Some
murders are easier to commit than others. Some look more like accidents,
whereas some are just so blatantly obvious. There are many different types of
murderers as well. The ones that are sneaky, the ones that don’t care if they
get caught and then there are the ones that commit so many murders that it’s a
part of their life. In this chapter of Molecules of Murder, we learn about a
woman name Kristen Gilbert. Just by looking at her you would assume that she
has the perfect life; a husband, two sons and a great job as a nurse. But
behind all of that is a really messed up woman who is having an affair and
eventually turns into a murderer.
Kristen
Gilbert committed supposedly fifty, maybe more crimes. There was something
different about Kristen’s crimes than other murderer’s crimes; hers were all
committed on state-owned/federal territory. This meant that she could
potentially be executed for her wrong-doings if caught, or found guilty. Along
with being a nurse came the availability of many drugs. Ever heard of the
saying “Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing? Well, that’s exactly what
Kristen did. She used adrenaline to kill people. Adrenaline is a natural
chemical that is produced by the human body. It is also quickly disposed of,
which means that it is easy to disguise adrenaline as a bodily malfunction,
rather than an attempted murder. When Kristen couldn’t use adrenaline, she
often used potassium chloride or insulin because both are also present in the
body.
No
one really knows why Kristen was a murderer. There are three main reasons that
could potentially be the reasons as to why she would want to kill her patients.
One was that she wanted to dispose of her terminally ill patients who were
being annoying. The second reason was she liked to create emergencies. The last
reason would be because she wanted to spend more time with her lover. By
getting rid of her patients that would make more time for her to leave work
early and spend time with her secret lover. Although none of these reasons had anything
to do with psychological problems, she has had incidents where she has gone
crazy.
Kristen married her husband
Robert and they eventually had two sons. Later on in her life Kristen met a man
named Glenn who she had a secret affair with. Eventually she left her family to
be with Glenn. One day when Glenn and Kristen were arguing, Kristen jumped at
Glenn with a sharp knife and Glenn had never seen this side of Kristen before.
So, it was proven that Kristen did have a side to her that no one really knew
about. Throughout Kristen’s career of being a nurse, she would make secret
plans to meet up with Glenn and sleep with him. Sometimes she would make plans
earlier than when her shift actually ended…but why?
During Kristen Gilbert’s time at
the hospital, she acquired the name ‘Angel of Death’ because she was involved
in so many fatalities. In 1991 it was brought to the hospitals attention that
there was 31 incidents in Kristen’s first two years at the hospital, in which
22 of them were discovered by Kristen, which is far more than any other nurse
had discovered. As coincidental as it might be, there were 90 deaths between
the years of 1994 and 1995, in which more than half of them (50) occurred
during the shifts that Kristen was working. Another coincidence that occurred
during her time at the hospital with that she activated the emergency alarm a
total of 72 times, whereas all the other nurses put together was only 70. Ward
C (the unit Kristen worked in) had encountered a total of 11 fires and Kristen
had recovered 8 of them. She even stopped one of them herself and received an
award for it…weird right?
The
first murder that Kristen committed was to a man named Jagodowski. He was 66,
had high blood pressure, diabetes and was recovering from a leg amputation.
Because his wife could no longer take care of him, she called the hospital when
he needed to be admitted. At the hospital he was given an examination and not
too long after, Kristen came in the room with a syringe in her hand and later,
other nurses heard him yelling and crying that Kristen was killing him. The
nurses did not know he even needed an injection, so it was very strange to them
as to why Kristen felt he needed one. After
the nurses left the patient’s room he went into a sudden cardiac arrest,
thankfully the nurses and doctors restarted his heart and he was transferred to
intensive care, where he died just before midnight. Because it takes a few
minutes for epinephrine to reach the heart, Kristen had enough time to flee the
area in order to ensure no one would suspect her as the cause of his death.
About three years after Jagodowski’s death, his remains were searched and it
was found that he had very high levels of epinephrine. The epinephrine takes a
couple minutes to reach the heart, which then causes a massive increase in
activity. This explains why the patient screamed when he was injected with the
chemical.
The
second murder the Kristen Gilbert committed was to a man named Henry Hudon. Henry
was admitted to the hospital many times due to a fight that he was involved in,
in 1986. During the fight he endured a strike to the face with a bottle, in
which he was knocked out, smashed his front teeth, and had a detached retina of
his right eye. After this fight he was in a coma for about three weeks until he
woke up and had suffered brain damage. This brain damage eventually led to him
being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Later, he also developed another
condition known as tardive dysdiadochokinesis, which caused him to have severe,
uncontrollable shaking. One day, Henry had an overdose on his medication, which
eventually led to him becoming very ill and being admitted to the hospital.
