thing.

Like children or elderly people, like that's a special kind of fucked upness.

It's kind of the alerting curve.

It's like you were bullied as a child.

Yeah.

So you are gonna turn around and be a bully.

You haven't learned anything.

And some of these, she called mercy killings, but she went

for younger people later on.

True.

She wasn't just going for the 96-year-old.

Yeah.

Do you think in her head she did know the difference, but it, it's

so weird why she, there was a video of her confession and she doesn't

sound like she 100% understands how terrible it was, what she did.

She must have known, but maybe not a hundred percent.

She did have mental issues.

Yeah, but she did also, she had addiction.

The killing to her was that warm surge, that red surge that she had.

Yeah.

Which would be the same way that someone's shooting heroin into their vein fields.

When I

eat like a Taco Bell, I get like a warm surge sometimes.

Look at Scott had

Taco Bell for lunch yesterday.

Okay.

One interesting thing that occurred to me is if you are a

nurse, especially in elderly care.

You could discover the surge of somebody dying sort of accidentally.

Right.

And then wanna do it on purpose.

You know, if she had somebody die in her care and then was like, Ooh, that was

food.

Yeah.

You don't know if that's like part of your makeup that that would make you excited.

So like you go into nursing and then one day it's like, Ooh, this is

actually a like playing God or whatever.

There was this movie, it was a weird, random, obscure movie with

Michael Kane called A Shock to Them.

I love that movie.

Did you see that?

I love that movie.

And he

kind of like accidentally pushes some like.

Unhoused guy on the subway platform, a trained and kills him

and he gets like a rush out of it.

And then he starts like killing other people.

Bty boo.

Is that what he says?

After he kills people.

Oh my

God.

So I love that movie.

But uh, getting back to Will's point, I. I would think to witness someone

die and they're giving you a surge, there's some sort of pathology there.

Because that's not a natural instinct.

Right.

To be inspired by watching someone die.

No.

There's something that happened to you, something wrong.

So some abuse that like cause you to have the, or just something

wrong with your makeup or something.

I mean, it's the same way where people might have weird proclivities during sex.

Yeah.

Right.

You know, and hopefully they find each other.

Going back to the whole, is she bad?

I do think.

She's definitely bad for sure.

But the one thing I did wanna mention, like they kind of tout

her as like one of the worst, like female Canadian serial killers.

Well, there's even a worst serial killer from Canada is there and

his name is Robert, but it's he.

There's not a lot of serial killers in Canada.

'cause I looked it up.

True.

But he was a serial killer who?

He was like sort of a truck driver, I believe.

Yeah.

Outside of Vancouver.

And he preyed upon indigenous women.

And this is interesting.

Oh, that's terrible.

Indigenous women are only 4% of the population.

I see.

However, they are 60% of the murdered population.

Oh my gosh.

So he went after those women and prostitutes, but he owed a pig farm.

So he would bring the women's bodies back there.

And so when they finally raided his pig farm, I think they got

him for I think, six murders.

But they said he worded up to like 49 indigenous women.

Oh, wow.

And they found the women's remains on his farm, meaning

he fed their bodies to the pig.

So.

He got that.

Yeah.

What if he learned that you were eating sausage?

God that had human remains in it.

Oh my God.

Right.

Far more egregious than what Wet Laffer did.

Exactly.

And it She's

a saint compared to that guy.

Exactly.

Some of them probably did.

Deserve to go

Well, the grab spot.

Let's be frank.

I'll, I'll give the, the World War II that a pass.

Okay.

Because you know how I feel about World War ii Hu.

There's a place in my heart the

greatest generation.

Any anybody that was on Omaha Beach?

Is she bad?

Let's get back to it.

I think Yes.

I, I blame it on she had addiction.

Which is a disease.

Yeah.

But that's not bad.

But that, that colors your reality.

Right.

And also she was mentally ill.

Yeah, but it goes beyond that, right?

No, it's You have, that's not why she killed people.

