Kristen Gilbert

What the record shows

Kristen Gilbert is a former registered nurse who was convicted in federal court in March 2001 of murdering four patients and attempting to murder two others at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northampton, Massachusetts, between August 1995 and February 1996. A jury found her guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder, then declined to impose the death penalty. She was sentenced on March 27, 2001, to life in prison without parole and is held at the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas.

According to the First Circuit's October 2000 opinion in United States v. Gilbert, she worked the evening shift on Ward C, which housed the hospital's intensive care unit, from March 1989 until February 1996. The indictment alleged that within six months of beginning an affair with a hospital police officer, James Perrault, in autumn 1995, she killed four Ward C patients and tried to kill three others by injecting them with epinephrine, a heart stimulant with no authorized use on the ward. The Boston Globe identified the four men as Stanley Jagodowski, 66, who went into cardiac arrest on about August 21, 1995; Henry Hudon, 35, who died on December 8, 1995; Kenneth Cutting, 41, who died on February 2, 1996; and Edward Skwira, who died in February 1996.

The investigation began inside the ward. The Globe reported that nurses who had noticed how many emergencies fell on Gilbert's shifts began quietly watching her, and one colleague found epinephrine ampules missing; hospital records could not account for about 88 of 135 ampules dispensed to Ward C over six months, a gap the defense blamed on poor record-keeping. In February 1996 three nurses took their suspicions to supervisors, a formal inquiry opened and Gilbert resigned. The Seattle Times reported that an autopsy of Hudon found epinephrine poisoning. A federal grand jury began a criminal investigation in June 1996.

While that investigation was under way, Gilbert made anonymous threatening calls to the hospital, including a false bomb threat on September 26, 1996 that forced the evacuation of about 50 patients, according to the Globe. She was arrested on October 8, 1996, convicted by a jury and sentenced in April 1998 to 15 months in federal prison. The Globe also reported Perrault's account that Gilbert, calling him from a psychiatric ward in July 1996, told him she had killed the patients. Gilbert denied the killings and pleaded not guilty.

The murder indictment was unsealed on November 24, 1998, while she was still serving the bomb-threat sentence. The Seattle Times reported charges of three murders, two attempted murders, witness retaliation and obstruction of justice; a later indictment added a fourth murder and a third attempted murder. Because the hospital was federal property, prosecutors could seek the death penalty even though Massachusetts has none. Before trial, Judge Michael A. Ponsor excluded evidence of the bomb threat and of a statistical analysis putting the odds of her presence at so many deaths at one in 100 million; the First Circuit largely upheld those rulings.

The trial opened in Springfield in late 2000. Prosecutors argued that Gilbert created emergencies to gain attention, particularly from Perrault; the defense said the men died of natural causes, ABC News reported. On March 14, 2001, the jury convicted her on four murder counts and two counts of attempted murder. After a penalty phase, the jury deliberated about six hours and on March 26 chose life imprisonment, according to CBS News. The judge imposed the sentence the next day; Wikipedia describes it as four consecutive life terms plus 20 years. In July 2003 she abandoned her appeal after a Supreme Court decision raised the prospect of a renewed death-penalty prosecution at any retrial.

Gilbert was born Kristen Heather Strickland in Fall River, Massachusetts, on November 13, 1967, according to the Globe. She earned a nursing diploma from Greenfield Community College in 1988, married Glenn Gilbert that year and had two sons. She joined the Northampton VA hospital on March 6, 1989; the Globe reported some staff privately nicknamed her the Angel of Death. She was living in Setauket, New York, when the murder indictment was announced.