S7 Ep.5: Confession

Summary

Mind of a Monster: The Killer Nurse

Episode 5 – Confession

Release date: October 21, 2025
Host: Dr. Michelle Ward (ID)

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Episode Overview

This episode ("Confession") delves into the unraveling of Kristen Gilbert’s crimes, focusing on her confessions to those closest to her, her erratic spiral as law enforcement closes in, and the pivotal investigative breakthroughs that would ultimately lead to her arrest. Dr. Michelle Ward interrogates the psychological dynamics at play, discusses the mounting evidence with key investigators, and gives voice to the trauma faced by victims’ families as the scope of Gilbert’s actions comes to light.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Confessions and Their Reversals

• Kristen Gilbert’s Confessions:

  • Kristen confesses to her lover, James Perrault:

    "I did it. I did it. I injected those guys." (03:07)

  • She quickly retracts the statement, claiming she was only joking to provoke a reaction.
  • She repeats this cycle with her estranged husband, Glenn Gilbert, who recounts her call as emotional but ending with sarcastic dismissal:

    "At the very end took an extremely sarcastic, almost laughing tone. And her comment was just kidding." (04:38)

• Perspective from Federal Prosecutor William Welch:

  • Welch sees these confessions as signs of Gilbert losing control:

    "She just kind of blurted out, you know, you wanted to know, I did it. I did it... I think it was because she was losing control." (05:45, 06:23)

• Dr. Ward’s Reflection:

  • Ward highlights the emotional volatility and manipulation:

    "The way Kristin can shift and change gears so easily. One moment candid and serious, the next vicious and sarcastic." (04:42)

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2. Statistical Evidence and Hospital Oversight

• Staggering Data:

  • Welch details the statistical improbability of the death rate linked to Gilbert:

    "The probability of this occurring by chance was 1 in 100 million." (07:14)

  • Most oversight mechanisms failed to trigger alarms due to disbelief—"They just cannot envision that someone would do this sort of thing." (07:34)

• Impact of Kristen’s Absence:

  • After Kristen’s sick leave, deaths on her ward dropped dramatically from 23 to 4 over comparable four-month periods.

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3. Psychological Games and Escalating Tactics

• Manipulation and Threats:

  • Kristen attempts to control James by harassing him following his grand jury testimony, sabotaging his property, and engaging in feigned suicide attempts.
  • Tom Soutier and Perrault discuss her escalating desperation and destruction:

    "On several occasions, my car was either egged, the windshield was spray painted, my front license plate was bent up, and my car was keyed..." (12:14)

• Profile of Narcissistic Immunity:

  • Dr. Katherine Ramsland interprets her behavior as showing “narcissistic immunity”:

    "They believe even if they're caught, they can't be held. Or if they're held, they can't be tried. Or if tried, they can't be convicted." (16:29)

    • She compares this mindset to famous serial killers: Bundy, Gacy, Raider.

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4. Investigation Breakthroughs and Gathering Evidence

• Process of Exhumation:

  • Investigators approach victims’ families for exhumation to look for toxic evidence, a harrowing process for families:

    “Imagine getting a visit like this... Can we have your permission to exhume his body? How would you feel if you got a visit like that?” (27:17)

  • Family member Sarah Square recalls the media and emotional strain placed upon them. (28:19)

• Forensic Evaluation and Probabilities:

  • William Welch on forensic work:

    "When you really think about a case like this ... the heart in its physical substrate tells you... the probability of a cardiac arrest without some sort of stimulus drops to, like, less than 1%." (29:40)

• Discovery of the Handbook of Poisoning:

  • During the search of Glenn Gilbert’s house, investigators find the “Handbook of Poisoning” with the epinephrine page dog-eared—directly relating to the means of the killings. (24:41)

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5. The Bomb Threats & Ultimate Arrest

• The Bomb Threat Scheme:

  • When Gilbert is cornered by evidence and emotionally fraught, she escalates to calling in bomb threats to the hospital where James works, using a Talkboy device to disguise her voice.
  • Suspicion falls on Gilbert as a neighbor sees her leave and return precisely within the timeframe of the threats. (37:12)
  • James receives further threatening, distorted calls at his favorite bar, recognizing Gilbert’s precise enunciation:

