Gruesome details emerged in the deaths of seven veterans after former nursing assistant Reta Mays confessed to murdering them by injecting lethal doses of insulin. The 46-year-old was working as a nursing assistant at Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg, West Virginia, where she killed the veterans during 2017-18.
Mays' victims, who died due to severe hypoglycemia, were identified as Robert Edge Sr., Robert Kozul, Archie Edgell, 84, George Shaw Sr, 81, Felix McDermott, 82, Raymond Golden, and William Alfred Holloway (WAH), 96. They were former veterans who were under Mays' care at the medical center.
Reta Mays Served in Iraq, Husband Arrested for Child Pornography
Mays, who is currently held at the Northern Regional Jail, pleaded guilty even as the motive for the killing spree remains unclear. The case gained attention after relatives of the victims raised suspicion over the mysterious deaths.
Hailing from Reynoldsville, Mayse was stationed with the West Virginia Army National Guard in Iraq in 2003. She served as a chemical equipment repairer in the 109nd Engineer Battalion. Speaking to the Washington Post, one of her colleagues expressed surprise at Mays killing spree. 'I would have never dreamt she was capable of doing something like this. This is Jekyll and Hyde if I ever did see it," said Mike Greaver, who served with her in Iraq.
After leaving the forces, Mays started working as a correctional officer at the Mount Olive Correctional Complex in Mt. Olive, West Virginia, from 2005. A year after she left the facility, in 2013 a lawsuit was filed against officials including Mays by an inmate claiming that she kicked him and 'bent over him, spit in his face, and said '[h]ow do you like that mother f****' and 'you ain't that tough now are you?'. The suit was dismissed later, reported Daily Mail.
Mays then went to work at the ResCare in a home for adults with disabilities in Clarksburg. A member of the local Monroe Chapel United Methodist church, Mays reportedly had issues in her married life with her husband, a sex offender, convicted for child pornography in West Virginia in 2012.
Mays Watched Her Victims Die a Slow Death
Mays who joined the VA Medical Center in 2015, pleaded guilty to seven counts of second-degree murder and one count of assault with the intent to commit murder. The killings took place during the graveyard shift of the serial killer.
Speaking to the Washington Post, an anonymous investigator revealed that Mays would watch her victims die a slow and painful death as she sat beside their beds after injecting them with lethal doses of insulin. Her injections caused victims' blood sugar levels to drop fatally.
In one case, she had to inject the victim twice after the first dose failed to kill him. In order to avoid suspicion, Mays detected a loophole in the hospital's system that enabled the patients' glucose test results to go undetected, the investigator told the outlet.
Killer Nurse Would Watch Doctors Failing to Revive Victims
Revealing about Mays's modus operandi, a healthcare worker told the Post that she would linger in her victims' rooms while the doctors would fight to revive blood sugar levels with the help of counteract drugs. She would also listen to the conversations between the doctors and the victims' families. The health care worker also revealed that many of Mays' victims would take several hours to a few weeks for their organs to shut down and die.
In her plea agreement, the former nursing assistant revealed that one of her victims, Archie Edgell, Korean War veteran, was injected multiple times with insulin after the first dose failed to kill him. During the autopsy, Edgell was found to be injected four times.
Edgell's granddaughter, Tina Hickman, told the Post that she wanted to know the reason behind the murders committed by Mays. 'I kind of didn't believe it, because I talked to her all the time. I would like to know why,' she added.
