By STACEY SHACKFORD
Staff Writer
Tuesday November 21, 2000 -- (SPRINGFIELD) - U.S. Attorney William Welch opened the trial of Kristen H. Gilbert Monday with a narrative.
It was Feb. 17, 1996, a "cold, chilly day," he began. On Ward C of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Leeds, there was a different kind of chill that penetrated the floor. It was a deep, eerie feeling - patients were dying unexpectedly from sudden cardiac arrest.
Three nurses came together and voiced their suspicions. It was every hospital's nightmare, Welch said. There was a killer among them, one who "coldly and callously" killed four men and attempted to kill three others by injecting them with the heart stimulant epinephrine, Welch said.
In the months ahead, Welch will try to prove that the killer was Gilbert, a nurse who had worked at the hospital for five years and had once been a trusted colleague. Her motive for the killings, Welch suggested, was a perverse need for attention from colleagues and her new boyfriend, hospital police officer James Perrault.
"Make no mistake about it. This is not a case in which patients of this nurse were begging her to put them out of misery," Welch said. "This is not a case of old, sick patients on their death beds. This is a case about cold-blooded murder."
"This is a case about a murderer who took this drug, epinephrine, and transformed it from a drug of life to a drug of death, solely for her own personal, selfish pleasures."
Welch outlined the government's case against Gilbert in a 21/2-hour opening statement. He also told many stories. The first was of alleged victim Stanley J. Jagodowski, 66, of Holyoke, who was admitted to the VA on July 21, 1995 after having his right leg amputated. Jagodowski had chronic health problems, but all were under control, Welch said, and by Aug. 14 doctors were planning to transfer him to a long-term care ward of the hospital and then home.
"The only thing that prevented him from leaving Ward C was an open bed - and this defendant," Welch told the jury, pointing to Gilbert.
On Aug. 21, several medical personnel had checked Jagodowski continuously, and he appeared to be doing well. Then Gilbert came on duty and wheeled her medicine cart in front of Jagodowski's room, Welch said. A nurse saw her enter the room with a needle and swab in hand and moments later, Jagodowski reportedly yelled, "Ow! It hurts! You're killing me!"
Gilbert left the room and continued down the hall, Welch said. The other nurse checked on Jagodowski, and was in the room for less than a minute when he went into sudden cardiac arrest, Welch said.
Jagodowski's was one of several puzzling deaths at the hospital. All of the men were in stable condition and were not expected to die. None of the men had been admitted for heart problems. Gilbert had been alone with the veterans when their hearts began to beat wildly, and eventually stopped. The medical records for each patient appeared to be falsified and several heart machine records were missing. It is not likely that their deaths were a mere coincidence, Welch said.
"It's kind of like lightning striking not once, not twice, but several times - in the same month, in the same hospital, on the same ward, all following this defendant," Welch said, pointing to Gilbert.
Welch said he expects his medical experts will prove that Gilbert injected each patient with epinephrine, also known as adrenaline. He said he also expects many of Gilbert's colleagues will testify about Gilbert's obsession with "codes," or medical emergencies in which she would find a patient in distress and call in a medical response team to help her resuscitate him.
Welch said Gilbert "was by no means the best nurse." He said she was unmotivated, uninterested in patient care and had an unhealthy obsession with medication. Her job performance further deteriorated when she became heavily involved in an extramarital affair with Perrault, Welch said. Welch even suggested that Gilbert killed Kenneth Cutting so she could get out of work early and go on a date with Perrault.
"The defendant injected him with epinephrine, then waited for Kenneth Cutting to die. Five minutes later, he was pronounced dead. At 8:10 p.m. she had his body in the morgue. By 9 p.m. she was gone, just in time to make her date," Welch said.
Welch said Gilbert's nursing supervisor, Kathy Rix, began to suspect Gilbert was involved in the men's deaths after discovering dozens of vials of epinephrine were missing from the ward's medicine storage. She began to keep count of the epinephrine supply. At 4 p.m. on the day Edward Skwira died, she had counted three vials of epinephrine. An our later, shortly after Gilbert came on duty and Skwira went into cardiac arrest, she noticed all three vials were gone. She found them in Skwira's room, empty and discarded, in a disposal container, Welch said.
"She felt sick to her stomach and her knees buckled, because she believed she now knew what had been happening in Ward C," Welch said.
