160 • The Code Blue Queen

WEBVTT
00:00.031 --> 00:00.491
[SPEAKER_00]: Can we talk seven else?
00:00.511 --> 00:01.111
[SPEAKER_00]: Can we talk about seven else?
00:01.151 --> 00:19.538
[SPEAKER_00]: Hellooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
00:25.565 --> 00:29.747
[SPEAKER_00]: Nurses, I think, generally have a pretty good reputation.
00:30.687 --> 00:37.290
[SPEAKER_00]: Though if you've ever been in a hospital for an extended period, you'll know that not all nurses are created equal.
00:38.270 --> 00:42.752
[SPEAKER_00]: Some are less than optimal, some are clearly in the wrong field.
00:43.632 --> 00:47.414
[SPEAKER_00]: Left field is from where the dower disposition, the callous care,
00:48.050 --> 00:49.751
[SPEAKER_00]: Seems to come from, from some.
00:50.331 --> 00:51.372
[SPEAKER_00]: He called it burnout.
00:51.412 --> 00:55.293
[SPEAKER_00]: He called it desensitized or he could just call it what it is.
00:56.214 --> 00:58.315
[SPEAKER_00]: Some are satis and scrubs.
00:59.235 --> 01:02.377
[SPEAKER_00]: Sick of the sick, tired of the retired.
01:03.297 --> 01:05.718
[SPEAKER_00]: Looking for any opportunity to stick it to their patients.
01:06.739 --> 01:08.499
[SPEAKER_00]: Some with a needle.
01:09.360 --> 01:11.861
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to our topic of your host, Jack Luna.
01:12.801 --> 01:14.022
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a true crime happening.
01:15.080 --> 01:16.280
[SPEAKER_00]: the Cold Blue Queen.
01:25.263 --> 01:31.905
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen Heather Strickland was born November 13, 1967 in Fall River, Massachusetts.
01:32.685 --> 01:40.008
[SPEAKER_00]: Coincidentally, Fall River is home town to the infamous Lizzy Borden, whom carved at a name for herself there in the late 1800s.
01:41.488 --> 01:52.316
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a picturesque place, something in a rockwell, as they say, or, as I'd say, a Stephen King novel, quaint with red paint, seeping in around the edges.
01:53.136 --> 01:57.239
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen was the second of two daughters born to Claudia and Richard Strickland.
01:57.860 --> 02:01.603
[SPEAKER_00]: Richard was an electronics executive, a Claudia, a homemaker.
02:02.330 --> 02:04.431
[SPEAKER_00]: The Stricklands were by all appearances.
02:04.991 --> 02:06.152
[SPEAKER_00]: The All-American Family.
02:06.853 --> 02:11.995
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen with her bright eyes and wide smile was praised as a polite and well-spoken young woman.
02:12.676 --> 02:17.879
[SPEAKER_00]: She was smart and excelled in math and science, showing a particular interest in biology.
02:18.759 --> 02:26.584
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen was clearly a type A personality from the start, everything had to be just right, and more often than not, she would take the lead with a task.
02:27.304 --> 02:32.948
[SPEAKER_00]: She was competitive and driven, annoying, but that's what the A and type A stands for.
02:33.748 --> 02:34.128
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe.
02:34.929 --> 02:44.395
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen portrayed herself as the perfect pupil, the doading daughter, but beneath the carefully crafted veneer, there were disturbances, signs of warping,
02:45.348 --> 03:08.382
[SPEAKER_00]: As a child, Kristen attended Spencer Borden Elementary School, where students were taught had a swinging axe while, completely naked, and now that's just silly, it's just Lizzy Borden jokes, but truly how strange that her elementary school was named Borden, not after Lizzy, of course, but still, that's like naming a Wichita school after some guy named Byron Trent Kingsley.
03:09.273 --> 03:09.593
[SPEAKER_00]: Get it?
03:10.014 --> 03:10.715
[SPEAKER_00]: BTK.
03:11.396 --> 03:16.382
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyways, Kristen, a compulsive liar, would tell people she was related to Lizzy Borden.
03:16.983 --> 03:22.249
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that she would think this a good thing and would go out of her way to lie about it is curious.
03:23.185 --> 03:29.249
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen in another example of her behavior later considered quite curious was once caught cheating on a math quiz.
03:29.750 --> 03:35.193
[SPEAKER_00]: And when confronted, cried so forcefully, instead of being disciplined, she received comfort.
03:35.994 --> 03:38.876
[SPEAKER_00]: A big, aha moment for a brat.
03:39.416 --> 03:47.122
[SPEAKER_00]: When it's realized that the sympathy of others can be twisted, like a key to escape or even enter certain situations.
03:47.934 --> 03:51.797
[SPEAKER_00]: By the age of 10, Kristen had learned quite a lot about manipulating others.
03:52.477 --> 04:02.645
[SPEAKER_00]: She began faking sudden illnesses, like a headache, stomach pain, or dissonous, slowly recovering once gently sat down in the center of attention.
04:03.385 --> 04:07.888
[SPEAKER_00]: One such incident would later be recalled by those wondering where the wonder girl went wrong.
04:08.469 --> 04:15.494
[SPEAKER_00]: It was at a neighborhood barbecue while playing by the pool that young Kristen had suddenly collapsed and began gasping for air.
04:16.467 --> 04:19.888
[SPEAKER_00]: Concerned parents' renderer, children stopped playing and stared.
04:20.669 --> 04:25.211
[SPEAKER_00]: Paramedics were almost called, but then, young Kristen snapped out of it.
04:26.091 --> 04:33.534
[SPEAKER_00]: She was brought inside to lay down and was soon eating ice cream and giggling at the antics of Uncle Types, working to cheer her up.
04:34.295 --> 04:36.836
[SPEAKER_00]: The women, however, looked on with doubt.
04:37.616 --> 04:38.596
[SPEAKER_00]: They knew these tricks.
04:39.377 --> 04:41.978
[SPEAKER_00]: That girl, some whispered, was trouble.
04:42.973 --> 04:49.703
[SPEAKER_00]: Others perhaps the more miscevious mavens in the room, more likely thought this manipulative little blonde was going places.
04:50.764 --> 04:56.493
[SPEAKER_00]: Two things can be true at once, though that usually means something false is at work.
04:57.493 --> 05:08.337
[SPEAKER_00]: This behavior would continue as Kristen grew older, fainting spells, sudden tears or anxiety that would interrupt the plans of friends and family, plans which would then change to suit Kristen.
05:09.317 --> 05:11.078
[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't want attention in the normal sense.
05:11.498 --> 05:12.938
[SPEAKER_00]: She wanted it on her terms.
05:13.439 --> 05:19.701
[SPEAKER_00]: The outcome will be seeming natural, but having been deliberately constructed and carefully orchestrated by Kristen.
05:20.652 --> 05:30.576
[SPEAKER_00]: In school, she was popular and made acquaintances easily, but though she considered friends soon understood what that meant being a friend to Kristen, it meant servicing her quirks.
05:31.416 --> 05:36.358
[SPEAKER_00]: She would listen and talk about the problems of others for hours, but never mention her own.
05:37.078 --> 05:39.139
[SPEAKER_00]: Her kindness, massed, cruelty.
05:39.879 --> 05:43.080
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen wasn't processing information so much as collecting it.
05:43.921 --> 05:45.241
[SPEAKER_00]: She enjoyed spreading gossip.
05:50.292 --> 05:53.053
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen enjoyed exploiting others for her own entertainment.
05:53.433 --> 05:55.635
[SPEAKER_00]: She did this impossibly and felt no guilt.
05:56.235 --> 06:01.037
[SPEAKER_00]: Only pleasure and extreme motivation to preserve herself in any of her harmful behavior.
06:01.697 --> 06:07.540
[SPEAKER_00]: The term in pression management consciously controlling how others perceive you, fits here.
06:08.541 --> 06:10.802
[SPEAKER_00]: So does the term cycle path.
06:11.382 --> 06:15.744
[SPEAKER_00]: If someone were to question Kristen, she would expertly turn their doubts into guilt.
06:16.464 --> 06:17.625
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't worth the trouble.
06:18.185 --> 06:30.776
[SPEAKER_00]: Most of what was being questioned about Christen's seem ridiculous anyways, she'd lie for the sake of lying, for a quick hit of attention, and for those who sent something off about Christen, they'd soon be made to look foolish if they questioned her.
06:31.216 --> 06:37.982
[SPEAKER_00]: The girl could sense what she was being sensed, and quickly put together a scheme that would back up her perceptions.
06:39.030 --> 06:44.094
[SPEAKER_00]: In her last years of high school she was, by all accounts, the girl destined for success.
06:44.734 --> 06:50.699
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen was keen to volunteer, tutor younger students, and was doing everything right from the outside.
06:51.399 --> 06:59.345
[SPEAKER_00]: Those inside understood that with Kristen there was a sharpness to her friendliness, an edge that slipped quickly to cut when she didn't get her way.
07:00.286 --> 07:05.329
[SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of, Kristen once told a boy friend that she had eaten glass after an argument.
07:09.012 --> 07:15.300
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, she didn't, because despite being a bit of a freak show, she never actually put herself in danger.
07:16.281 --> 07:22.068
[SPEAKER_00]: It was all a show, and the stages were only going to get bigger, along with the performances.
07:23.201 --> 07:27.205
[SPEAKER_00]: It is the mid-80s when Kristen Strickland graduated high school with honors.
07:28.005 --> 07:32.990
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen was accepted to Bridgewater State College, but there was soon an issue that caused her to drop out.
07:33.810 --> 07:40.376
[SPEAKER_00]: She had faked a suicide attempt, and as a result was removed from the prestigious program and sent for psychiatric treatment.
