West Virginia serial killer nurse injected seven veterans with fatal dose of insulin and stood to watch them die
A 46-year-old serial killer nurse, a veteran, reportedly lingered in the rooms of her victims and watched them die after she injected them with fatal doses of insulin. With the recent emergence of gory details in Reta Mays' case, the families of victims are now demanding answers from her. Mays, a former nursing assistant at the Louis A Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg, West Virginia, broke down in tears mid-July as she confessed to killing at least seven elderly veterans in her care between 2017 and 2018.
Mays' victims, Robert Edge Sr, Robert Kozul, Archie Edgell (all 84), George Shaw Sr (81), Felix McDermott (82), Raymond Golden and William Alfred Holloway (both 96) all died from severe hypoglycemia. The former nurse's murder spree was brought to authorities' attention after colleagues and families of the victims sounded alarm over a string of deaths with the nearly same cause.
The Washington Post, in an article, revealed shocking new details about Mays' killings, including the fact that she watched her victims die as some took days to succumb to a fatal dose of insulin. She reportedly tried to murder one of her victims twice after she failed in her first attempt. A doctor employed at the hospital had reported concern about the deaths of patients who suffered hypoglycemic episodes on the floor, including multiple non-diabetic patients. This led to an internal investigation in the hospital, which concluded in a referral for a criminal investigation. Nearly a month after the probe, May was fired.
The Post, in its report, stated that Mays, after administering a fatal injection to her victim, would continue to be in the room and watch as medical workers desperately attempted to save the veterans. Investigators told the outlet that May evaded eyes easily for nearly a year after finding a flaw in the hospital's systems that enabled the patients' glucose test results to go undetected.
One healthcare worker said that the veteran nurse would linger in her victims' rooms when doctors arrived the morning — after she injected them — to find their blood sugar levels had plummeted. She would then watch doctors battle to counteract the drugs and would often listen to their conversations with the victims' families. Reports state that many of the nurse's victims took several hours to a few weeks for their organs to shut down and die. "She absolutely fooled me," one medic said. "I looked at her and thought, 'she wants to be a go-getter'. She was helpful and involved."
Mays' first attempt at murder was during her graveyard shift in 2017 when she injected Edgell with enough insulin to cause his glucose levels to plummet. However, when Edgell did not die the next day, she injected him with another dose the next night. After an autopsy was conducted on Edgell, it was revealed that he had four injection sites on his body, reports state.
Edgell's granddaughter has now broken her silence over his murder, saying she needs to know why the nurse went on her killing rampage. Tina Hickman, while speaking to the Post, said: "I kind of didn't believe it, because I talked to her all the time. I would like to know why."