Elizabeth Wettlaufer - Episode 13

Welcome back Caffeine Casefilers. Grab a mug, fill it with something dark and unforgiving, and let’s get started.Between 2007 and 2016, residents of long-term care homes in Ontario, Canada, were dying. Nothing unusual there—elderly people with complex medical conditions pass away every day. But eight of those deaths were something else entirely. They were murders, committed by the one person everyone trusted: their nurse.Elizabeth Wettlaufer was a registered nurse, a quiet woman from rural Ontario who went to church on Sundays and worked the night shift. She was also a serial killer. For nearly a decade, she moved through the corridors of care homes injecting vulnerable seniors with lethal overdoses of insulin—and no one noticed. Not her employers, who fired her multiple times but gave her glowing references. Not the nursing regulator, who ignored red flags going back to 1995. Not the coroner, who refused to investigate because “no death in a nursing home is unexpected.”In this deep dive, we tell the full story of Wettlaufer’s crimes, with extended biographies of each victim: a WWII veteran who lied about his age to fight for Canada, a Hungarian refugee who escaped Soviet tanks with nothing but the clothes on his back, a seamstress who cried out for help for over an hour as she fought for her life. We examine the psychology of a killer who described “the red surge” and “euphoria” after murder, the systemic failures that allowed her to operate undetected for a decade, and the 2019 public inquiry that concluded she would never have been caught if she hadn’t confessed.Follow Dark Roast for new episodes every week :Instagram: @darkroastcaffeinecasefilesSubstack: @darkroastcaffeinecasefilesFacebook: Dark Roast: Caffeine Casefiles PodcastYoutube: Dark Roast Caffeine CasefilesEmail: [email protected]: Dark Roast: Caffeine Case files by Caitlin Francois | SubstackRate and Review:If you enjoyed this episode, please rate us 5 stars and leave a review on Spotify. It helps other true crime and coffee lovers find the show. Get full access to Dark Roast: Caffeine Case files by Caitlin Francois at darkroastcaffeinecasefiles.substack.com/subscribe