07:41.277 --> 07:49.244
[SPEAKER_00]: This was the first time she'd suffered a consequence for her manipulative behavior, and it caused Kristen to adjust her ways for a while.
07:50.201 --> 07:54.623
[SPEAKER_00]: One set of treatment, which she didn't really need, at least for being suicidal.
07:55.164 --> 08:01.367
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen quickly applied to and was accepted into the nursing program at Greenfield Community College in Massachusetts.
08:01.947 --> 08:10.552
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't as competitive or demanding a program as Bridgewater, but still required academic discipline, emotional resilience, and genuine care for others.
08:11.332 --> 08:12.674
[SPEAKER_00]: a one in a three ain't bad.
08:13.515 --> 08:16.959
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen was confident and her instructors noted her intellect.
08:17.439 --> 08:23.546
[SPEAKER_00]: She passed exams with high marks, especially in anatomy, pharmacology, and clinical procedures.
08:24.382 --> 08:28.346
[SPEAKER_00]: One former instructor recalled years later of Kristen, co-wout.
08:29.107 --> 08:31.950
[SPEAKER_00]: She was the kind of student who always looked like she had it together.
08:32.571 --> 08:36.075
[SPEAKER_00]: Hair, neat, uniform, spotless, charting perfect.
08:36.756 --> 08:38.638
[SPEAKER_00]: She wanted to be seen as the best in the room.
08:39.318 --> 08:40.780
[SPEAKER_00]: And often, she was.
08:41.701 --> 08:42.061
[SPEAKER_00]: And, quote.
08:42.943 --> 08:45.604
[SPEAKER_00]: but when she wasn't, it was the same old tricks.
08:46.344 --> 08:57.966
[SPEAKER_00]: Fainting spells or migraines were common at home, and after proceeded up coming exams, of course she just wanted everyone talking about how hard she was working to achieve our end status, registered nurse.
08:58.766 --> 09:05.468
[SPEAKER_00]: At the college, if she was late with a submission, she would show up to class to strad, claiming a family emergency as the reason.
09:06.308 --> 09:10.329
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen continued to exploit, could drive crises, and manipulate the world around her.
09:11.198 --> 09:19.524
[SPEAKER_00]: She gained the respect of her instructors and peers, but often during group work, Kristen would be suddenly critical, especially if someone was performing her.
09:20.505 --> 09:22.906
[SPEAKER_00]: Overall, her college experience was fairly typical.
09:23.387 --> 09:30.812
[SPEAKER_00]: There were a few signs that something wasn't quite right with Kristen, but nothing to indicate that the school was producing a so-called angel of death.
09:36.490 --> 09:41.031
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sick by the way, so if you're noticing, yeah, I'm sick.
09:41.271 --> 09:49.313
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not hammered, I'm over, I'm very sick, so this, she's very sick too, so we kind of fit here together.
09:49.713 --> 09:57.314
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, we kind of fit in this way too, when I was a college, I would notice when the teacher was noticing me.
09:58.094 --> 10:00.955
[SPEAKER_00]: I would, I don't know, manipulate in ways.
10:02.033 --> 10:06.016
[SPEAKER_00]: Where it looked like I was trying a little harder than everybody else, more focused than everybody else.
10:07.757 --> 10:08.938
[SPEAKER_00]: I was kind of screwed up, too.
10:09.899 --> 10:27.271
[SPEAKER_00]: Still, I'm really just aware, you know, hyper-aware of how other people are perceiving you or trying to perceive you and then putting it out there that you are a certain type so that they think positively of you.
10:27.291 --> 10:31.314
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a teacher come up to me one time I think I've told the story before and she said,
10:32.275 --> 10:42.202
[SPEAKER_00]: You're very self-preserved, and I thought about later, I'm like, yeah, she thinks that because I can see her eyes when everyone's talking around me, I can see the teacher's eyes.
10:42.242 --> 10:48.506
[SPEAKER_00]: I can sense that she's looking over at the talking happening, and I'll pretend like I'm working now to give a good impression on myself.
10:49.787 --> 10:52.289
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I didn't kill anybody when I was working in a...
10:53.393 --> 11:05.786
[SPEAKER_00]: Social services later on, but forming the impression management is something that I was pretty good at early on and maybe even today for whatever reason.
11:06.607 --> 11:11.392
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably a psychopath, I don't know, now I'm not, I don't think so.
11:12.133 --> 11:23.004
[SPEAKER_00]: An early sign of trouble was an incident while Kristen was working part-time as a health care aid for medically fragile children, where a mentally disabled child was scalded in a bath she had drawn for this child.
11:23.664 --> 11:26.687
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing came of this except scarring on the poor kid.
11:27.448 --> 11:29.170
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I'm gonna step in.
11:29.210 --> 11:36.815
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw this happen once a new girl working in the facility I was at was running a bath with a paralyzed child in the bath.
11:37.456 --> 11:40.939
[SPEAKER_00]: She was actually trying to warm up the bath because they've been in there for a bit, the kid had been.
11:41.439 --> 11:49.806
[SPEAKER_00]: And she's bathing the client still while the tap runs hot water, scalding hot water over the child's feet.
11:50.366 --> 11:52.047
[SPEAKER_00]: and it was a nightmare when I came into it.
11:52.087 --> 11:55.808
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a headstaff on shift when she started screaming about it.
11:56.408 --> 11:58.109
[SPEAKER_00]: Skin was peeling off this kid's feet.
11:58.909 --> 12:01.530
[SPEAKER_00]: The poor kid hadn't felt it due to the paralysis.
12:02.430 --> 12:04.030
[SPEAKER_00]: And this new girl she'd made a mistake.
12:05.231 --> 12:07.592
[SPEAKER_00]: Like with this case, nothing much came of it.
12:07.892 --> 12:08.532
[SPEAKER_00]: What can you do?
12:08.872 --> 12:11.573
[SPEAKER_00]: You arrest a personal support worker for making a mistake?
12:12.432 --> 12:15.754
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably at the very least the incident should follow you around for a while.
12:16.314 --> 12:20.396
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can get rid of such things by switching jobs, at least back then you could.
12:21.216 --> 12:23.357
[SPEAKER_00]: Definitely in Christen's time, the 80s, the 90s.
12:25.213 --> 12:30.899
[SPEAKER_00]: After completing her associate degree in nursing, Kristen Pastor board exams and became a registered nurse.
12:31.560 --> 12:41.970
[SPEAKER_00]: In the early 1990s, she began a full-time position on Ward C, known as the Intensive Care Psychiatric Unit, at the North Hampton Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Leeds, Massachusetts.
12:42.790 --> 12:47.054
[SPEAKER_00]: This government run facility consistently required reliable nursing staff.
12:47.614 --> 12:53.039
[SPEAKER_00]: That is to say there is high overturn due to the difficulties of working in such an environment.
12:53.680 --> 12:57.083
[SPEAKER_00]: Ward C was often understaffed, the nurses were overworked.
12:57.623 --> 13:04.529
[SPEAKER_00]: This was a place where patients attention to detail and emotional stamina, where essential in maintaining compassionate care.
13:05.150 --> 13:14.199
[SPEAKER_00]: The patients were vulnerable, as many were elderly suffering from chronic illness, post-operative complications, dementia, or degenerative diseases.
13:15.020 --> 13:23.589
[SPEAKER_00]: Somewhere in their final months and others were there, simply for recovery, but all of them dependent on the staff to keep them clean, fed, comfortable, alive.
13:24.510 --> 13:27.432
[SPEAKER_00]: Nurse Kristen stood up from the rest of the staff from the start here.
13:27.812 --> 13:34.116
[SPEAKER_00]: She thrived in the high-pressure environment, taking extra shifts, and it's high-pressure because something's always fucking going on.
13:34.156 --> 13:39.740
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone's almost always about to die, you know, there's plenty of drama in such places.
13:41.181 --> 13:42.902
[SPEAKER_00]: So she would take extra shifts.
13:43.343 --> 13:51.128
[SPEAKER_00]: She really called it sick, and she was always calm and composed during emergencies, speaking with clarity, confidence, and authority.
13:51.880 --> 14:01.991
[SPEAKER_00]: She quickly earned the reputation as the go-to nurse on Ward C. Some of her co-workers admire her efficiency while others found her intimidating and even cold.
14:02.932 --> 14:06.716
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no small talker conversations about her life, she just got the job done.
14:07.584 --> 14:15.651
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen cultivated trust with patients, especially the ones without families, sitting with them and asking them about their war stories, literal war stories.
14:16.091 --> 14:19.434
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember if I didn't make that clear there, this is a Veterans Hospital.
14:20.175 --> 14:23.457
[SPEAKER_00]: Supervisors appreciated Kristen's warmth and lack of drama.
14:24.198 --> 14:25.499
[SPEAKER_00]: Christen seemed built for this.
14:26.140 --> 14:26.801
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people are.
14:27.361 --> 14:30.264
[SPEAKER_00]: Their empathy is so large that it is fed by such places.
14:31.005 --> 14:33.227
[SPEAKER_00]: People often wonder how caregivers can do it.
14:33.747 --> 14:35.028
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't do it.
14:35.449 --> 14:36.490
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't believe he can do that.
14:36.830 --> 14:38.772
[SPEAKER_00]: But you hear it all the time when he worked in these fields.
14:39.392 --> 14:44.077
[SPEAKER_00]: I've always felt that it has to do with certain people being almost addicted to exercising their empathy.
14:44.878 --> 14:45.919
[SPEAKER_00]: That was me once.
14:46.319 --> 14:46.879
[SPEAKER_00]: Believe it or not.
14:47.911 --> 14:56.576
[SPEAKER_00]: I got worn out, pulled a hamstring and tore my Achilles, exercise my empathy, and was forced into an early empathy retirement.
