WOODSTOCK— She had become “overwhelmingly angry” about the direction of her career and life and said God was urging her to kill.

On Thursday, former nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer pled guilty to murdering eight elderly patients at the three long-term care facilities where she worked between 2007 and 2014, and at a private house. When Justice Bruce Thomas of Superior Court asked if she was admitting to fatally injecting her victims with insulin for no medical reason, she replied: “Yes, your honour.”

Wettlaufer also pled guilty to attempting to kill four other people, and to two charges of aggravated assault.

She is now one of the most prolific serial killers in Canadian history.

The judge will deliver Wettlaufer’s sentence at the end of June, when family members and friends will be given the opportunity to read victim impact statements.

Family members in the packed courtroom sobbed as Wettlaufer quietly responded “guilty” as the names of each of the victims were read aloud.

Some left in tears as details of the murders were aired throughout the day, first by an agreed statement of facts that took several hours for the prosecutor to read aloud and then through a two-and-a-half-hour videotaped confession with police.

Court heard Wettlaufer felt “anger and pressure” building inside her regarding her third victim, Second World War veteran James Silcox.

Silcox, 84, was “often confused” and frequently made inappropriate comments at his home, Caressant Care, according to nurses who cared for him.

She let the niece of Helen Young, 90, cry on her shoulder after she gave the senior a fatal insulin injection.

She said that one night she “snapped inside” after Young told her she wanted to die. Wettlaufer told investigators she felt a “red surge” and thought, “OK, you will die.”

Wettlaufer told police she overdosed attempted-murder victim Michael Priddle, 63, because “it was his turn to go” and he often talked of wanting to die.

Priddle had Huntington’s disease and needed a checkup every half hour.

She told investigators that Huntington’s is a terrible disease and she injected Priddle with insulin one night after feeling a “surge.”

Describing the “surge” to police, Wettlaufer said, “This must be God because this man isn’t enjoying his life at all.”

Wettlaufer said she gave Helen Matheson, 95, a slice of blueberry pie and ice cream the night she died. She had four bites and praised the crust.

Wettlaufer felt Matheson, who had dementia but was lucid that night, “seemed to be wanting to die,” adding she did not struggle when she was given her fatal needle and that she got a “laughing” feeling after injecting Matheson with insulin.

Wettlaufer’s final murder victim, Arpad Horvath, 75, spat, kicked and yelled at Wettlaufer the day she killed him at the Meadow Park home in London, court heard.

Wettlaufer told investigators she decided “enough is enough.”

Horvath fought back when she attempted to give him two doses of insulin but Wettlaufer “got it in him eventually.”

“I’m angry. I’m pissed off . . . and I can’t forgive this woman for what she did,” Horvath’s son said after court adjourned Thursday.

“When I lost my father the first time, a part of me died, but the second time, my heart was ripped right out of my goddamn chest.”

The investigation into Wettlaufer began last September after police became aware of information she had given to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

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After being released from CAMH, Wettlaufer agreed to speak with Woodstock police and willingly appeared before a judge.

She was diagnosed with adult anti-social behaviour, major depressive disorder and mild opioid/alcohol dependence, court heard. In the videotaped interview with detectives, she said she used drugs to fuel her own addiction — including drugs from a safe where deceased patients’ medication was kept.

Wettlaufer said she was sober for all the killings and wasn’t experiencing psychosis or hallucinations. Court heard that Wettlaufer told several people about the murders to different degrees of detail before she spoke to police and CAMH staff, but most didn’t tell authorities or didn’t believe her.

She told a young nursing home employee that she had found God, who she considered the source of her urges, and that God had forgiven her.

Wettlaufer, whose 10-year marriage ended in 2007, studied nursing for three years, including courses in palliative and senior care.

Autopsies were performed on only two of the victims. The rest were cremated.

Redacted court documents released in March — which were filed by police in an application to obtain records — have indicated Wettlaufer was fired in 2014 from a nursing home in Woodstock, where some of her alleged victims lived, after an incident in which she allegedly incorrectly medicated and over-medicated a resident who “experienced distress” as a result.

In a letter of termination cited in the documents, the Caressant Care nursing home said the alleged incident was part of a “pattern of behaviours that are placing residents at risk.”

The home’s director of nursing also told police Wettlaufer was dismissed for how she handled insulin, the documents show.

Records from the College of Nurses of Ontario show Wettlaufer was first registered as a nurse in August 1995 but resigned Sept. 30, 2016, one day after Woodstock police began investigating her, and is no longer a registered nurse.

On Thursday, The Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario called for a public inquiry into the deaths of Wettlaufer's victims.

“We need to get to the bottom of what happened, how it happened and what we can learn from an organizational, regulatory and system perspective to ensure nothing like this ever happens again,” Doris Grinspun, RNAO CEO, and the group’s president, Carol Timmings, said in a statement.

“We want no stone unturned in this effort.”

The Victims

Related stories:

Elizabeth Wettlaufer was fired over ‘medication error,’ yet continued to work as a nurse

Inside the troubled life of Elizabeth Wettlaufer, the nurse on the night shift

With files from Star staff and The Canadian Press

Recap: Elizabeth Wettlaufer pleads guilty to murder

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