No, you have a choice.

You have a choice.

The one thing I did with when she dated Sheila Edwards.

Yes.

Sheila from Saskatchewan.

Mm-hmm.

I wonder if she was happy when she was with her.

I think she was, but I don't think Sheila was too into it.

I think she actually, in one of these documentaries, she kind of said.

When she broke up with her that like Wet Laffer was a bit scary.

Like she kind of by hing, like you're, yeah, exactly.

You're gonna love me.

So it wasn't just that island of like, she wasn't just like

a totally different person.

I don't think so, but I do think that was part of her anger of.

Like you've said a few times, Kathy, she just was alone and alienated and isolated.

But I'm, I'm wondering that maybe her life with Sheila, 'cause she did have

a respite from the victims for a while.

Yeah.

Between 2007 and 2011, she was with Sheila.

Yeah.

And so then when she broke up with her, that's when she turned.

Yeah.

I think maybe we should talk to Charlie.

Okay.

Charlie writes about fun stories,

lots of fascinating stuff.

Yeah.

He's been there.

He's gone to the dark side.

Serial killing Nurses are not just limited to Canada.

We also have them here in the States.

Joining us from Nantucket is Charles Grabber, author of The Good Nurse, A True

Story of Medicine, madness, and Murder.

Which investigated serial killer nurse Charles Cullen.

The book was adapted into the Oscar nominated film starring

Eddie Redman, the Good Nurse.

Welcome Charlie Grabber.

Charlie, to give a little background, how do we know each other?

Do you remember when we met?

Yeah, I think maybe you should tell the story.

Well, I believe it was one of those Sunday funs in Williamsburg.

I think I was with Adam Fisher and my sister, and we were sitting at.

I think a bar on Metropolitan that had an open space that

looked down on the sidewalk and you walked by doing your laundry.

That sounds right.

And you're talking about Williamsburg Brooklyn, not a colonial Williamsburg.

Not colonial.

Right.

I was wearing a tri corner hat.

Right.

I had a fight.

They didn't like me on the drums.

They said, you're a girl.

You should be sewing flags.

Oh

boy.

So Charlie, we are talking about Beth Wet Lauer, but we wanted your insight in

this with your experience researching.

Charles culled and could you explain to us how, you know he, this

notorious serial killer goes to jail.

He's not talking to anyone.

How did you get him to talk to you and share his story?

That was happening right at the time we met?

Yeah, I mean, that was exactly what was happening.

The first letters were coming into my under, underneath my

door, right at that, at that time.

I'd written him a letter not actually thinking he was going

to respond because he was trying to donate a kidney from jail.

Oh, wow.

It was that circumstance that got me interested because I didn't really

have a, you know, overwhelming need to talk to serial killers or even a great

interest, but he was a killer nurse.

And he wasn't speaking to anyone, but he was attempting to donate a

kidney to someone who needed one and would literally die without it.

It had already been tested and was a match for that recipient, and the

families of the victims didn't want to see the, you know, nurse that had

played God with their family members.

Continuing to be able to play God, even a benevolent God.

Mm-hmm.

They didn't want him to go, you know, change testaments or something.

So they were walking his ability to donate a kidney.

And so ironically, or that's probably the wrong use of ironically, but

another person, another innocent person, was going to die as a result.

And I thought that was a really screwed up situation that was

perfect to insert myself into.

And also, if I got involved, you know, maybe a good thing would happen.

Meaning attention would be brought to this situation and the

ridiculousness of the, my narrative would make the donation possible.

And I wrote him based on that premise, which turned out to be the perfect way

to speak to a sociopathic serial killer, which is to say, powers in your hands.

I'm not your karmic accountant.

I'm not going to weigh good versus bad.

I'm just simply saying.

If this is something that's important to you, this is a

vehicle that might further that.

And it reflected a version of himself that he, he wanted to see

reflected and so he got back in touch.

So tell us a little bit about Charles Cullen.