14:58.057 --> 15:02.379
[SPEAKER_00]: Some days I still got it, but I'm Christian appeared to have it.
15:02.919 --> 15:09.623
[SPEAKER_00]: The over-abundance of empathy necessary to do her job well, but it seems she was feeding something entirely opposite to empathy.
15:10.644 --> 15:12.745
[SPEAKER_00]: Her hidden, sadistic nature.
15:14.075 --> 15:16.217
[SPEAKER_00]: It began to show a little as the years passed.
15:16.777 --> 15:25.263
[SPEAKER_00]: Later, her colleagues would confess that nurse Kristen, as she rose in the ranks and became more comfortable with herself, in her position, one of growing authority.
15:26.044 --> 15:28.386
[SPEAKER_00]: It seemed a monster within her was growing as well.
15:29.370 --> 15:34.953
[SPEAKER_00]: odd comments, a strange smirk, or a lingering gaze at a patient just before something went wrong.
15:35.694 --> 15:40.277
[SPEAKER_00]: The mask would slip, and some side, but didn't know what to do with that information.
15:41.057 --> 15:49.042
[SPEAKER_00]: Some co-workers felt she was too confident Kristen, too polished, and one of those types who just didn't want to make mistakes or admit to them when she did.
15:49.582 --> 15:56.907
[SPEAKER_00]: If she did make a mistake, she was able to cover it up so well that no one above her would notice, and those below her, she'd make feel culpable.
15:57.527 --> 16:04.549
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, if this gets out, we're all fucked, so that's clean this mess up, when a mistake was made.
16:05.009 --> 16:06.990
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not unusual at all for those places.
16:07.890 --> 16:16.473
[SPEAKER_00]: In my experience as well, I mean, even with that girl that I saw get burned, my supervisor at that time was like, well, these mistakes happen.
16:16.513 --> 16:21.995
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, if we tell anybody about this baby, we should start treating this thing and we treated this girl,
16:23.103 --> 16:30.647
[SPEAKER_00]: For our blisters over the next few days, and it wasn't as bad as it initially seemed, but her skin was peeling off immediately, and I was like, whoa, this is how we do things here.
16:31.147 --> 16:32.428
[SPEAKER_00]: We kind of cover them up, okay.
16:32.868 --> 16:33.588
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we do.
16:34.209 --> 16:35.629
[SPEAKER_00]: It felt like a battlefield, you know?
16:35.690 --> 16:37.230
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you're in some weird battle.
16:37.691 --> 16:41.673
[SPEAKER_00]: Not that extreme, but you're in a place that no one else would understand outside of it.
16:42.033 --> 16:43.774
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet you only can understand when you're in it.
16:44.554 --> 16:45.975
[SPEAKER_00]: And you look out for one another.
16:46.595 --> 16:48.656
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, a kid will throw themselves down the stairs.
16:48.696 --> 16:52.759
[SPEAKER_00]: A kid will smash their head against the wall when you went to go help another child.
16:53.339 --> 16:55.460
[SPEAKER_00]: And you come back to her and the kid's faces all bloody.
16:57.041 --> 16:59.542
[SPEAKER_00]: You just clean them up and let the wound heal.
16:59.562 --> 17:04.065
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't necessarily let the parents or your supervisor know about that because it's going to make you look incompetent.
17:04.525 --> 17:05.606
[SPEAKER_00]: These things did happen.
17:07.667 --> 17:13.310
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and then once in a while a child would die on shift and you'd be investigated.
17:14.337 --> 17:16.159
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a fair, it's a difficult job.
17:17.481 --> 17:23.787
[SPEAKER_00]: She's a nurse here in a hospital and they cover things up sometimes when they make mistakes.
17:25.208 --> 17:26.109
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying it's a good thing.
17:26.129 --> 17:27.291
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just saying I know what happens.
17:27.973 --> 17:43.316
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Kristen, she didn't take criticism very well, and when given it would retaliate with a cold shoulder or withhold help to the offending fellow nurse who had criticized her during a later shift, she would just kind of act like, oh, what, you need help?
17:43.857 --> 17:45.437
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you fucked with me.
17:45.477 --> 17:46.257
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what you get.
17:46.277 --> 17:47.737
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to come in and help you out.
17:48.238 --> 17:49.138
[SPEAKER_00]: Good luck lifting that
17:55.251 --> 18:00.816
[SPEAKER_00]: Later, this behavior seemed to be in the realm of red flags, but truly most workplaces have staff like this.
18:01.496 --> 18:05.740
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ's behavior was brushed off and attributed to understaffing and burnout.
18:06.380 --> 18:09.863
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there were a few out of the blue and of the cold blue.
18:10.284 --> 18:13.206
[SPEAKER_00]: Deaths that didn't raise any red flags either.
18:13.847 --> 18:16.189
[SPEAKER_00]: If you were going to grocery stores, some meat goes missing.
18:16.689 --> 18:19.151
[SPEAKER_00]: The occasional carton of eggs slips and crashes.
18:19.812 --> 18:22.234
[SPEAKER_00]: In hospitals, you lose track of men's from time to time.
18:22.874 --> 18:27.178
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes a patient unexpectedly hits the floor, and dies, same-diff.
18:28.279 --> 18:33.585
[SPEAKER_00]: Christian excelled on Ward C, and with that, she was allowed to operate largely unsupervised.
18:34.361 --> 18:35.422
[SPEAKER_00]: Doctors relied on her.
18:35.882 --> 18:40.485
[SPEAKER_00]: She was trusted to administer medications and make major decisions in the treatment of patients.
18:41.146 --> 18:46.590
[SPEAKER_00]: Naturally, Christom was often left alone with those charges of hers that were entrusted to her.
18:47.671 --> 18:54.816
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually, ones who were on their deathbed, you're the lead nurse, you're the one who needs to be hyper aware of this person there, closing in on death.
18:55.076 --> 18:59.980
[SPEAKER_00]: They're starting to speak to their ancestors and tongue before they go to bed at night.
19:00.720 --> 19:01.720
[SPEAKER_00]: Honey, is that you?
19:01.780 --> 19:04.741
[SPEAKER_00]: There has been fucking died five years previous, you know, though.
19:05.321 --> 19:09.402
[SPEAKER_00]: The way it is, you're a bit in an hospital, or a riffically haunted places.
19:10.003 --> 19:12.363
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, maybe positively, I shouldn't say horrifically.
19:13.363 --> 19:16.704
[SPEAKER_00]: Hospitals, nursing homes, group homes, very haunted.
19:17.524 --> 19:22.706
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it was in the early 90s that some staff started to notice a pattern that was hard to ignore.
19:23.487 --> 19:24.207
[SPEAKER_00]: Code Blues.
19:24.828 --> 19:29.791
[SPEAKER_00]: Patients who went into cardiac or respiratory arrest seem to spike during Kristen's shifts.
19:30.531 --> 19:34.794
[SPEAKER_00]: Often without prior symptoms or warning these patients were going to code blue status.
19:35.334 --> 19:37.135
[SPEAKER_00]: That is, you know, it's a emergency they're dying.
19:37.995 --> 19:41.898
[SPEAKER_00]: Patients who were in stable condition at lunch were dead by dinner.
19:42.778 --> 19:45.500
[SPEAKER_00]: Others coded and were revived only to crash again.
19:46.440 --> 19:50.603
[SPEAKER_00]: In mostly situations, Kristen was the first to respond, and more often than not, she was
19:53.066 --> 20:02.071
[SPEAKER_00]: The deaths were attributed to natural causes as these were sick patients, and some already in hospice-level care, and the reason my Kristen would be there all the time is that she's a lead nurse.
20:02.671 --> 20:08.554
[SPEAKER_00]: For a while, this increase in sudden mortality was chocked up to a string of bad luck for Kristen's shifts.
20:09.075 --> 20:14.758
[SPEAKER_00]: But eventually a few veteran nurses began to track the numbers, veteran nurses of veterans.
20:15.458 --> 20:25.263
[SPEAKER_00]: So for a period spanning months in the mid-90s here, these nurses got together and they started noting every cold blue and the staff there on duty at the time.
20:26.024 --> 20:28.285
[SPEAKER_00]: And eventually the pattern became undeniable.
20:29.025 --> 20:35.449
[SPEAKER_00]: Nurse Kristen Schiffs had the highest number of cardiac arrest and unexpected deaths on the entire ward.
20:36.369 --> 20:40.690
[SPEAKER_00]: Even more disturbing was Kristen's reaction to these deaths, the deaths piled out.
20:41.270 --> 20:46.971
[SPEAKER_00]: This was causing suspicion for the nurses, and they had concerns something odd was going on for Kristen.
20:47.371 --> 20:48.271
[SPEAKER_00]: They knew how she was.
20:48.972 --> 20:59.854
[SPEAKER_00]: If in fact something was going on, Kristen would begin to adjust her behavior, go dormant like any killer, feeling the heat, so they were quietly collecting this information because of their suspicions.
21:00.801 --> 21:05.383
[SPEAKER_00]: After a death, so talking about Christmas reaction to these deaths, she wouldn't show much grief.
21:06.064 --> 21:11.927
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, she'd seem energized, chatty and upbeat in the hours after this death.
21:12.447 --> 21:17.910
[SPEAKER_00]: And, man, there's just tons of people like that, too, that I ran into through the field in life and they get excited about death.
21:18.774 --> 21:27.057
[SPEAKER_00]: They like to talk about a gossip, but there's a morbid fascination with that for all, for many of us, but some of them really odd one, you know.
21:28.637 --> 21:31.078
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they almost wanted to happen so they can talk about it.