    "A lot of the tones were very familiar to the ones I heard during arguments with her, when she would leave messages on my machine..." (39:47)

• Investigation and Sting Operation:

  • Trooper Kevin Murphy predicts Gilbert would use a payphone near her apartment; surveillance confirms this:

    "He had this gut feeling that she was going to use a pay telephone right by the apartment... Sure enough, she came up in her car, got out, made the phone call..." (43:15)

• Search & Discovery:

  • During a search of Gilbert’s apartment, they find the Talkboy in a child’s room and battery packaging, cementing the bomb threat connection.
  • Tom Soutier describes the sparse, neglected state of her home, signifying personal chaos. (47:47)

• On Arrest:

  • After several feigned suicide attempts delay her detainment, Kristen Gilbert is finally arrested upon release from the hospital in October 1996. (50:04)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Kristen’s Manipulation and Control:

  "It's like it's her default response to a rejection or loss of control."
  — Dr. Michelle Ward (12:26)

• On the Investigation:

  "She was cold as ice. Oh my God. She, I tell you, if looks could kill, I'd be dead now."
  — Bruce Sackman, Special Agent (21:26)

• On Family Impact:

  "I tried to get him through it... he really wanted to have this whole thing go away, but it wasn't going to go away."
  — Tom Soutier, on Glenn Gilbert (25:47)

• On Forensics and Probability:

  "The probability of a cardiac arrest without some sort of stimulus drops to, like, less than 1%. It's like the probability of being hit by lightning."
  — William Welch (30:46)

• Celestial Serial Killer Psychology:

  "Narcissistic immunity. I love it. It's an indignance. Like, how dare you try to ruin my spree."
  — Dr. Katherine Ramsland (17:57)

• On Arrest:

  "Kristen Gilbert is finally arrested."
  — Dr. Michelle Ward (50:18)

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Timeline of Critical Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |-----------|--------------------| | 03:07–04:38 | Confessions and immediate reversals to James and Glenn Gilbert | | 07:14 | Statistical probability and damning evidence | | 12:14 | Property sabotage; parallels to teen behavior | | 16:29–17:57 | Dr. Ramsland on "narcissistic immunity" | | 24:41 | Discovery of the dog-eared Handbook of Poisoning | | 27:17–28:19 | Families asked for exhumation; emotional impact | | 29:40 | Forensic work and probabilities | | 37:12–39:47 | Bomb threats, neighbor observations, and harassing calls | | 43:15 | Sting operation—Gilbert caught using the payphone | | 47:47 | Search of Gilbert’s apartment, finding Talkboy | | 50:04 | Final arrest of Kristen Gilbert |

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Tone and Atmosphere

The tone of the episode is tense and analytical but deeply empathetic. Dr. Ward maintains a clinical yet compassionate perspective, balancing the procedural intensity with the emotional cost to those impacted. Investigators’ testimonies blend professional detachment with the gravity of confronting someone capable of such crimes. The interviews explore not just the facts, but also the psychology and human toll behind the headlines.

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Conclusion

Episode 5 meticulously documents the unraveling of Kristen Gilbert's manipulations—estranging partners with confession-and-denial tactics, sabotaging property, faking suicide attempts, and ultimately embarking on a bomb threat spree. The mounting evidence, from the statistical analysis of deaths to the discovery of key physical items, dovetails with psychological profiling to present a picture of a woman whose need for control and narcissistic self-image drove increasingly reckless acts. The episode ends with Gilbert finally under arrest, as investigators and those she hurt try to piece together the enormity of her crimes, setting the stage for trial and yet more difficult reckonings ahead.

Transcript

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This podcast explores themes of violence, self harm and murder. Listener discretion is advised. Please note some of the voices you hear in this series have been performed by actors. Previously on Mind of a Monster. The killer nurse.

[B]

When she thought it might be looking at her, she somehow got injured.

[A]

My first reaction was this is someone who's pranking me. There's no way like this is going on.

[C]

Well, you don't get to break up with someone like this. They're the ones who are in charge.

[B]

She would call up with heavy breathing and hang up. She claimed that she was going to commit suicide. She was really, really striving for attention.