I, I've sort of given the lowdown.

He was a nurse, uh, in Pennsylvania to New Jersey, bouncing around

hospitals, you know, committing murders and stuff like that.

He was an addict.

Well, he, yeah, he was He.

He was an alcoholic and struggled with that.

He is from East Orange, New Jersey originally.

He was in the Navy.

He had a hard time in high school.

He had a hard time with his mother's death, and he really

found himself in nursing.

Then over the course of 16 years, he was at nine different hospitals

across New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

At each hospital.

He was either let go or fired with positive or neutral references.

Never negative references, and he was killing the entire time.

So, so throughout his career, you know, I, I interviewed him for years in secret

based on everything I learned from him and other sources that were opened

up to me because of talking to him.

You know, the body count was somewhere around 400.

Victims during that time.

Oh my goodness.

You know, the question is always, why wasn't he discovered earlier?

And the answer is he was.

He was discovered over and over again and, and moved out the back door

and made someone else's problem.

And that's, to me was the real story.

Yeah.

And 'cause also like hospitals didn't wanna deal with the paperwork

and the

quietly out the back door, having

that publicity too, no one

wants that publicity.

Well just pay these people off and move forward.

Yeah, it was, it was a liability issue.

People at the hospital that dealt with Colin, did a great job of limiting their

liability and getting rid of him, but over and over again, they failed to do anything

more than that, and he would simply move down the road literally and get

another job and continue killing people.

And after a while, I mean, he is the one that told me this.

I mean, I, I verified it.

I did a lot more research than just talking to him.

But after a while, his murder habit or murder compulsion, he justified as a way

of pointing out that the hospitals were.

Not there for patient safety, that they were more concerned

with their own wellbeing.

So he actually justified what he did as almost being a

symptom of a sick institution.

Mm.

Which is, I dunno, kind of meta.

Yeah.

And

he

is not wrong.

No, he's not wrong.

And how did he end up getting discovered or who turned him in?

Well, I wrote a book about it.

In that book you find that he was actually discovered over and over

again that there were some nurses that came forward and risked their careers.

To say, no, you can't just let this person go.

This is, there's, there's more happening here.

The death rates spiked.

We're missing, you know, huge amounts of certain medications.

Not narcotic medications, but you know, paralytic medications or heart

medications, everyone knows, and those whistleblowers, brave whistleblowers.

Nothing ever good happens to whistleblowers, you know?

And so they kind of came and went.

In the end, the last hospital he was at in Somerset County, New Jersey, he was

caught and then the hospital got caught out trying to investigate on their own,

they called New Jersey Poison Control.

They wanted help with the mass to figure out, okay, we have a patient that was

overdosed on, you know, heart drug or a patient that was overdosed on insulin.

And they're trying to figure out when would this patient

have been given these drugs?

Working from that, you know who was on shift.

They're just trying to do it internally rather than call it a

homicide and bring in the cops.

And to their credit, New Jersey, poison Control, Dr. Steven Marcus and Dr.

Bruce Ruck said, well, wait a minute.

This isn't just a math problem.

The problem is that someone's killing patients, right?

That's the problem.

And they refused to let it go.

Said that if you're not going to do something about it, we will.

And this has all been on recorded line the entire time.

After that point, the hospital felt compelled to indicate that they thought

that perhaps they had an issue, not a homicide issue, just an accident issue.

And the detectives, you know, homicide detectives that, that tried

to figure out what was going on.

They were having no luck because.

A hospital full of doctors and a law firm had apparently been investigating,

and they said they had no paperwork and no idea what was happening.

So, you know, two guys that are used to street murders, they're

not going to be able to solve medical, a medical situation.

They were very fortunate that Charlie Cullen, the serial killer, his best

friend at the hospital, a woman, uh, named Amy, Amy Lundgren, agreed to

discover for herself whether or not.

Her best friend, someone she'd been protecting, assuming he was being

scapegoated or whether he was a serial killer, and so she put herself at risk

and her job at risk and approached him, you know, wearing a wire.