21:31.738 --> 21:36.119
[SPEAKER_00]: And I work with some nurses who were like that to like, oh, I think that we got one happening tonight.
21:36.979 --> 21:39.460
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a full moon, I remember one nurse, me that's a full moon.
21:40.120 --> 21:43.301
[SPEAKER_00]: You're ready, you're going to start dropping like flies and like what the fuck?
21:44.062 --> 21:46.742
[SPEAKER_00]: You seem excited about this and I think some of them are.
21:49.602 --> 21:54.485
[SPEAKER_00]: We got a type of epinepharin, a medication used to stimulate the heart and case of cardiac arrest.
21:55.266 --> 21:59.809
[SPEAKER_00]: Nurses began noticing vials of this medication missing from what they call crash carts.
22:00.209 --> 22:02.871
[SPEAKER_00]: Carts that they push around with all the medications and them they're locked up.
22:03.752 --> 22:12.758
[SPEAKER_00]: So they noticed one or two of these vials missing at a time, but there was enough to eventually raise concerns for those who were tabulating this information against Kristen.
22:13.526 --> 22:21.953
[SPEAKER_00]: Eponephrine had specific protocols and dosages, and Chris had full access to this eponephrine, which is a, it's a adrenaline basically.
22:22.453 --> 22:32.641
[SPEAKER_00]: What became suspicious to them was that some patients who coded weren't on medications that would cause cardiac arrest, and they're destined to make sense as they weren't in decline.
22:32.661 --> 22:40.328
[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about people with organ issues, not necessarily heart issues, you know, and they're dying of heart attacks.
22:41.481 --> 22:47.429
[SPEAKER_00]: And they were just stable with their other condition outside of the heart until they weren't and had a heart attack.
22:47.810 --> 22:52.896
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't want to believe it, but it sure was uncanny how often Christom was in the middle of a cold blue crisis.
22:53.963 --> 23:15.232
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen was a star nurse and accusing her of such a dastardly thing could make for trouble, even worse as I mentioned, she was proficient at turning things around if she knew others were under and they were under her about this, so be careful around Kristen, you know what you say what you do around her, she'll make something happen to you, she's especially trying to tip anyone off about her.
23:16.013 --> 23:19.994
[SPEAKER_00]: So nothing was said to hire apps in the Kristen Cold Blue Log State
23:21.793 --> 23:34.039
[SPEAKER_00]: The first death that really unnerved the floor happened in the fall of 1994, with the passing of Edward Sequara, a Korean war veteran, Edward had been admitted for routine muttering of a heart condition.
23:34.519 --> 23:39.161
[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't dying and wasn't flagged as high-risk, Christian was the lead nurse assigned to him.
23:39.962 --> 23:45.324
[SPEAKER_00]: Another nurse who had chatted with Edward hours before his death said later, he was fine.
23:45.805 --> 23:49.006
[SPEAKER_00]: Smiling joking, I didn't expect him to die that night.
23:52.481 --> 23:58.472
[SPEAKER_00]: The official report lists to the cause of death as cardiac arrest, nothing out of the ordinary, at least on a paper.
23:59.487 --> 24:02.508
[SPEAKER_00]: Edward's death, though, was followed by another than another.
24:03.168 --> 24:12.891
[SPEAKER_00]: All of the weeks, and each time Kristen was on shift, so we're talking about what initially set these nurses off to begin the little club where they're collecting information secretly against Kristen.
24:13.451 --> 24:17.152
[SPEAKER_00]: The one that really set them off made them think about the previous here, Edward.
24:17.813 --> 24:25.355
[SPEAKER_00]: Henry Hoodon, a grumpy golf war veteran who served as a physical therapist in the Air Force, was a very unusual case.
24:26.217 --> 24:31.799
[SPEAKER_00]: Henry, who was known to give the nurses grief, coded, suddenly after Kristen entered his room.
24:32.559 --> 24:38.782
[SPEAKER_00]: Henry was only 35 years old, and had been accidentally sent for care in Kristen's ward.
24:39.362 --> 24:52.687
[SPEAKER_00]: He suffered from delusions and voices in his head after having come in with a coma, following an incident at a pizza parlor where he'd been hit in the head with a beer bottle, suffered a brutal knockout and smacked his head on like a table on the way down,
24:53.576 --> 25:02.841
[SPEAKER_00]: and was put into a medically induced coma, when he awoke from the coma, he has said to have been a very different person, and was receiving care at this veteran's hospital.
25:03.121 --> 25:10.265
[SPEAKER_00]: But like I said, was accidentally put into Christen's ward where they normally dealt with older patients and ones closer to death.
25:10.985 --> 25:19.710
[SPEAKER_00]: Early, while this 35 year old Henry was receiving care under Christen's watch, Henry had begun to claim that the nurses were killing people in the ward.
25:20.964 --> 25:25.987
[SPEAKER_00]: He was around long enough to have seen Edward before him in his 60s with a heart problem die.
25:26.707 --> 25:32.231
[SPEAKER_00]: But he skits a frenic and maybe he was picking up on something.
25:32.751 --> 25:36.133
[SPEAKER_00]: I filled with a lot of skits of frenics and this is a crazy take by me.
25:36.893 --> 25:47.200
[SPEAKER_00]: But maybe with some screws loose, they're taking in a frequency that we normal people can't take in.
25:50.297 --> 26:01.661
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't want to talk too much about that for fear of sending crazy myself, but he was sensing that something was wrong in here and thought that people were being killed in the ward he was in.
26:02.662 --> 26:13.946
[SPEAKER_00]: And that same evening that he's going on about this, only an hour or so after a visit from his family, family who shrugged off 35-year-old Henry's claims as he was considered schizophrenic, kind of nuts.
26:14.746 --> 26:18.828
[SPEAKER_00]: Henry suffered three heart attacks after dinner and died.
26:19.753 --> 26:23.434
[SPEAKER_00]: And then this is a, they're like, wow, that young guy we had to be strainer.
26:23.474 --> 26:27.375
[SPEAKER_00]: Earlier, it must have really got around up to the area of three fucking heart attacks.
26:28.815 --> 26:35.277
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, the cause of death was listed as natural causes as it was for many of our other victims.
26:36.457 --> 26:46.200
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, many of them were undetermined deaths, but most natural causes and an undetermined death in a hospital is very common, quite common.
26:46.999 --> 26:47.659
[SPEAKER_00]: It could be anything.
26:47.920 --> 26:50.141
[SPEAKER_00]: They're fucked up for whatever reason for being in the hospital.
26:50.201 --> 26:53.083
[SPEAKER_00]: So, um, something leads to a heart attack.
26:53.823 --> 26:57.385
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know exactly what led to that heart attack, but was in the hospital.
26:57.986 --> 27:00.207
[SPEAKER_00]: I can shoot an happens, undetermined.
27:01.508 --> 27:11.974
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's watching Kristen, after this 35-year-old's death in Henry Hudon, calmly noted that the time of death that she saw a small, subtle smile on nurse Kristen's face.
27:12.913 --> 27:15.274
[SPEAKER_00]: quote, it wasn't that she seemed happy.
27:15.954 --> 27:17.655
[SPEAKER_00]: It was that she didn't seem surprised.
27:18.255 --> 27:20.496
[SPEAKER_00]: The nurse recalled, as she should have been surprised.
27:21.096 --> 27:22.997
[SPEAKER_00]: A young man having three heart attacks.
27:23.477 --> 27:31.940
[SPEAKER_00]: By early 1996, more than a dozen deaths occurred under similar circumstances, the hospital cared for an aging population and death was inevitable, usually.
27:32.420 --> 27:47.208
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was the frequency and suddenness and the fact that Kristen was there for almost all of them that eventually caused a younger, less careful nurse in the respect of not rocking the boat to take her concerns to a supervisor without first checking in with the team collecting information on Kristen here, right?
27:47.829 --> 27:49.850
[SPEAKER_00]: I should insert here that there was a patient.
27:50.530 --> 27:51.450
[SPEAKER_00]: who survived.
27:52.271 --> 28:03.897
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the attempted killings by Kristen via injection of the needle of adrenaline and epinephrine, saying this patient did that I was fine.
28:03.917 --> 28:10.260
[SPEAKER_00]: She was clearing my IV and then whenever she did, made my veins feel like they were on fire.
28:10.800 --> 28:13.321
[SPEAKER_00]: the next era remember as being revived by a Christian.
28:13.982 --> 28:15.302
[SPEAKER_00]: So we'll get to it.
28:15.322 --> 28:19.105
[SPEAKER_00]: But she was injecting people, causing their heart to go to high rate.
28:19.685 --> 28:22.706
[SPEAKER_00]: One went to 300 beats per minute that survived.
28:22.746 --> 28:23.987
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure if it's this patient.
28:24.007 --> 28:26.268
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so many of them I had to pick and choose here.
28:27.069 --> 28:29.210
[SPEAKER_00]: And then she would revive them.
28:29.530 --> 28:31.231
[SPEAKER_00]: by giving them a downer, right?
28:31.792 --> 28:32.792
[SPEAKER_00]: Just fucking with people.
28:33.453 --> 28:48.202
[SPEAKER_00]: And this case is kind of all over the place because there are so many suspected victims, but I want to touch on one of those suspected victims here that occurred in early 96 when Kristen was going through a lot in her personal life, which will soon get to her personal life, it's a tangled web.
28:48.902 --> 28:52.565
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe this was the death that raised this young nurse's concern.
28:53.457 --> 29:04.735
[SPEAKER_00]: It was February 2, 1996, Kristen was looking for some time off, and was vocal about her annoyance at a particular patient, making it necessary to have full staffing available.
29:05.705 --> 29:11.508
[SPEAKER_00]: 41-year-old Kenneth Cutting, a U.S. Army vet, had been on the ward for 20 years.
