1. Kristen Heather Gilbert is an American serial killer and former nurse who was convicted of four murders and two attempted murders of patients admitted to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northampton, Massachusetts.
19 Facts About Kristen Gilbert
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Kristen Gilbert induced cardiac arrest in patients by injecting their intravenous therapy bags with lethal doses of epinephrine, commonly known as adrenaline, which is an untraceable heart stimulant.
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Prosecutors said Gilbert was on duty for about half of the 350 deaths that occurred at the hospital from when she started working there in 1989, and that the probability of this merely being a coincidence was 1 in 100 million.
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Kristen Gilbert had a history of faking suicide attempts to manipulate people.
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Kristen Gilbert graduated from Groton-Dunstable Regional High School in Groton, Massachusetts.
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Kristen Gilbert graduated from the latter with a nursing diploma, becoming a registered nurse in 1988.
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In 1989, Kristen Gilbert joined the staff of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northampton.
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Kristen Gilbert was featured in the magazine VA Practitioner in April 1990.
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Kristen Gilbert telephoned in a bomb threat to attempt to derail the investigation.
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Kristen Gilbert left the hospital in 1996 amid a hospital investigation into the many suspicious patient deaths that occurred during her shifts.
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That fall, Kristen Gilbert checked herself into psychiatric hospitals seven times, staying between one and ten days each time.
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In January 1998, Kristen Gilbert stood trial for calling in a bomb threat to the Northampton VAMC to retaliate against coworkers and former boyfriend James Perrault for their participation in the investigation.
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Prosecutors said that Kristen Gilbert tried to poison a patient at the VA hospital on January 28,1996, and that she caused a medical emergency by removing a patient's breathing tube at the VA hospital on January 30,1994.
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Prosecutors said that Kristen Gilbert abandoned a patient undergoing cardiac arrest on November 9,1995, and then asked another nurse to accompany her on a check of patients.
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Kristen Gilbert forced an untrained colleague to use cardiac defibrillation paddles on a patient during a medical emergency on November 17,1995, by refusing to use the equipment herself.
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Prosecutors said Kristen Gilbert threatened the life of at least one person verbally and physically in July 1996.
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Kristen Gilbert was transferred from a prison for women in Framingham, Massachusetts to FMC Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, where she has remained ever since.
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In July 2003, Kristen Gilbert dropped her federal appeal for a new trial after a new US Supreme Court ruling that would have allowed prosecutors to pursue the death penalty upon retrial.
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Kristen Gilbert had two sons with Glenn Kristen Gilbert before they divorced in 1998.