[C]

Kristin Gilbert is a health care serial killer convicted of murdering four patients, attempting to murder two more and Suspected of killing dozens of others, her victim count could be as high as in the hundreds from ID and Aeromedia. I'm criminal psychologist Dr. Michelle Ward, and this is Mind of a Monster, the Killer Nurse. Chapter five Confession. I did it. I did it. I injected those guys. It's 30 minutes after Kristen Gilbert drops the confession bomb on her lover, James Peralt. From the psychiatric unit in Holyoke Hospital, James receives another phone call. It's Kristen again. She's panicked and claims to have only been joking when confessing. To get a reaction out of him, James warns Kristen that he will have to tell the grand jury investigators what she had said. The grand jury will establish whether there is enough evidence to indict Kristen for a crime. The date of the grand jury is set for July 16, 1996. But James isn't the only person to have received phone calls from Kristen that day. Her estranged husband, Glenn Gilbert.

[B]

She was in hysterics, crying, sobbing, and sounding like she was hyperventilating. She had said to me that she was calling to tell me to contact the investigators. She wanted to save the taxpayers a lot of money for this investigation. She was basically confessing. During the time that she was talking, I was telling her that I didn't want to hear this, that I was in fear that she was going to make a confession, and I wanted no part of being responsible in having that information. Having been told that information at the very end took an extremely sarcastic, almost laughing tone. And her comment was just kidding.

[C]

Goodbye.

[B]

And she hung up. The.

[C]

This is a remarkable interaction, the way Kristin can shift and change gears so easily. One moment candid and serious, the next vicious and sarcastic. I want to speak with federal prosecutor William Welch about the confessions. Can you tell us about Kristin's confessions to the killings that she made to James and Glenn?

[A]

Yeah, it was during this very tumultuous February through the summer of 96 time frame. And I think as she is trying to whip up the emotions and the sympathy from everybody, I think she in turn is kind of internally whipping up a lot of her own emotions. And part of it, I think she was really getting the sense that we actually weren't going away, that we were building a case and we had formally initiated a federal grand jury investigation, which would have been known to her because we were issuing subpoenas for documents and to witnesses. And I think the magnitude and the seriousness of what we were doing was becoming quite apparent to her. So both Glenn and James told us about two discreet episodes. You know, each they had their own independent episode with her, but they themselves were beginning to press her about all of her conduct, about how strange all of these suicide attempts were. And to James Peralt, she just kind of blurted out, you know, you wanted to know, I did it. I did it. And to Glenn Gilbert, she made a similar confession.

[C]

Do you think she was doing that because she's losing control, or do you think it was just to garner some sort of sympathy or an ally?

[A]

I think it was because she was losing control. So while she may have had control in her mind over a number of the individuals within her circle, she didn't have control over what we were doing. And I think she knew that. And that's really what was beginning to bear down on her, is that this was not going away and she had no control over it.

[C]

That's so interesting. The queen is dethroned by her own doing. The investigation is progressing at a rapid pace. Having pulled all the files relating to codes and deaths throughout Kristen's time working within Ward C, investigators find disturbing patterns. Looking at the total number of Deaths in the 18 months before Kristen's departure from Ward C in February 1996, we would expect her to be present at between 11 and 12 deaths. Kristen was present at 40. William Welch.

[A]

And that's why we said that deaths followed Kristen Gilbert no matter what shift she worked on. So we had a expert statistician take a look, and he said that the probability of this occurring by chance was 1 in 100 million.

[C]

Wow. Who's in charge of keeping track of that data at the hospital?

[A]

Yeah, so that would have been the responsibility of the nurse manager. It would have been response, the responsibility of the chief physician for the VA Medical center. I know that they had a quality committee that would review this sort of data. What I don't know is whether or not they began to compare it to historical numbers. And, you know, today you would think that they would do that. You would hope that all hospitals do that. But I think back then, I don't know that they did it, number one. And then number two, the data competes with, I think, everybody's imagination or perspective of what they view as, you know, each individual healthcare provider. They just cannot envision that someone would do this sort of thing.