29:12.268 --> 29:23.814
[SPEAKER_00]: Kenneth was in doing so hot, he had multiple sclerosis, who was blind, and lately had been suffering from a multitude of complications that had resulted in a do not resuscitate order, but DNR.
29:24.574 --> 29:29.017
[SPEAKER_00]: The constant watch and care of Kenneth was likely cramping nurse Kristen Style.
29:29.737 --> 29:34.119
[SPEAKER_00]: Only 40 minutes after Kristen had a request for time off denied.
29:34.440 --> 29:43.224
[SPEAKER_00]: Due to the additional care demanded by Kenneth Cutting's condition, Kenneth died of heart attack, Kristen then received her time off.
29:44.225 --> 29:46.046
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was this suspicious death.
29:46.795 --> 29:52.021
[SPEAKER_00]: that prompted the young nurse to tell her story that I just told you to the supervisor.
29:52.542 --> 29:59.530
[SPEAKER_00]: And the supervisor nodded and told us young nurse too, quote, be careful about making accusations such as this.
30:00.391 --> 30:05.037
[SPEAKER_00]: The supervisor went on to tell us young nurse that if something was wrong, it was up to the staff to prove it.
30:05.911 --> 30:12.814
[SPEAKER_00]: This was a message not necessary for the veteran nurses who were already collecting the information necessary for a proper complaint to be filed.
30:13.595 --> 30:19.338
[SPEAKER_00]: Administrative saw Nurse Kristen as dependable, disciplined, and were impressed that she rarely missed a shift.
30:20.018 --> 30:23.300
[SPEAKER_00]: That is until she met a boyfriend and will get to that in a moment.
30:24.220 --> 30:27.382
[SPEAKER_00]: She never lost her temper and her charting was perfection.
30:28.142 --> 30:31.344
[SPEAKER_00]: This concern by the young nurse was never brought to Kristen's attention.
30:32.104 --> 30:34.146
[SPEAKER_00]: In the break rooms, the whisper is circulated.
30:34.746 --> 30:35.587
[SPEAKER_00]: She likes drama.
30:36.147 --> 30:37.408
[SPEAKER_00]: She likes being in the middle of it.
30:37.988 --> 30:40.130
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you seen Kristen's face when someone dies?
30:41.031 --> 30:47.816
[SPEAKER_00]: Many nurses began avoiding the same shifts as Kristen, because they didn't want to be tied into what they felt was.
30:48.336 --> 30:48.957
[SPEAKER_00]: Some kind of...
30:49.577 --> 31:05.994
[SPEAKER_00]: horrible shit going on here, more nurses outside of this cabal of veteran nurses who were collecting information, began reporting their suspicions, but without physical evidence they were dismissed as spreading rumors or being jealous of Kristen.
31:06.587 --> 31:14.311
[SPEAKER_00]: Nurse Kristen was always praised after handling a cold blue with poise and her superior's complimented her on her ability to stay calm.
31:14.972 --> 31:20.255
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen gained cloud admiration and promotions, making it even harder to challenge her.
31:20.955 --> 31:32.182
[SPEAKER_00]: The whispers from nurses grew more urgent, but if they were wrong, they could ruin an innocent woman's career, along with putting their own career in jeopardy so the whispers went silent.
31:32.957 --> 31:38.039
[SPEAKER_00]: By the summer of 1996, Kristen's reputation had reached a point of unsettling contradiction.
31:38.579 --> 31:43.441
[SPEAKER_00]: She was seen by her supervisors as one of the most dependable nurses and trusted to handle the toughest patients.
31:44.142 --> 31:52.085
[SPEAKER_00]: But among the floor nurses that nicknamed the Angel of Death, or the Code Blue Queen, were whispered with a nervous laugh in breakrooms.
31:52.895 --> 32:05.267
[SPEAKER_00]: On a typical nursing ward, a cold blue was rare, not expected, but certainly it happened, although not weekly, daily in some situations, on a Christian's shifts they were occurring at rates that defied logic.
32:05.908 --> 32:14.196
[SPEAKER_00]: Another joke among the nurses was that the safest room on the floor is the one Christian isn't assigned to, but behind that kind of sarcasm was a growing panic.
32:14.957 --> 32:20.642
[SPEAKER_00]: Veteran nurses continued to keep track of the deaths of veterans on the floor by her attack.
32:21.022 --> 32:22.763
[SPEAKER_00]: The pattern was becoming undeniable.
32:23.504 --> 32:25.625
[SPEAKER_00]: One detail that kept emerging was the epinepharin.
32:26.126 --> 32:27.427
[SPEAKER_00]: It was alarming.
32:27.587 --> 32:33.411
[SPEAKER_00]: I've already mentioned it was the growing number of patients who were crashing unexpectedly from her attacks with no prior symptoms.
32:34.192 --> 32:36.976
[SPEAKER_00]: Their vitals will be fine one moment and then plummet the next.
32:37.656 --> 32:41.661
[SPEAKER_00]: When resuscitation efforts were made on these, victims will find of Christians.
32:42.162 --> 32:42.903
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing would work.
32:43.363 --> 32:46.467
[SPEAKER_00]: It was as if the heart had been overloaded and burned out.
32:47.297 --> 32:49.560
[SPEAKER_00]: time at a time that desks were listed as natural.
32:50.341 --> 32:52.022
[SPEAKER_00]: Then someone noticed the crash cards.
32:52.683 --> 32:59.711
[SPEAKER_00]: Crash cards, like I mentioned, are emergency rolling cabinets, stock with defibrillators, IVs, medications, and tools for resuscitation.
33:00.412 --> 33:04.456
[SPEAKER_00]: These cards were supposed to be sealed and inventoryed afterwards after an event.
33:05.217 --> 33:08.522
[SPEAKER_00]: Onward, C, vows of epinephrine started to go missing.
33:09.243 --> 33:17.896
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't enough to flag an audit, but definitely enough to alarm the nurses who were paying attention to note that the epinephrine was vanishing on a Christian shifts.
33:18.893 --> 33:23.635
[SPEAKER_00]: Once again, a disturbing pattern emerged, the whispers began changing to accusations.
33:24.236 --> 33:24.876
[SPEAKER_00]: She's using it.
33:25.236 --> 33:26.317
[SPEAKER_00]: She's given them her attacks.
33:26.877 --> 33:28.018
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how she's doing it.
33:28.778 --> 33:36.422
[SPEAKER_00]: In classic Christian fashion, she could create a crisis, play the hero during a resuscitation attempt, and then walk away.
33:37.102 --> 33:40.464
[SPEAKER_00]: If the patient lives, she was praised, and if they died, no one questioned it.
33:41.084 --> 33:43.386
[SPEAKER_00]: So she was creating these incidents,
33:44.326 --> 33:53.848
[SPEAKER_00]: People were dying, I believe she was targeting people that pissed her off, but she was also creating incidents where it was like, oh, I'll save them, and she was looking like a hero.
33:54.728 --> 34:02.270
[SPEAKER_00]: Christmas explanations would be such like, they were struggling, they were declaring already, or I gave them what was ordered.
34:02.970 --> 34:09.912
[SPEAKER_00]: She never raised suspicion, not officially, then people began noticing the patient charts starting to change.
34:10.472 --> 34:12.473
[SPEAKER_00]: Entries were made that back dated symptoms
34:14.173 --> 34:17.896
[SPEAKER_00]: Like this, quote, appeared flushed, shortness of breath.
34:18.977 --> 34:24.681
[SPEAKER_00]: After one of Christ's patients coded one time, his chart was missing and later found filed under the wrong name.
34:25.321 --> 34:28.724
[SPEAKER_00]: The chart had no record of the patient's vitals for the previous two hours.
34:29.505 --> 34:31.906
[SPEAKER_00]: Just enough to leave a void deep enough to bury questions.
34:32.387 --> 34:34.989
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, Nurse Christen had been the last person to handle it.
34:35.790 --> 34:39.132
[SPEAKER_00]: On paper, so to speak, it was all adding up.
34:39.952 --> 34:50.658
[SPEAKER_00]: Christen knew the system well and was covering your tracks, veterans were dying, who should have lived, charts were being altered, vows were disappearing, and Christen was always the common denominator.
34:51.459 --> 34:55.321
[SPEAKER_00]: More whispers, was she with Mr. Reigns before he crashed?
34:56.081 --> 34:58.382
[SPEAKER_00]: She changed his med schedule, did you notice?
35:03.518 --> 35:09.360
[SPEAKER_00]: entered Gulf War veteran James Perro, a federal security guard assigned to the VA hospital.
35:09.941 --> 35:16.063
[SPEAKER_00]: He would be nurse Christians undoing, beginning with undoing her scrubs and having sex with her all-munch.
35:16.743 --> 35:20.225
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a few years younger than Kristen and his boyishness appealed to Kristen.
35:20.665 --> 35:28.328
[SPEAKER_00]: At first it was subtle, she would find him during breaks, teasing, smile, and user-charm to wear down this unsuspecting security guard.
35:28.708 --> 35:31.289
[SPEAKER_00]: Their connection grew quickly, but secretly,
35:31.669 --> 35:36.671
[SPEAKER_00]: as she was married to a man in consequential to her story to this point, Glenn Gilbert.
35:37.452 --> 35:39.993
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ's relationship with her husband Glenn was strained.
35:40.633 --> 35:46.095
[SPEAKER_00]: One story has Christ in chasing him around with a butcher knife early in their marriage, but they stuck it out.
35:46.676 --> 35:49.817
[SPEAKER_00]: Glenn was patient, easygoing, and provided stability at home.
35:50.297 --> 35:53.839
[SPEAKER_00]: They had children together whom thankfully stay out of this story.