For the cops.

Wow.

We also wanna add that the Good Nursery book also became a movie in 2022 with

Eddie Redman and Jessica Chastain.

It did.

I read

the book

and

I

saw the movie, Charlie.

Thank you.

What, what'd you think of the, uh, translation between the two?

I didn't make the movie,

you know, it's funny 'cause I'm reading, uh, devil in the White City right now.

Mm-hmm And I don't know how the hell they're gonna make that a movie.

Do you have to say, I really enjoyed, not just 'cause I know you, but I

really enjoyed the book a lot and really broke things down and got into a sense.

Thanks.

So I, I'd have to say I prefer the book.

But the movie was great.

And Eddie Redate is, they're both great.

I

only saw the movie, but I thought it was great.

Kitty can read.

I'm sorry, I didn't read your book.

Kitty doesn't read bugs.

So we had been talking about Elizabeth Wet Laffer.

Mm-hmm.

And I know after the trial, and she basically pled guilty.

There was a whole look into the system and what went wrong.

There was some good that came out of this horrible thing that

they changed the system a bit.

I think they changed the way they screen people, et cetera.

After your book and after the whole ordeal with Charles Colin, did

something like that happen here?

I'd love to say yes.

My real goal from the book, aside from writing a book that I would

wanna read, I really wanted to expose the four story because it seemed

like a really simple story, right?

Bad guys out there.

He is eluding the system.

Eventually the system catches up with him and order is restored, and in

fact, that's not the story at all.

Again, he was caught over and over again.

The system perpetuated that and eventually the system got caught

and therefore he got caught.

Yeah.

He is sentenced to hundreds of years.

He's never going to get out of maximum security in Trenton.

But the people that facilitated him, the career bureaucrats in hospitals, the

administrators, there's been a question, were they knowingly accessories to murder?

Was that something that they should be held accountable for?

And the detectives.

Who stopped.

Cullen wanted a grand jury and they were denied on a political level, so Wow.

What I really hoped to do was to at least get to the point where we were

allowed to ask the question, were these people accessories to murder?

And that still hasn't happened.

There are so-called Cullen laws that are supposed to.

Help stop bad nurses from being in the system.

And all they do is they penalize nurses, right, who are often

overworked, you know, scheduled poorly.

You know, if a hospital doesn't have enough nurses on, and nurses start

making mistakes because of under staffing, the problem becomes the nurses.

So it's become a, a further way of scapegoating in protecting themselves.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No

hospital has even said, whoops, we shouldn't have done that.

No.

Even that.

They just can't do it for liability's sake.

It's just crazy.

And, and you know, there were some civil cases that were brought in

some successfully, especially with hospitals where it was revealed that

the president of the hospital called his friends and said, don't hire this guy.

Oh boy.

But they never reported it officially.

Oh, that's

interesting.

So we told you a little bit about Beth with an e. Weer, she had

sort of similar characteristics.

I mean, she had problems with alcohol.

She did go from a couple of different hospitals.

She actually was suspended four times in one place for big drunk on the

job, but they still brought her back.

Mm. Which I don't think any other job would let you do that.

She actually confessed to people.

Number one, they didn't wanna deal with it.

Number two, she just didn't look the part.

You know, she looked like she could be a church lady.

Yeah.

One of the factors that I think you have to keep in mind with all these

cases is that we need more nurses,

right?

There's a shortage and.

Anybody with a pulse and the right letters after their name is acceptable.

And that's horrible.

Especially, you know, I know in, in her case, she was taking care

of our most vulnerable people.

The nineties.

Yeah.

You know, there was a more recent case in, in Pennsylvania, she'd seen the movie too.

I guess she liked it as well.

You're an inspiration.

Yeah, I know.

I felt really bad.

But that one, she'd basically been in a euthanasia clinic, you know, a kill

shelter, and then she moved to a nursing home and couldn't get fired for trying

Wow.