[C]

That's right. It's uncomfortable, and it goes against our perception of those taking care of us when we need it the most. And you don't want to begin questioning, really, the people who have your life in their hands. This, of course, is just speculation, as we don't really know how the hospital monitored and reviewed the statistics. But the numbers are revealing themselves in real time. It has now been four months since Kristen was put on sick leave with her shoulder injury. In those months, four deaths had been reported on Ward C and two medical emergencies. Compared to the four months before Kristen's leave, when there were 23 deaths on the ward and 4:30 emergencies. James Peralt starts to have doubts about Kristin's truthfulness.

[A]

Because I was having doubts of Kristen and myself because of her behavior, and our relationship was lacking, and. And I just started wondering actually what was going on.

[C]

24 hours after making her shocking confessions, Kristen is discharged from the hospital. She has confessed to multiple murders, and yet she's still free to terrorize those around her. The first thing she does is attempt to break into James Perrault's apartment. I can't help but wonder if Kristen would be allowed to roam free if she had been a man or if the murders had taken place in any other environment. It's true she will no longer kill within the vamc, but she is demonstrably dangerous. Breaking into properties, threatening violence, harassing people. Authorities are called, and she's taken to yet another psychiatric facility, this time Arbor Hospital in Boston, and she's held there for three days. The psychiatric doctors at Arbor Hospital flag her manipulative behavior. One doctor even going so far as to report that Kristin seemed to be very cognizant of the various psychological conditions he could potentially diagnose her with. The doctor claimed she said, if you call me manic, you think that will enable them to pin the wrap on me? The day of her release is the day James Peralt is due to be interviewed by the grand jury investigators. Upon release, Kristen tells him that she has taken 60 aspirins and is sent again to a psychiatric ward. This time it's the Cooley Dickinson facility in Northampton, Massachusetts. It's a far cry from the woman organizing charity events and having the first stirrings of a romantic affair the previous summer. Is she already thinking about an insanity plea? Is she trying to delegitimize her confessions? Or is she genuinely mentally ill? Detective Lieutenant Tom Soutier is tasked with supervising the case for the Massachusetts State State Police, overseeing the work of Detective Kevin Murphy and Special Agent Steve Plant. He describes how during the summer of 1996, James Perrault is stuck between a rock and a hard place.

[B]

James, I don't think, wanted to believe any of this in the beginning. He decided he didn't want to be around her anymore, and he tried to break up with her. And little by little, as he pulled himself away from her, she became more manic. He told her that he had an interview at the U.S. attorney's Office 1 day and she drove her car in front of me, wouldn't let him get out of his parking space. She pulled her car behind him so he couldn't leave and tried to talk him out of it. And finally he says, no, I'm gonna go do it because I have to. I've been summons, I'm gonna go. And so he went. But while he was there, she let the air out of one of his tires where it was parked.

[A]

On several occasions, my car was either egged, the windshield was spray painted, my front license plate was bent up, and my car was keyed on four or five different occasions.

[C]

The damage to property, particularly the cars, is reminiscent of what Kristin was accused of doing as a teenager. It's like it's her default response to a rejection or loss of control. Mint is still $15 a month for premium wireless. And if you haven't made the switch yet, here are 15 reasons why you should. One, it's $15 a month. Two, seriously, it's $15 a month. Three, no big contracts.

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Tom Soutier. Explain to me how she could behave so brazenly knowing that she's under suspicion for murder.

[B]

I think when it came to these ridiculous things she did, I don't think she had any control of herself on that. She would become so agitated that she just did it and thought it was okay.

[C]

What do you think Kristen was doing at that point, other than panicking?

[B]

I think that she was kind of like trying to figure a way out of this, you know, trying to figure out if she could blame somebody else or just. Just say it wasn't me, because, you know, I wouldn't do anything like that. This person might, though. I think that she just spent all her time. First of all, she was ruminating about her boyfriend. You know, she was just upset with him all the time. And I think that she just figured she was going to find a way out of all of this. She thought she could figure it out.

