Former VA nursing assistant Reta Mays pleads guilty to murdering seven veterans with insulin
Reta Mays admitted in federal court in West Virginia that she killed seven veterans at the Clarksburg VA hospital with insulin injections and tried to kill an eighth.
Published
For two years federal investigators had been looking into a string of deaths at the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg, West Virginia. They had described a person of interest only as a former nursing assistant with overnight access to the rooms of the veterans who died, and they had never named her. On Tuesday, July 14, 2020, that person stood in federal court and admitted she had killed seven of the men in her care.
Reta Mays, 46, of Harrison County, pleaded guilty to seven counts of second-degree murder and one count of assault with intent to commit murder. The men she admitted killing were Robert Edge Sr., Robert Kozul, Archie Edgell, George Shaw, Felix McDermott, Raymond Golden and a veteran identified in the court papers only by the initials W.A.H. The assault count involved an eighth veteran, identified as R.R.P. U.S. District Judge Thomas S. Kleeh presided.
Mays was a nursing assistant on the night shift, and she worked during the same stretch of time in which veterans in her care died of hypoglycemia, dangerously low blood sugar. Nursing assistants at the hospital were not qualified or authorized to give patients any medication, insulin included. In her plea she admitted injecting insulin into several patients with the intent to cause their deaths. The patients, all men, died between July 2017 and June 2018, and they ranged in age from 82 to 96, ABC News reported.
The charging document, as reported by WDTV, placed the deaths on the hospital's Ward 3A. Around June 2018 a doctor at the hospital reported a concern about patients who had died after hypoglycemic episodes on the ward, including several who were not diabetic. An internal inquiry followed, then a referral for a criminal investigation, and Mays, who had worked at the hospital since 2015, was removed from her position around July 2018. The hospital said it had fired her.
The case was investigated by the VA Office of Inspector General and the FBI, with help from the West Virginia State Police and the Greater Harrison Drug & Violent Crimes Task Force. "These eight Veterans deserved respect and honor," said FBI Special Agent in Charge Michael Christman. "They didn't deserve to die at the hands of a nursing assistant who intentionally inflicted pain on them and their families."
What drove her remained a mystery. Officials told reporters the motive was still unclear. U.S. Attorney Bill Powell called her acts evil and said the government would seek the maximum penalty at sentencing. Each murder count carried up to life in prison, and the assault count up to 20 years.
Mays admitted these crimes under a plea agreement, and the murder counts named above are the ones she pleaded guilty to. The ages and the July 2017 to June 2018 span come from ABC News; the ward, the doctor's report and Mays's dates of employment come from WDTV's account of the charging document.
Sources
- Former VA Hospital Nursing Assistant Admits to Murdering Seven Veterans and Assault with Intent to Commit Murder of an Eighth, U.S. Attorney's Office, Northern District of West Virginia
- Hospital worker charged with 7 counts of murder following string of mysterious patient deaths, ABC News
- Fired VA employee pleads guilty to multiple veteran homicides, WDTV (via WSAZ)