After being admitted, Kristen entered the room and gave him an injection of
potassium chloride, instead of adrenaline because she wanted his heart to stop
completely because she knew is heart was already weak. Along with the fact that
epinephrine is not likely to kill a 35 year old man. ON December 8, 1995 Henry
seemed to be better, but just thirty minutes after his checkup, his heart
suddenly stopped and he was revived with epinephrine. This is another way we
know that Kristen didn’t use epinephrine because he definitely would have died immediately
if he had even higher levels of epinephrine than he already did. Henry ended up
going into cardiac arrest four times before the doctors finally called it quits
and declared his death at 9:30 that night.
Although
Kristen felt this drug was fool proof, there was an instance where her plan did
not work. It was on a man named Thomas Callahan. There were no problems with
his heart and his appetite was fine when he was admitted. When Kristen gave him
an injection of epinephrine, his heart rate went up to 215 beats per minute and
his blood pressure rose to 191/116. Surprisingly, Callahan did not suffer a
heart attack and returned back to normal after only half an hour.
In
order to take the attention off of herself, Kristen disrupted the hospital by
causing a bomb scare. Later on that year, Kristen went to Perrault’s (her
secret lover) house and acted so irrationally that he ended up calling the
police and she was then sent for psychiatric treatment. While there, she admitted
to Perrault that she had killed some of her patients and he eventually obtained
a restraining order from her. It was brought to the police that she had killed
some of her patients with epinephrine and that there were many bottles of
epinephrine missing or used from the hospital. Kristen was sent to her parents’
house to live while she was on psychiatric watch. While there, she made several
attempts to kill herself, but was never successful. She was in and out of the
hospital for the next couple of months, but when she was at her parents’ house,
she made several threatening phone calls to Perrault, which she was eventually
placed under arrest for. In the end of all the drama, Kristen was found guilty
and was sentenced to four consecutive life terms, plus twenty years, all
without parole. The big debate was that Kristen could have been executed and
the only reason she didn’t appeal for a new trial was because of this
possibility.
The
actual chemistry of adrenaline is a little more complicated than it is to
actually use. It is “an activating life-saving chemical which the body produces
in times of crisis.” It has a couple of different functions and ways of
working. For example “it is secreted by the adrenal medulla. When released into
the bloodstream, epinephrine binds to multiple receptors and has numerous
effects throughout the body. It increases heart rate and stroke volume, dilates
the pupils, and constricts arterioles in the skin and gut while dilating
arterioles in leg muscle. It elevates the blood sugar level by increasing hydrolysis
of glycogen to glucose in the liver, and at the same time begins the breakdown
of lipids in fat cells (1).” Adrenaline (also known as epinephrine) is mostly used
to help when someone is n cardiac arrest (1). But it is also used for different
things depending on how much of it is used.0.01% is used to help restart the
heart, whereas .001% is used in local anesthetics, such as dentistry. Adrenaline
is usually activated by stress. It is usually used when the body is decided if
it wants to take flight or stand and fight.
Adrenaline
was first discovered in 1856, showing that removing the tiny adrenal glands
from the liver of an animal would quickly cause it to die. This led scientists
to believe that there must have been something it that was needed for survival.
That same year, another man discovered that whatever made it necessary for the
animal to survive was from the adrenal glands to the blood.Epinephrine is used as injection in much simpler ways, such as when using an Epipen. Epipen's are used when someone is having an allergic reaction. Along with being used for an allergic reaction, it can also be used for an asthma attack.
While epinephrine is a natural
chemical, it is also toxic and has an LD50 of 4 mg per kg of body weight.
Normally epinephrine is an antidote, but it can also kill if used on a frail
heart, given to much, or used incorrectly in general. Epinephrine’s main job is
to suppress the immune system. When it is injected into the body, its job is to
be able to start the heart and shift bodily processes up a gear. Adrenaline
constricts blood vessels in the skin, while dilating muscles and the liver.
Also, adrenaline dilates the pupils and expands vision. It is a
neurotransmitter and its chemical formula is C9H13NO3.
Some side effects of using small
doses of epinephrine are sweating; nausea and vomiting; pale skin; feeling
short of breath; dizziness; weakness or tremors; headache; or feeling nervous
or anxious (2). If epinephrine is used incorrectly, like the way Kristen used
it, it can speed up a person’s heart rate and raise their blood pressure, which
eventually leads to cardiac arrest, or even worse, death (2).
1. http://www.chemistrydaily.com/chemis/Adrenaline#Epinephrine_versus_adrenaline
2. http://www.drugs.com/mtm/epinephrine-injection.html
3. All other information used in this paper is from the Molecules of Murder book
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