[C]

And she's been able to outsmart everyone so far. She's emboldened by the fact that she hasn't been found out. So she probably does think she's smarter than everyone else and can get out of this as well. Forensic psychologist Dr. Katherine Ramsland has a really interesting take on this behavior. Kristen's behavior is rather manic at that point, as we saw. What does that tell you about her mental state? Well, that would go to the whole borderline thing, because the erratic nature, the instability, now she's scared, she's anxious, she's beginning to realize there could be consequences. I don't think she understands how serious this could get. But she's lost control and that scares her a lot. So she tries to think of anything she can do to restore control, and that's going to put her in a manic state. It's so fascinating because it really speaks to that whole narcissistic element of, a, I'm not going to get caught, so I'm not going to think about consequences. But B, this is happening to me. I didn't cause this. How do I gain control and I can get out of this? I get out of all of it. I call it narcissistic immunity. It's a special type of narcissism where they actually believe even if they're caught, they can't be held. Or if they're held, they can't be tried. Or if tried, they can't be convicted. And you see it in Ted Bundy plays all the way through. You won't be able to hold me, I'll be home for dinner kind of thing. Gacy. John Wayne Gacy. Same thing. Dennis Raider, too. Yeah. Even him. You just can't conceive of losing. I don't lose. There will be consequences. Yeah. Yep. Well, and they're. And they're emboldened. They have a track record of winning and. Yeah, and they do. They've gotten away with it. They can't believe suddenly, especially if it was a stupid mistake, they get caught. And these people have to see their superiority. People have to recognize that I'm special, I'm destined, and that's that immunity thing that I can't be touched. Narcissistic immunity. I love it. It's an indignance. Like, how dare you try to ruin my spree. Kristin lashes out at James, accusing him of spying on her for the Inspector General's office.

[A]

Several times she accused me of being an agent of the IG that, you know, I had been sent to the hospital to start up a relationship with her, to spy on her or, you know, there's another accusation that I had been recruited by the IG after my relationship started with her. But as time progressed, she continued to engage in these fake suicide attempts. I think it became exhausting for him. And he also began to step back and realize that there was a lot of conduct going on that perhaps he had never really put together for himself, such as the rate of the codes, his appearance at the codes, the comments at the codes. That, to his credit, I think he became much more objective in how he was viewing all the things that he knew. And then ultimately, I think when she actually admitted it to him, in his mind, that was probably the straw that broke the camel's back. I just need to go in and tell him everything that I know.

[C]

One can imagine that he has that extra layer of bias. Not only does he confront. What we confront is that we don't want that to be true. We don't want somebody who's in charge of vulnerable lives to be a murderer. But he's sleeping with her, so he has to face his own responsibility and not seeing it, not wanting it to be true, but then ultimately doing exactly the right thing and recognizing her and her patterns and bringing it to you. But Every time James tries to distance himself from Kristen, she becomes volatile.

[A]

If we ever had an argument, she would taunt me saying that I was enjoying myself and that I enjoyed to argue that I was sexually gratified by it. When we were arguing, if we were having a face to face argument, she would be very cold and turn off her emotions towards me. Many times she left messages on my answering machine when I wasn't talking to.

[B]

Her.

[A]

Threatening me without emotion, stating that she was upset with me.

[C]

On July 16, he testifies to the grand jury along with a number of other witnesses. William Welch. What was presented to the grand jury, I mean, that's always, you know, an interesting part of a case because you have to decide what you show and you don't have it all put together yet.

[A]

Yeah. So we had a number of witnesses appear before the grand jury. The three main individuals who came forward. Initially, the three senior RNs appeared before the grand jury. We had a number of other VA medical center witnesses who appeared before the grand jury. Several of our experts appeared before the grand jury. And then our investigators also came in to talk about some of the documents they uncovered and things of that nature.

[C]

So you had quite a bit to present. That's fantastic. A search warrant is issued for Kristen Gilbert's apartment during this time. Bruce Sackman is a special agent in the U.S. department of Veterans affairs investigating the case. He tells the story.

[B]

We went to her apartment and she was there with James parole. And it's the first time I had met her. Pretty attractive lady at that time. And she was cold as ice. Oh my God. She, I tell you, if wooks could kill, I'd be dead now. She was cold as ice. But her boyfriend, James Perot, was acting like a real asshole. Oh, at that time, he later, he later had his come to Jesus moment.

[C]

Oh, he was a jerk too.

[B]

But at that time he was saying, do you guys have a search warranty? You have this? Do you have that?