Kind of was doing the same thing in, in both places and was a supervisor at

the end and had almost no experience.

I mean, we could blame ourselves as well.

Apparently the, we don't prioritize taking care of our elderly enough

to make it pay and be able to be selective and who we admire.

So I guess what I wanna ask you too is, you know, when we're talking about wet

L for, she said that she would get a surge, she called it the red surge, and

they even likened it to be like the same sort of feeling you get with gambling.

Mm-hmm.

When you're winning or something like that.

Like it's sort of an addictive thing.

Mm-hmm.

Do you think there's a common thread like.

Did Colin have sort of being an alcoholic himself, he had sort of the

same similar feelings with the addiction of killing, or was it a God syndrome?

Like, what do you think drove him to do that?

He described it as a compulsion.

I felt, I felt compelled to intervene.

Yeah, that's probably as honest as he'll ever get in terms of his, his motives.

It made him feel better.

It gave him a sense of control.

Kathy had some really good comparison to, to gambling, which is, you know, he,

he read the results of what he had done.

So he'd give various patients different mixtures of push and pull for their

blood pressure, for their heart rate, for their insulin levels, all these different

things, these different cocktails.

And he was very good with the chemistry, so he, he knew what he was doing, but

he didn't know exactly which would win.

And then he would read the next day, back through the medical

records on a little computer screen.

The way you'd read the results on a sports page in the newspaper.

Wow.

So it was very similar, I think to to gambling.

He compared himself to James Bond at one point, at least to his friend Amy,

which is to say that he felt like he was leading a sexier secret double

life instead of being an employee.

Or you know, a pawn.

He was in control.

He was the secret puppet master.

That was his motivation.

You interacted with Colin.

How did you feel about him?

Like, we're calling this bad Elizabeth.

These people are bad people.

Obviously Colin is a complicated creature, but do you think he is a sociopath?

Do you think he's bad?

I

think he's a sociopath.

I think he's amoral.

Okay.

The question is, you know, did he know right from wrong?

Right?

Yes.

Did he know what he was doing was affecting or ending people's lives and

and impacting family members and so forth?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

When he put an 86-year-old man who was in a halo with a broken neck,

you know, one of those awful things where they screw it and yeah.

And when he put him into a seizure with insulin and was able to stand by him

as he shook himself to death, right.

And then go on.

With his day.

That's a different sort of person.

I also wanted to, if I, if I can talk about nurse serial killers, of course.

I mean, it is a sub genre.

There are, there are a bunch of 'em.

But the thing is that if, if you like killing people.

Hospital's a great place to do it.

People dropping dead in the auto zone just seems wrong, right?

But people die in hospitals.

That's what happens.

You're also given the tools to save or not save, kill people on a daily

basis, and you're drawing a population that is interested in life and death.

Being involved.

Mm-hmm.

So you're kind of self-selecting a person.

Not that those people are more likely to kill you, of course, but Yeah.

Uh, compared to other professions like serial killing

bankers, you know, it's rare.

And also, as you said before with Colin in particular, gave him some agency.

Yeah.

He might be wiping people's asses during the day, but at the end

of the day, he also has control if they're gonna live or die.

As nursing pay rates went up, more men joined.

Mm.

Because it was once really seen as an exclusively female profession.

Right.

And then you got a lot of, uh, what Charlie Colen would

consider bros, the nurse bro.

Right.

And those guys playing hacky sack with a tape ball while Mrs. Gi Bonano was

dying in the other room and mocking him as well, because he was sort of a

drippy, nerdy, you know, he was the guy that got whipped with a towel in high

school, got whipped with a towel in the submarine when he worked in the Navy.

He had a target on his back.

And this was a way of writing the power balance in his, in his mind somehow.

Yeah.

Most people don't ever have to face the question, should I kill this person?

Do I care?

Yeah.

I tried to ask that question of myself in writing the book.

It took 10 years.

Wow.

And I tried to make myself crazy so I could write through him.