35:54.559 --> 35:59.903
[SPEAKER_00]: For Kristen, life, and death revolved around the hospital in her tire this work there.
36:00.544 --> 36:03.306
[SPEAKER_00]: Her children for information sake were both boys.
36:03.966 --> 36:07.009
[SPEAKER_00]: She just returned to work after maternity leave for the second-born boy.
36:07.449 --> 36:19.279
[SPEAKER_00]: When she met this dashing Gulf War vet turned security guard at her hospital, this on the night shift where Kristen really started getting into trouble, she became obsessed with this security guard Jamesboro.
36:20.209 --> 36:23.211
[SPEAKER_00]: She told him he was different, and she never felt this way before.
36:24.011 --> 36:27.073
[SPEAKER_00]: James had no way of knowing how far Christian would go to keep his attention.
36:27.553 --> 36:31.236
[SPEAKER_00]: As a security guard, he responded to emergencies, especially cold blues.
36:31.776 --> 36:34.758
[SPEAKER_00]: The more patients coded, the more James would be called to the floor.
36:35.498 --> 36:42.204
[SPEAKER_00]: There was Kristen, almost every time, with a co-blue flushed from the chaos, performing CPR or a guy in the team too.
36:42.865 --> 36:45.908
[SPEAKER_00]: In those moments she was the hero and James Sire is one.
36:46.689 --> 36:52.654
[SPEAKER_00]: She would turn to James, the security guard, for comfort, after a tense code blue, and she would say to James softly,
36:54.760 --> 37:10.045
[SPEAKER_00]: You the only one keeping me sane James, she played the hero while James and aware of being manipulated, played her protector, her obsession with him intensified, and Kristen talked about leaving her husband, but James told her they were moving too fast.
37:21.168 --> 37:29.997
[SPEAKER_00]: By the end of 1995, it wasn't just about the unexpected deaths, it was also about Kristen's personal drama in this relationship with security guard James.
37:30.998 --> 37:40.166
[SPEAKER_00]: She separated with her husband just before Christmas after meeting James' 95, leaving her husband to care for their boys as she called took care of herself.
37:40.963 --> 37:46.528
[SPEAKER_00]: Plan was devastated by lucky to have been deserted by Kristen, considering what she'd been putting in his dessert.
37:47.189 --> 37:50.232
[SPEAKER_00]: He had been sick in the weeks leading up to Kristen's separation from him.
37:50.792 --> 37:59.620
[SPEAKER_00]: It's suspected she had been poisoning him, but then decided she needed him around to watch the kids, while she continued her affair with the night watchmen at work.
38:00.365 --> 38:07.386
[SPEAKER_00]: There are many close calls, later that December on the day Kristen filed for divorce, she requested early leave from her shift.
38:07.866 --> 38:09.647
[SPEAKER_00]: It was denied due to a staff shortage.
38:10.327 --> 38:16.448
[SPEAKER_00]: Not long after a 72-year-old World War II vet suffered a heart attack, but was saved during the co-blood to follow.
38:16.988 --> 38:19.809
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen was involved in the co-blood, the rescue.
38:20.489 --> 38:26.170
[SPEAKER_00]: You see it wasn't always about killing, like I said, but it certainly always was about Kristen playing around to get her way.
38:27.247 --> 38:28.148
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I can't leave.
38:28.708 --> 38:36.314
[SPEAKER_00]: How about I create an emergency, resolve it, then the upper staff, my staff around me filled guilty for not letting me go now.
38:37.135 --> 38:40.358
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not clear she was then allowed to leave early, but I wouldn't be surprised.
38:40.878 --> 38:42.699
[SPEAKER_00]: A good job, Kristen, you're going through enough.
38:43.180 --> 38:44.861
[SPEAKER_00]: How much you leave after lunch then?
38:45.702 --> 38:49.945
[SPEAKER_00]: Her relationship with this unsuspecting lover in James was no longer a quiet affair.
38:50.506 --> 38:55.550
[SPEAKER_00]: Her need for the security guys attention and the connection to the emergencies became clear to some of the nurses.
38:56.475 --> 38:59.918
[SPEAKER_00]: Nurse Kristen's mood after predicted whether a patient would crash.
39:00.579 --> 39:10.027
[SPEAKER_00]: If she and the security guard had one of their open arguments, or he didn't answer her calls from her station to his own, there was another code blue, another unexplained cardiac arrest.
39:10.887 --> 39:11.928
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't subtle anymore.
39:12.629 --> 39:21.377
[SPEAKER_00]: After James told her he needed his space, that weekend while they worked together in the hospital, but in separate boards, there were three code blues in rapid succession.
39:22.263 --> 39:26.144
[SPEAKER_00]: All patients of Christans, none in critical admission, but all died.
39:27.024 --> 39:28.844
[SPEAKER_00]: James was called to each of these co-blues.
39:29.564 --> 39:34.765
[SPEAKER_00]: Christans in our cystic manipulation made patients her props, tragedy her method of seduction.
39:35.585 --> 39:42.927
[SPEAKER_00]: James was beginning to sense something was terribly wrong when, after a breakup, she showed up at his door with slashed wrists.
39:43.567 --> 39:46.127
[SPEAKER_00]: The wounds were superficial, but James was shaken.
39:46.767 --> 39:49.948
[SPEAKER_00]: She told him she had nothing with Adam and no one else understood her.
39:50.738 --> 39:52.662
[SPEAKER_00]: That same week, two more patients died.
39:53.524 --> 39:57.092
[SPEAKER_00]: James didn't want to believe she was capable of harming anyone, but his instincts knew better.
39:57.718 --> 40:03.479
[SPEAKER_00]: When he finally spoke to investigators, he would be the one to help unravel Christians carefully constructed illusions.
40:04.079 --> 40:13.641
[SPEAKER_00]: The logbooks, the nurses kept noted that in the span of seven weeks, there were 22 code blues and 19 of them at occurred during nurse Christians shifts.
40:14.341 --> 40:21.122
[SPEAKER_00]: When Christian went on vacation for five days, not a single code blue occurred, in which he returned, there were two within 12 hours.
40:21.862 --> 40:26.363
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1994, Ward C had experienced a typical number of code blues and patient deaths.
40:27.224 --> 40:32.257
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1995, during Kristen's rise in authority and number of shifts, that number tripled.
40:33.041 --> 40:42.703
[SPEAKER_00]: But who would believe that this smiling, competent nurse who called families with updates took night shifts with no complaints, who cried at funerals, was actually orchestrating death?
40:43.423 --> 40:51.845
[SPEAKER_00]: What the nurses collecting on this information, and Kristen didn't know, was that someone outside of the VA was beginning to quietly investigate.
40:52.265 --> 40:57.606
[SPEAKER_00]: A data analysis in the quality assurance department had flagged a spike in mortality on ward C.
40:58.406 --> 41:15.474
[SPEAKER_00]: To help with this data analysis on the 17th of February 1996, finally, this cabal analysis I've been calling them, three well-regarded nurses, John Wall, Kathy Ricks, and Renee Walsh, filed a report of concern that nurse Christian was ejecting patients with adrenaline, causing heart attacks.
41:16.194 --> 41:18.175
[SPEAKER_00]: A formal investigation finally was underway.
41:18.676 --> 41:20.536
[SPEAKER_00]: This was just too many complaints to ignore.
41:20.997 --> 41:23.898
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact the nurses felt they must band together says a lot.
41:24.538 --> 41:25.139
[SPEAKER_00]: Sounds like one of
41:28.100 --> 41:31.166
[SPEAKER_00]: It also sounds like every place ever worked before podcasting.
41:32.087 --> 41:34.171
[SPEAKER_00]: And this beyond is during podcasting.
41:35.502 --> 41:41.806
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyways, the investigation was finally underway, Kristen quickly realized that everyone was acting funny.
41:42.467 --> 41:48.751
[SPEAKER_00]: She is thought to have then killed another patient, whom will make the short list of confirmed victims I'm soon a bit to read off.
41:49.352 --> 41:52.774
[SPEAKER_00]: After this, Kristen fixed a shoulder injury and takes leave.
41:53.374 --> 42:01.580
[SPEAKER_00]: She'll use security-lover James as a spy until the summer when she decides based on the intel from her lover that she'd better stay away from the hospital.
42:02.569 --> 42:10.554
[SPEAKER_00]: In June of 1996, Kristen Strickland, formerly Gilbert, submitted her letter of resignation citing stress, burnout, and personal issues.
42:11.315 --> 42:17.099
[SPEAKER_00]: Some saw this as an omission of guilt, and others a tactical move, a way for her to slip out before things exploded.
42:17.459 --> 42:19.560
[SPEAKER_00]: The most disturbing part was the code stopped.
42:19.921 --> 42:22.122
[SPEAKER_00]: The code blew stop completely for a while.
42:22.763 --> 42:25.424
[SPEAKER_00]: Patients stabilize and the sense of normalcy returned.
42:25.885 --> 42:27.286
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like she was making them sicker.
42:27.966 --> 42:34.052
[SPEAKER_00]: and they never proved that, but as I said, she's making a lot of these people sicker, besides, eventually killing many.
42:35.093 --> 42:39.637
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the closest thing to confirmation that the investigation could get, these stats.
42:40.378 --> 42:45.103
[SPEAKER_00]: One nurse put it simply, quote, She left, and the people stopped dying.
42:45.932 --> 42:46.752
[SPEAKER_00]: What else do you need?"
42:47.672 --> 42:53.894
[SPEAKER_00]: And, quote, Christom resigned from the North-Hant of VA with no criminal record, no charges, no scandal.
42:54.334 --> 42:55.374
[SPEAKER_00]: Just whispers and rumors.