[C]

Well, and she's probably putting a lot of pressure on him at that point to defend her against the rumors, the suspicions.

[B]

She refused to talk to me. She called her attorney.

[C]

He was a decent chap.

[B]

And I don't think we found anything at that time. I don't remember. And then we left. But subsequently, sometime later, Glenn Gilbert, her husband, nice, nice fellow, he called us up.

[C]

Her estranged husband, Glenn Gilbert has had his life dragged into Kristen's drama. His house, the family home, has already been searched once by investigators for anything that might further link Kristen to the crimes. And he's had to come to terms with the fact that the mother of his two young sons is being investigated for multiple murders. Tom Soutier, what was Glenn like in person?

[B]

He was a nice guy, kind of quiet, kind of sheepish. For the longest time he held on to hope that this wasn't true. And little by little, he started to believe it.

[C]

Tell us about the search of Glenn's house on August 15th and what was found there.

[B]

All right, the search of Glenn's house. Kevin and I was there. I'm assuming Steve was there. Glenn still wasn't completely convinced, but he had been on vacation with his kids. And while he was gone, his, I think it was his stepfather stayed at the house so that Kristen wouldn't come. And they. Glenn wasn't gone a few minutes when Kristen showed up at the house trying to get in. And she said to the stepfather that she had to get something out of the pantry. And if you entered their kitchen from their driveway counter space and there was a little room built off to the right hand side and in there she had had like sewing material, I think like crochet or knitting. She had all of her stuff back in there. And Glenn had called Steve or Kevin, one of the other or both maybe, and told him that she had been at the house trying to get something out of the pantry.

[A]

It was what's called a consent search. So if you're the owner of a house, you can obviously agree to have the police come in and take a look at your house and search it.

[C]

Tom Soutier.

[B]

So we're up there, we're talking to him. While we're talking to him, Kevin's in the pantry and he comes out and he's got a book.

[A]

William Welch, the Handbook of Poisoning. And a Critical Fact was of a book that was maybe three to four hundred pages long. The page for epinephrine had been dog eared.

[C]

Wow, that's incredible. What a find. What a boon for your investigation. What was Kristen's reaction to that?

[A]

I don't know that there was really any reaction that we heard back. I think a lot of her reaction to Glenn Gilbert talking to us from what we heard was sort of increased rage and a communicated sense of betrayal. So she would tell individuals that she believed would ultimately tell Glenn that she was feeling very betrayed by her husband. None of which really made a lot of sense given all the things that we began to know what was going on in that relationship.

[C]

Yeah, it's ironic that she feels betrayed. You know, she's cheating and leaving and now she's mad at him for allowing a search. And if you have nothing to find, then you wouldn't be mad about that. Tom Soutier. When did you hear from him again?

[B]

I don't know if it was that night or the next night. And I received the phone call from him, and he was basically asking me to convince him that she was actually doing these things. All right. He was. Said he was hesitant. He didn't want to believe it. He was worried about his kids, what the. What everybody was going to say about it, their mother and everything else. And I must have talked to him for half an hour. It was just like, you know, I. I tried to get him through it, and he really wanted to have this whole thing go away, but it wasn't going to go away. And I think he needed. He needed some convincing. And I did my best, and I know Kevin and Steve did their best to try to convince him that this was really going on. And I think he was just worn down at the point where it was almost inevitable he was going to be on board.

[C]

It's kind of heartbreaking the way you describe it, how he reaches out for help, asking you to convince him that his wife was a murderer.

[B]

That's basically what he did. He asked, you know, can you please explain to me why I should believe this? And I just went over the things that Kevin and Steve had already told him.

[C]

He just needed to hear it again. 350 deaths have occurred during Kristen Gilbert's tenure at the VAMC, and investigators must ask the loved ones of some of the deceased to make a heartbreaking decision. Bruce Sackman.

[B]

So we assembled the team, and then we have to find this samples. Right now these patients are all dead and buried. So how do we do it? So we got court orders and we went to the families. Imagine getting a visit like this, saying, you know, excuse me, ma'. Am. We have reason to believe that your dad's death at the VA hospital was of a suspicious nature. Can we have your permission to exhume his body? How would you feel if you got a visit like that?

