Whenever you made it to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) and you were greeted by Kristen Gilbert, you would bet your life that she was a good and caring nurse. You would be dead wrong. The woman was responsible for the death of at least 4 people, with many other deaths said to have occurred under her watch.
Dubbed the Angel of Death, here is the story of Kristen Gilbert, an American nurse who ended the lives of some of her patients. Her crimes have put her among the most dangerous female serial killers in the history of the United States.
Birth and Early Life of Kristen Gilbert
The dangerous American nurse was born Kristen Heather Strickland on November 13, 1967, in Fall River, Massachusetts, U.S. She was the first of the two daughters of her parents, Richard an electronics executive, and Claudia Strickland, a teacher and homemaker.
The childhood of the nurse seemed to be very normal but it was reported that she started showing some anti-social tendencies when she entered her teenage years.
Kristen has been described as a very manipulative teenager who would lie and often fake suicide attempts to get the attention of people. More so, she also showed some aggressive tendencies.
Much later, she married Glenn Gilbert in 1988 and had two kids together. The marriage lasted until 1998 when they finally divorced.
How She Became a Nurse
A graduate of Massachusetts Groton-Dunstable Regional High School, she went to Bridgewater State College in Bridgewater, Massachusetts where she was alleged to have faked a suicide attempt, she was transferred to Mount Wachusett Community College in Gardner, Massachusetts.
The controversial nurse did not graduate there as she was again made to move to Greenfield Community College in Greenfield, Massachusetts where she obtained a diploma in nursing. Soon afterward, she became a registered nurse.
She was hired as a nurse at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she went on to commit her heinous crimes.
Kristen Gilbert as the Angel of Death
Initially, when the nickname, Angel of Death, was given to Gilbert, it was some sort of a joke among her colleagues at VA Medical Center. This came after it was noticed that under her watch, there was a high number of deaths.
The coincidence was too much for some nurses who realized that more people continued to die under her care, as a result of cardiac arrest. This forced 3 nurses to raise the alarm in 1996 when they uncovered that coinciding with the deaths, there was also an unexplained decrease in the supply of epinephrine. This drug can stimulate the heart and cause cardiac arrest depending on the dosage administered.
When investigations on the matter began, it was alleged that she made a bomb threat telephone to derail investigators before she left the hospital. The behavior of Gilbert turned erratic and she checked herself into psychiatric hospitals at least seven times.
Before the age of 31, she was already arrested and convicted of the bomb call she made. It was after this that more light was shone on her, with claims that she might have been involved in at least 350 deaths and close to similar emergency cases. She was subsequently made to stand trial for the murder of some of her patients and the attempted murder of some others.
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How she was caught and jailed
Her trial was a big deal in more ways than one would believe. To prepare and try the case, three lawyers were said to have abandoned their practices for close to a year. Her defense team brought together three investigators, two toxicologists, a pathologist, two cardiologists, and a nursing consultant.
Others that were also brought were a jury consulÂtant, a venue analyst, 2 mitigation specialists, a statistician, a neuropsychologist, a behavioral psychologist, a psychiatrist, an endocrinologist, and a paralegal.
The trial lasted from October 16, 2000, to March 26, 2001, and involved 70 witnesses, over 200 exhibits, and hundreds of pages of medical records.
After the hearings were done on February 21, jurors took 12 days of delibÂerÂaÂtions before finally returning with a guilty verdict on 3 counts of 1st degree murder and other charges.
Where is Kristen Gilbert today?
With the guilty verdict on her, Kristen Gilbert saw herself standing the risk of facing the 1st death penalty in Massachusetts in several decades.
In this decision, the jurors arrived at a deadlock, forcing the judge, Michael A. Ponsor, to sentence her to mandatory life imprisonment without a possibility of release. She was then moved to a high-security federal facility in Texas where she is expected to serve the rest of her natural life.
She appealed the ruling and sought a new trial. However, she later dropped the appeal in July 2003. She feared that a new trial could allow prosecutors to demand the death penalty. Today, she is in FMC Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas,