And happily I came up with the answer that no.

I mean, I, I could almost get there.

But at the end of the day, no, I find it horrifying.

But really, very few of us deal with, you know, suffering people life and death.

So we really don't even have to address.

Whether or not we're monstrous.

Yes.

Right?

Yes.

Yes.

And I found

that that to be the most horrifying thing because the, you know, the,

there's a temptation to treat the serial killer as the other.

I think that's part of the fetishization of serial killers, you know?

Mm-hmm.

And those people aren't us.

And so we feel better about that.

But what I found was, given the right circumstances.

Pretty much any of us become monstrous.

Yeah.

I'm sure the desensitization of it causes you to act differently from people

that don't see those things every day.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, and I think you have to be that way to have

that type of job, you know?

Mm-hmm.

Of course.

Um, the other thing I was curious about, also, the victims, you know,

the relatives of the victims too, the way they feel after that, that

sort of fallout, you know, that you were trying to help get justice for

that, and then people writing to you.

Mm-hmm.

Imagine that's for you as the writer, they're looking for you as to be

the sort of conduit for justice.

The first reaction, almost universally for any family member,

uh, involved with this, was to turn their anger to me, to a person.

They thought I was disgusting.

They imagine I was, you know, massively profiting off of and preying on their

suffering, and they were awful to me.

Oh, I found universally that none of those people had read the book.

I haven't found anyone that did read the book, all the family

members that had any problem.

In fact, I heard from a lot of them that appreciated what I was

doing and then wanted to ask if I had any more information because

I had a lot of leaked files.

That was difficult, you know, just like there's no perfect serial killer.

There's no perfect victim.

Yeah,

you wanna love all the victims and all the victims' families, and you don't.

But none of that has anything to do with whether or not they should die.

Yeah.

But it's, it can get confusing.

'cause you want your victims to be sympathetic.

Of course.

And you want your villain to be villainous.

Exactly.

Well, the other thing, are you still in touch with him or are you guys

No, we're done with each other.

I was useful to him, he thought, or potentially he didn't like what I made.

Oh really?

When you start dealing with people like that, you start asking

yourself even who you are and what lies you're telling yourself.

You'll obviously also start asking yourself whether

you have any real feelings.

Or whether you just need to pretend you have feelings.

It gets it.

It can drive you nuts.

No, you spent 10 years

with this.

And the other thing too is that you're an immersive journalist and you've

done all kinds of stories like this,

and the people you're interviewing will often try to manipulate

you to change your mindset.

So you're fighting that all time.

Oh, very much.

It's not easy.

So what are you working on next?

I'm working on a few things.

Some are nonfiction, uh, some are sort of crossing over into fiction, which

is just taking nonfiction and not worrying about the timeline as much.

I've always been a cartoonist and I'm working with, uh, an illustrator

because my cartoons are saggy.

You know, they're not neat.

So now I'm working with an illustrator and I just make the concepts and

he draws 'em out and we're sending 'em to the New Yorker and so forth.

So that's been my candy lately, but I've got some, I'm still dealing

with horrible things, don't worry.

Oh, good.

Yeah.

Good,

good, good.

Well.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you all.

See you guys.

Thanks so much to our guest, Charles Grabber for joining us from

Nantucket and check out his books, the Good Nurse and the Breakthrough.

If you want more information on Beth Lauer, I got her name right.

You can find that in the show notes.

Thank you for listening to Battle Elizabeth.

Please rate and review the show on places like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

We are Battle Elizabeth Pod on Instagram and Substack.

Feel free to email us at Battle elizabeth pod@gmail.com.

If you have any questions or comments

that Elizabeth is recorded at Jet Road Studios.

It is hosted by me, Gideon Evans,

me, Kathy Egan Taylor.

It is produced and engineered by Will Becton, and our executive

producer is Amber Becton.

Our theme music was composed by Alexis Cardo and Danny Gray.

Thanks again for listening.

We'll see you next time.