[C]

It's hard enough to mourn your loved one, but to hear that he or she may have been the victim of murder. And now I have to imagine the exhumation.

[B]

And they were very appreciative and very supportive of what we would do. The families were terrific.

[C]

The body of Sarah Square's grandpa, Ed Square Senior, is one of those exhumed.

[B]

I remember I must have been in like fourth or fifth grade, I think.

[C]

And I do remember learning that they.

[B]

Were gonna dig up his body and.

[C]

Do some testing on it.

[B]

And I didn't really remember this, but my sister remembered that we at the time had reporters that would call our house and that our parents told us to not answer the phone because they.

[C]

Didn'T want us to talk to them.

[B]

And didn't want anyone in my family to talk to them. So I remember just kind of periphery of things happening.

[C]

After extensive testing, a death certificate is finally issued for Henry Houdon on July 1, 1996. The cause is undetermined. In the medical examiner's own words, and I quote, it's not very often, possibly a few times a year, that I run into a case where I don't have an answer or even a hint of an answer. But Henry's tissue samples are released to the investigative team and undergo further toxicology tests. William welch details the next stage in the investigation. When you say you knew you could treat each body as a crime scene, is that standard in looking at cases like this, healthcare cases?

[A]

I mean, I think so. I mean, obviously we are doing it after the fact, but certainly from. From autopsies, from laboratory tests, from, you know, tissue examination, you know, the body tells you so much about how it was and what its condition was at that time. And when you really think about a case like this and you think about the practice of medicine, death is all about an illness, is all about probabilities. So you can look at an x ray and you see a broken arm, and it's 100% probability that's a broken arm. But when you're talking about epinephrine and cardiac conditions and things of that nature, you know, the heart in its physical substrate tells you what's the probability that someone naturally is going to go into cardiac arrest? And as soon as you eliminate some of the key factors, like, did they have a prior cardiac arrest? Did they have scarring in their heart? You know, was their heart relatively strong? Suddenly, the probability of a cardiac arrest without some sort of stimulus drops to, like, less than 1%. It's like the probability of being hit by lightning.

[C]

Meanwhile, former hospital staff members are contacted about the investigation, including Dr. Greg Blackman, who had left the VAMC in June of 1996, but had been the doctor on shift when Henry houdon died. Who called you? How did you hear about this inspector general looking into this case? So I was at u. S. Naval hospital in naples, italy, and I get.

[B]

A phone call, and it's the gentleman.

[C]

Introduces himself as being from the FBI.

[B]

And they're saying, we're investigating deaths at the VA and we think that the.

[C]

Deaths may have been intentional.

[B]

And they said, is there any chance that they were? And the second that was mentioned, it.

[C]

Was like, holy cow. Oh my God.

[B]

Yes, of course.

[C]

That's the missing piece.

[B]

That was, that was the thing that.

[C]

I had been searching for for all that time. And then they said, we think that Kristen Gilbert is the most prolific mass murderer on the east coast.

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In history.

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And I just thought, wow.

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[A]

This message is for all Persian Gulf veterans who were exposed to chemical weapons.

[C]

At 5:22, he takes another call.

[B]

There are three explosive devices in building one.

[A]

You have two hours. Nothing will compare us to what is going to happen tonight.

[C]

And the calls just keep coming.

[A]

Would you like to know where to locate the devices? You sound dumb or you would go, you mustn't think this is very serious. Just sitting in your office, answering the phone. You must be pretty stupid.

[C]

James Peralt describes the calls.

[A]

It sounded taunting, provocative towards me. I tried to get them to speak to me, to think about the patients, to help me, you know, locate the device, anything that might be helpful in finding out what was going on.

[C]

Northampton police are alerted and respond immediately to these serious threats. They then call Massachusetts State police, where Detective Lt. Tom Souter is working.

[B]

We really didn't know what to make of it at first. They said this voice was like a man's voice, but it sounded like it was metallic. They didn't know. So the fire department shows up, the police department shows up. They evacuate some. Something like 50 patients out of there into another building, and the whole place is searched and nothing is found. They don't find any suspicious packages, anything.

