Elizabeth Wettlaufer is escorted into the courthouse in Woodstock, Ontario on Friday, Jan. 13, 2017. Ontario Provincial Police laid six more charges against 49-year-old Wettlaufer, four counts of attempted murder and two counts of aggravated assault.
Image Credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Dave Chidley
January 13, 2017 - 9:32 AM
WOODSTOCK, Ont. - A former Ontario nurse charged with killing eight seniors in two long-term care homes now is accused of attempting to kill others in her care.
Ontario Provincial Police laid six more charges against 49-year-old Elizabeth Wettlaufer on Friday — four counts of attempted murder and two counts of aggravated assault.
Court documents accuse Wettlaufer of injecting the six new alleged victims with insulin at various points between June 2007 and August 2016.
Police did not provide details on the alleged incidents, but said their investigation was ongoing.
"It's a very intense investigation and obviously there's still a lot more questions than answers but it's an ongoing investigation," said Sgt. David Rektor. "We'll just follow the evidence and take it to where it leads us."
Anyone who might have information on the case is being encouraged to contact police, said Rektor.
The new charges against Wettlaufer were announced less than an hour before she appeared briefly in a packed Woodstock, Ont., courtroom.
The former nurse, who has been in custody since late October, looked out silently at the public benches where friends and family of some of her alleged victims sat. Her case was put over to Feb. 15 after a Crown lawyer updated the court on the new charges.
Wettlaufer now is charged with aggravated assault against 87-year-old Clotilde Adriano and 90-year-old Albina Demedeiros between June and December of 2007. Both were residents at the Caressant Care nursing home in Woodstock where Wettlaufer had worked for years as a nurse.
She is also charged with the attempted murder of 57-year-old Wayne Hedges between September and December 2008, and the attempted murder of 63-year-old Michael Priddle between January 2008 and December 2009. They were also Caressant Care residents.
The alleged victims named in the other attempted murder charges are 77-year-old Sandra Towler, a resident of Telfer Place in Brant County, Ont., in September 2015, and 68-year-old Beverly Bertram, who was at a private home in Oxford County in August of last year.
Police say four of the new alleged victims — all the Caressant Care residents — have since died, but their deaths have not been attributed to Wettlaufer.
The latest charges against Wettlaufer come in addition to eight counts of first-degree murder laid in October in connection with the deaths of residents at nursing homes in Woodstock and London, Ont.
At that time, police alleged Wettlaufer used drugs to kill the seniors while she worked at the facilities between 2007 and 2014.
The allegations against her have not been proven in court.
Police have said their investigation was launched in late September of last year.
The probe was prompted by information Wettlaufer provided to a psychiatric hospital in Toronto, a source has told The Canadian Press.
Officials from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) alerted the Toronto police that Wettlaufer shared information with hospital staff that caused them "concern,'' a police source has said.
Records from the College of Nurses of Ontario show Wettlaufer was first registered as a nurse in August 1995 but resigned Sept. 30, 2016, and is no longer a registered nurse.
News from © The Canadian Press, 2017