42:55.974 --> 42:57.815
[SPEAKER_00]: It looked like the story might end there.
42:58.355 --> 43:04.536
[SPEAKER_00]: But the data analyst who flaged Christom's co-blues had been persistent and shared his findings with the VA Central Office.
43:05.176 --> 43:11.658
[SPEAKER_00]: After they landed on the desk of an attorney with experience and healthcare fraud, the numbers going to be ignored along with the complaints.
43:12.458 --> 43:17.162
[SPEAKER_00]: In the fall of 1996, the FBI was contacted in a real investigation began.
43:17.922 --> 43:22.506
[SPEAKER_00]: Numbers, cold clinical data, was all the FBI needed to take this seriously.
43:23.227 --> 43:26.629
[SPEAKER_00]: Deaths that defied the hospital averages and surrendered one nurse.
43:27.330 --> 43:31.853
[SPEAKER_00]: A nurse who exploited her position of trust to commit serial murder on the government property.
43:32.709 --> 43:47.712
[SPEAKER_00]: Their first step was quiet, data collection, between 1995 and 1996 award C record, an unprecedented number of cardiac arrests, over 60% occurred during Kristen's shifts, when she was off-duty the rate of cardiac arrest dropped nearly zero.
43:48.512 --> 43:54.854
[SPEAKER_00]: Desk listed as natural, lack-consistent medical justification, epinephrine and vials were frequently
44:00.590 --> 44:07.993
[SPEAKER_00]: The FBI, they built a meticulous patient by patient timeline who died under what circumstances who was present and what had been documented.
44:08.614 --> 44:16.638
[SPEAKER_00]: Medical experts who were brought in to look for errors that didn't look like mistakes, symptoms that didn't match the cause of death and vitals that disappeared between assessments were blown away.
44:17.138 --> 44:21.100
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the investigation reached out to the nurses and what they heard could form their worst fears.
44:21.760 --> 44:24.381
[SPEAKER_00]: One nurse said to an agent, quote, she's killing people.
44:24.821 --> 44:25.302
[SPEAKER_00]: We know it.
44:25.922 --> 44:27.663
[SPEAKER_00]: We just didn't think anyone would believe us.
44:28.585 --> 44:32.968
[SPEAKER_00]: To prove that Nurse Kristen had murdered patients, there was needed forensic proof.
44:33.609 --> 44:39.933
[SPEAKER_00]: With the cooperation of the families and a judge's order, the bodies of several former patients were exhumed in early 1997.
44:40.713 --> 44:44.416
[SPEAKER_00]: Edwards, Aquara, 69, a Korean war vet, who we talked about.
44:44.496 --> 44:46.818
[SPEAKER_00]: He died suddenly after Joker with nurses hours earlier.
44:47.278 --> 44:51.261
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen had been reported by three nurses just a day previous to Edwards' son and death.
44:51.541 --> 44:54.563
[SPEAKER_00]: He was exhumed and was found to have high levels of epinephrine.
44:55.116 --> 45:17.453
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... residual in his body and rehoot on who we mentioned thirty five years old the grumpy air force vet who collapsed after an encounter with christian after saying that nurses are killing people in this ward uh... the so called like they're calling a skits a friend of keneroon on he was found with high levels william reton sixty five years old a vitt on war vet whose death came just days after being told he would be discharged soon
45:18.213 --> 45:25.800
[SPEAKER_00]: And Stanley Jaggedowski, 66 a patient who'd seem stable, and a Christian had described after his death as not looking right.
45:26.400 --> 45:33.126
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd been a Vietnam vet as well, a truck driver, and he suffered from a bowel obstruction and that's why he was in there for a bowel obstruction.
45:33.767 --> 45:35.628
[SPEAKER_00]: Somehow that obstruction got to his heart.
45:36.729 --> 45:38.391
[SPEAKER_00]: A story truly full of shit.
45:39.201 --> 45:52.591
[SPEAKER_00]: They were examined for signs of epinophon overdose, all of these victims and forensic pathologists reached a dam in conclusion, elevated levels of catechalo means, an epinophonin related compound were present in immense far beyond therapeutic limits.
45:53.172 --> 46:00.197
[SPEAKER_00]: In multiple cases, there were no medical reasons for the administration of epinophonin, the pattern pointed to intentional administration of lethal doses.
46:00.957 --> 46:05.061
[SPEAKER_00]: Hospital records revealed no physician orders for epinophonin at the times that deaths occurred.
46:05.813 --> 46:08.654
[SPEAKER_00]: They had what they needed, and Kristen was at the center of it all.
46:09.335 --> 46:12.376
[SPEAKER_00]: The last detail missing to make an arrest was confirmation of intent.
46:12.996 --> 46:18.419
[SPEAKER_00]: They built a psychological profile consisting of interviews with coworkers, letters, phone records, and her movements.
46:19.019 --> 46:22.180
[SPEAKER_00]: By late 1997, the walls were closing in on her's Kristen.
46:22.780 --> 46:25.742
[SPEAKER_00]: She hadn't yet been formally arrested, but she knew something was happening.
46:26.362 --> 46:34.347
[SPEAKER_00]: Former co-workers were no longer answering her calls, and administrators were suddenly tight-lipped, and James Farrow, or lover, had slipped away from her entirely.
46:34.987 --> 46:41.171
[SPEAKER_00]: James would later share in court that Kristen had become impossible and scary to be around following her resignation.
46:41.691 --> 46:46.154
[SPEAKER_00]: She checked herself into a psychiatric care facility, and had one day called him while doped up.
46:46.835 --> 46:50.477
[SPEAKER_00]: According to James, Kristen had admitted, maybe for the only time,
46:56.326 --> 46:57.288
[SPEAKER_00]: You wanted to know?
46:57.308 --> 46:59.171
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't fucking tell ya.
47:00.173 --> 47:01.335
[SPEAKER_00]: I killed those guys.
47:02.837 --> 47:03.959
[SPEAKER_00]: And, well, something like that.
47:04.862 --> 47:06.343
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, guys, she said.
47:06.783 --> 47:11.427
[SPEAKER_00]: All of her victims were men as it was a war of that hospital full of men as patients.
47:11.447 --> 47:13.388
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure there was some women too, but she killed all men.
47:14.369 --> 47:17.611
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen cannot handle losing control and she was unraveling inside.
47:18.152 --> 47:23.116
[SPEAKER_00]: On November 17, 1998, she checked into a hotel in Western Massachusetts under an alias.
47:23.716 --> 47:31.242
[SPEAKER_00]: After mixing wine with prescription medications and writing a series of notes that contained cryptic statements, she tried to commit suicide.
47:31.986 --> 47:35.533
[SPEAKER_00]: In one of the notes she wrote, it wasn't supposed to happen like this.
47:36.600 --> 47:39.322
[SPEAKER_00]: The attempt on her life by herself wasn't lethal.
47:39.722 --> 47:41.042
[SPEAKER_00]: She pretty good at that, right?
47:41.082 --> 47:42.723
[SPEAKER_00]: But she couldn't get it down on herself.
47:43.224 --> 47:46.946
[SPEAKER_00]: And for those who knew her, it was just another act of emotional theater designed to get sympathy.
47:47.606 --> 47:54.050
[SPEAKER_00]: She deflected blame, cried for her children, hinted at trauma, work related stress, and overwhelming expectations.
47:54.750 --> 48:02.034
[SPEAKER_00]: In September of 1998, she called in a bomb threat to the veterans hospital, which resulted in over 50 critically ill patients having to be evacuated.
48:02.334 --> 48:03.395
[SPEAKER_00]: This just before her arrest.
48:03.995 --> 48:11.700
[SPEAKER_00]: Christom was soon found at an arrested for the crime that could have killed more, who knows, maybe the stress of that event, did lead to some premature death.
48:12.581 --> 48:20.806
[SPEAKER_00]: While in custody for the bomb threat, Christom was held for the duration of the investigation into a conduct while employed at the hospital, she was held on her suspicion of murder.
48:21.426 --> 48:30.272
[SPEAKER_00]: Her apartment, a bachelor at Pad, who says only men ditched the responsibilities as parents to go into a hole to drink and screw themselves silly, books were found on the
48:32.013 --> 48:36.476
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not the Christian plan that killing your ex has been Glenn for cooperating with the investigation.
48:37.197 --> 48:41.980
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, she was likely trying to lure her security guard James into a trap at kill him as well.
48:42.660 --> 48:49.385
[SPEAKER_00]: James, he had decided Christian was nuts and had turned from her to help investigators in their investigation.
48:50.045 --> 49:07.140
[SPEAKER_00]: So while being held in jail took about two years, eventually in February 9th, the 2000 Kristen Gilbert was formally arrested in prison in jail and charged with four counts of first degree murder and two counts of attempted murder in the deaths of veterans in her care at North Hampton VA.
49:08.085 --> 49:10.667
[SPEAKER_00]: U.S. District Attorney Donald Stern later at the facts.
49:11.387 --> 49:19.112
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen Gilbert had killed patients by injecting them with lethal doses of epinephrine, without medical justification, without any physician authority.
49:19.692 --> 49:25.515
[SPEAKER_00]: She altered charts and fates symptoms while on the job in uniform, inside a federal hospital, repeatedly.
49:26.136 --> 49:27.557
[SPEAKER_00]: She had done it all for attention.
49:28.317 --> 49:32.840
[SPEAKER_00]: How could someone so respected, so professional, so seemingly put together, be a serial killer.
49:33.607 --> 49:42.974
[SPEAKER_00]: In March 2000, Chris and Sudtrial, and if convicted, she could face the death bed only, she sat in court with her blonde hair neatly brushed, dressed conservatively and with a controlled demeanor.
