Massachusetts Nurse Convicted of Euthanising Four Patients
Associated Press; March 15, 2001

Springfield, MA -- Kristen Gilbert was hired as a caretaker, but the accusations that followed painted a gruesome picture: The nurse allegedly killed four patients at a veterans hospital with drug injections to impress her boyfriend.

Gilbert now faces the death penalty after a federal jury convicted her Wednesday of three first-degree murder charges and one second-degree murder count. She also was convicted of trying to kill two other patients who did not die.

The same jury that spent nearly 12 days deliberating after the three-month trial is to reconvene Monday to consider if the 33-year-old mother of two should be executed or sentenced to life in prison.

``Now, I can go to the cemetery and feel good that vengeance has been done,'' said Julia Hudon, the 67-year-old mother of one of the victims, Henry Hudon.

Massachusetts banned capital punishment in 1984. But the case was tried in federal court, where murder can be punishable by death because the crimes took place on federal property, at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northampton, Mass.

Gilbert bent her head and wept quietly as the verdict was read. Her parents, Richard and Claudia Strickland, of Setauket, N.Y., sat behind her in the courtroom. Richard Strickland covered his face with his hand as the verdict was announced.

The victims' families cried and let out ghtmls of relief, but they are split on what Gilbert's punishment should be.

Christine Duquette, the sister of Hudon, says Gilbert should die. ``She is a serial murderer. Nothing is going to stop these people,'' she said.

Julia Hudon says life in prison may be a harsher sentence. ``She is a young person, and every day she would have to relive what she did,'' Hudon said. ``She was e-mailing her lover while my son was dying.''

Prosecutors said Gilbert injected patients with overdoses of epinephrine, or adrenaline, sending their hearts racing out of control. They said she wanted to attract attention, especially from her lover, a hospital security guard.

The boyfriend, James Perrault, said she once told him, ``I did it! I did it! I injected those guys with a certain drug.'' But later, Gilbert told him she was only trying to make him angry, Perrault said. They were breaking up at the time. Prosecutors said she once climbed atop a patient and straddled him, apparently so Perrault could see her garter belt.

Gilbert's lawyers blamed the emergencies and deaths on natural causes, saying the patients were already seriously ill. They argued she was falsely accused by co-workers who were upset she was having an extramarital affair.

``Every single one of these people had a coronary disease, were at risk for a coronary disease or at risk for sudden cardiac death,'' defense attorney David Hoose said in closing arguments. ``If you start out looking at these cases with a suspicious eye, then you'll find suspicion.''

The deaths occurred in 1995 and 1996, as the government began investigating the unusually high rate of deaths from cardiac arrests that occurred on Gilbert's shift at the hospital.