49:43.594 --> 49:45.376
[SPEAKER_00]: She had always known how to look harmless.
49:46.136 --> 49:55.083
[SPEAKER_00]: Over the weeks that followed, witnesses took the stand, nurses, doctors, families, FBI agents, expert witnesses, and James Fro, the security guard.
49:55.663 --> 50:05.271
[SPEAKER_00]: This case wasn't just about Kristen, it was about institutional failure, delayed justice, and the horror of realizing someone trained to save lives could so deliberately take them.
50:06.072 --> 50:17.181
[SPEAKER_00]: Some side notes on all this in the trial, prosecutors said that Kristen, she tried to poison a patient at the hospital on January 28, 1996, and that she caused a medical emergency
50:20.052 --> 50:28.959
[SPEAKER_00]: They also said that she had a band in the patient undergoing cardiac arrest on November 9th, 1995, and then asked it on the nurse to come and help her check on patients.
50:29.580 --> 50:37.146
[SPEAKER_00]: They said the prosecutor is that Kristen had waited until her colleague independently spotted that there was difficulty with this patient.
50:37.366 --> 50:43.011
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm getting this bit of information from Wikipedia by the way, just to be open.
50:44.372 --> 50:47.515
[SPEAKER_00]: I caught it at the very end here, but there were so many cases
50:48.367 --> 50:50.108
[SPEAKER_00]: involved that couldn't grab the mass.
50:50.188 --> 50:51.669
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just kind of throwing this one in there.
50:51.949 --> 50:58.092
[SPEAKER_00]: This one's interesting because she was setting up other nurses to be like the ones to find the person in distress.
50:58.452 --> 51:05.175
[SPEAKER_00]: She would set the distress up and just be looking at another patient, bring the other one in to look at that patient and then they would discover it.
51:05.756 --> 51:09.698
[SPEAKER_00]: So it wasn't always her discovering the patients in distress.
51:10.557 --> 51:25.984
[SPEAKER_00]: On March 14, 2001, the jury returned to the decision, Kristen Gilbert, at that time, still considered Gilbert, was guilty in all charges, four accounts of 1st degree murder, two accounts of attempted murder, and multiple accounts of tampering with patient records.
51:26.565 --> 51:30.867
[SPEAKER_00]: She might be responsible for over 50 they believe.
51:31.587 --> 51:37.690
[SPEAKER_00]: She showed no emotion in court, no tears or shaking, just the same blank calm that followed every death on Ward C.
51:38.456 --> 51:40.237
[SPEAKER_00]: The prosecution sought the death penalty.
51:40.658 --> 51:44.841
[SPEAKER_00]: They argued she had betrayed her oath, targeted the most vulnerable and used her position to kill.
51:45.462 --> 51:51.607
[SPEAKER_00]: The final verdict would be life in prison after she decided not to appeal and all that, and she took a plea deal.
51:52.227 --> 52:05.598
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen was led away in chains and transferred to the federal medical center, cars well in Fort Worth, Texas, a high security medical facility for female inmates, housing those with chronic illnesses, psychological disorders, and notorious criminal records.
52:06.178 --> 52:13.447
[SPEAKER_00]: She's being protected because she was attacking vulnerable people, and she's a risk by other female inmates.
52:14.308 --> 52:17.152
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, women, women and mates, that have I say properly?
52:17.712 --> 52:22.438
[SPEAKER_00]: Other than attacking her, for these despicable crimes against the most vulnerable in society.
52:22.908 --> 52:25.209
[SPEAKER_00]: Her husband went on to raise his children without her.
52:25.309 --> 52:29.872
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't make any effort for his children to remit the mother or anything like that.
52:30.552 --> 52:32.833
[SPEAKER_00]: And he now lives an anonymity with his children.
52:33.553 --> 52:34.694
[SPEAKER_00]: Kristen has never confessed.
52:35.274 --> 52:38.496
[SPEAKER_00]: A mother, nurse, coworker, friend, a serial killer.
52:39.076 --> 52:41.737
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you minding that the worst monsters don't always strike at a rage?
52:42.098 --> 52:44.259
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes they just are trying to help out.
52:44.279 --> 52:46.420
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's wearing this grob, scrubbing life's out.
52:46.960 --> 52:50.162
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes they're sitting in federal prison quietly waiting for the world to forget.
52:51.140 --> 52:52.261
[SPEAKER_00]: How many people did she really kill?
52:52.661 --> 52:55.203
[SPEAKER_00]: She worked for years before anyone took the room as seriously.
52:55.523 --> 52:59.186
[SPEAKER_00]: The official count was four, but the number could be dozens, I think, over 50.
52:59.806 --> 53:04.490
[SPEAKER_00]: Records from the 1990s were incomplete and autopsy were rare back then in this place.
53:05.030 --> 53:07.872
[SPEAKER_00]: Some deaths were dismissed before they were ever even questioned.
53:08.413 --> 53:10.194
[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't just kill those in her care.
53:10.234 --> 53:13.537
[SPEAKER_00]: She left behind psychological destruction among the nurses who were beside her.
53:13.937 --> 53:15.858
[SPEAKER_00]: Care givers trained to heal, were harmed.
53:21.122 --> 53:30.108
[SPEAKER_00]: Many have participated in resuscitations that were futile, believing the emergencies were real, and it fucked them up, and they lost a lot of nurses because of the city, and won't even do the trade anymore.
53:30.128 --> 53:32.590
[SPEAKER_00]: They just felt ashamed of what they've been involved in.
53:33.210 --> 53:38.794
[SPEAKER_00]: Some could in sleep develop panic disorders, anxiety depression, some left nursing forever, some killed themselves.
53:39.194 --> 53:45.258
[SPEAKER_00]: They were carrying the trauma of having worked alongside a murderer, and questioned if their silence made them complicit.
53:45.838 --> 53:52.621
[SPEAKER_00]: In the aftermath of what happened with Nurse Christan, the Department of Veteran Affairs were forced to confront an uncomfortable truth and reformed again.
53:53.102 --> 54:05.408
[SPEAKER_00]: The most immediate and lasting change of the VA Hospital network will be the medication tracking and crash-cart security from the crash-cart to the ones they bring in to a crash situation, a cold blue, with everything you need to help resuscitate someone.
54:05.890 --> 54:11.735
[SPEAKER_00]: The use of digital logs were put into effect, barcode scanning, two-person authentication and regular audits.
54:11.775 --> 54:17.581
[SPEAKER_00]: It's much more difficult these days to pull off anything what Christen did for until she was God.
54:18.181 --> 54:25.948
[SPEAKER_00]: Another safeguard would be behavioral flags and internal whistle blowing procedures like listening to fucking young nurses when they have a complaint about somebody.
54:26.849 --> 54:45.255
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was provided anonymous reporting tools of this boy in confidential hotlines, whistleblower protection, and ethics training to help staff recognize manipulation, and falsified documentation, pattern recognition technology was implemented to track abnormal spikes in mortality, and psychological screening and hiring and evaluation.
54:45.775 --> 54:50.997
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's been made very difficult for this to happen again in this particular part of the world.
54:53.122 --> 54:54.063
[SPEAKER_00]: like with a lot of things.
54:54.603 --> 55:06.773
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure it all comes out in different ways going forward with those who would be motivated to commit such acts, but you have to say you have to admit that when it's made that easy, it's much more possible.
55:07.233 --> 55:10.636
[SPEAKER_00]: So hopefully with these things implemented, it's much less possible.
55:10.896 --> 55:11.477
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course it is.
55:12.157 --> 55:16.118
[SPEAKER_00]: For the families of Kristen's victims, they were robbed of a chance to say goodbye to their loved ones.
55:16.379 --> 55:18.039
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't know they were on their fucking deathbed.
55:18.139 --> 55:20.540
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually when you tell me your grandpa or someone is in the VA and what was that noise?
55:20.560 --> 55:23.581
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus Christ, something just... Usually when your grandparents are, I wonder if they got picked up on their things.
55:23.621 --> 55:34.025
[SPEAKER_00]: Something just went, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa
55:35.560 --> 55:59.194
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... sometimes i have something happened in my recording device when i'm i'm required when i get to spooky with you but i'm haunted in here sometimes when people pass uh... most times you you get a heads up right your grandparents about to die everyone collects together and they could get to say goodbye so many of these people just didn't get that chance was like boom he died of heart attack he was thirty five years old but the fucking talking about
56:00.075 --> 56:02.399
[SPEAKER_00]: So they were robbed of the chance to say goodbye.
56:02.840 --> 56:07.208
[SPEAKER_00]: And their loved ones were killed without one, and they were murdered, which was fucking brutal, too.
56:08.757 --> 56:12.039
[SPEAKER_00]: They never once heard or felt any remorse to victim families.
56:12.619 --> 56:30.430
[SPEAKER_00]: On the part of disgraced nurse Kristen, according to Kristen, the reason she had such a large number of code blues on a resume was, because other staff felt Kristen to be the most competent staff on shift, and would run to her for every emergency, drag in her name into an unusual amount of emergencies, hospital-wide.
56:31.510 --> 56:37.634
[SPEAKER_00]: The victim families received letters of apology from the VA, letters that were more legal necessity than warm gesture.
56:38.442 --> 56:42.205
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of these letters were handwritten, others coldly typed on V.A.
56:42.245 --> 56:58.336
[SPEAKER_00]: letterhead, a coldness in this case through and through, an isonist to this true crime tale of which even the title of Oxacell, preceded by a prick, a push-up poison, then a choked off-screen, the co-blue queen,
57:00.535 --> 57:04.920
[SPEAKER_00]: You have been listening to Dark Topic Plus, an exclusive piece of content.
57:05.661 --> 57:08.484
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got Doris Locke State Paranoid talking to you soon.