[C]

This is the age of the Unabomber, and the Oklahoma bombing was just a year prior. Bomb threats have to be taken seriously, but evacuating the hospital is not a quick nor easy task. There are patients attached to IV poles, oxygen canisters and heart monitors. Some patients are so frail that the hospital staff has to move their entire bed. Whoever made these phony calls will be facing serious charges. Meanwhile, one of Kristen's neighbors, Mickey O', Donnell sees Kristen leave her apartment at 5pm and return at 8pm precisely the gap when the bomb threats are made. Kristen says she's just been doing her laundry but can't stop stopped to talk. She had to go inside because Must See TV was on and there was a new ER on and she went in the house. The next day, the neighbor bumps into Kristin again, who's holding a copy of the local newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, which is running a story about the bomb scare. She was excited. She was talking quickly. She told me that she. She had a theory about the person who called in the bomb threats and that it was probably a patient at the VA who wanted to sit by and watch the action. James Peralt has a couple days off from the hospital. Over that time, no more phony threats are made. On September 30, Kristin writes James a letter. I was out driving one night and I drove by the VFW and saw.

[A]

I saw your car.

[C]

I couldn't help myself. I pulled in. I saw you in the window playing darts, but I couldn't go in. So I just watched you a while. I never lied to you about loving you. I meant it from the first time I said it. Around midnight that same day, a call comes in for James at his favorite bar, the vfw. After his shift at the hospital, James holds the phone to his ear and hears another strange, distorted voice.

[B]

You think you have a problem? Just wait to see what I have planned for you.

[C]

This time, the voice has a slightly Southern drawl, unlike the voice he heard giving the bomb threats. But James quickly comes to the realization that only one person would have known he would be at the bar at this time because she used to come here with him as after they finished work together. Kristen.

[A]

It sounded familiar to me as I'd heard it somewhere before because of the pronunciation was very precise and Chris likes to pronounce everything very precisely. A lot of the tones were very familiar to the ones I heard during arguments with her, when she would leave messages on my machine or call me up and upset with myself.

[C]

Harassing boyfriends with phone calls is one thing. Calling a hospital with a bomb threat is on a whole other scale. What's more, this isn't just any hospital. It's the VA Medical center, meaning this is federal property. Whatever her motivation might be, Kristen Gilbert has just threatened the US Government. It's reckless, nihilistic, and I need to speak to forensic psychologist Dr. Katherine Ramsland about it. So do you think at this point when she's calling in the bomb threat. Do you think that this. That she believes that somehow that will get her out of the suspicions of the investigators? I don't think she thought they would trace the bomb threats to her. That's why she used the voice. It was a child's toy, but it would modulate the voice to sound different. I think she did not recognize that. They're gonna figure this out. And. And honestly, they lucked out with it. They could have not been able to get her on it. So I don't think she thought she's gonna get caught on that one. I thought she thought the bomb threat was going to be a good way to distract people away from this case. They were trying to build against her. I think at the same time, they were exhuming bodies of a couple of the. Of the patients. And this is a dramatic way to, you know, get attention in another direction. I don't think she thought she'd be caught. One thing about those bomb threats is that she's calling them when she knows James is going to pick up the phone and be sent. Yes, very much. What are your thoughts on that? Well, calling them when she knows James will pick up the phone is serves two purposes. One is to punish him because now he's got. He's got to go into, you know, motion, and he'll have to make sure people are evacuated. And if it's a fake threat, he's going to kind of be blamed for all the commotion and putting patients at risk, etc. So she's putting him on the spot. That's one thing. But she's also potentially setting him up as the person who's behind all this. Oh, she's evil. And this kind of speaks to the way that she would react when he tried to break up with her. James Perrault knows it's Kristen, investigators know it's Kristen. But it's one thing believing she's responsible and a whole other thing proving it.

[A]

William Welch, one of the chief investigators, State trooper Kevin Murphy. We were able to figure out that the calls were coming in on pay telephones. I don't recall exactly how he was able to do it, but he worked with the telephone company to determine that that was the source of the calls. So then we're able to pinpoint what telephone booths they were coming from.

[C]

State trooper Kevin Murphy hatches a plan. For it to work, they'll need the assistance of none other than James Perrault. As Perrault explains.

[A]

Plan was that I would call Kristen to let her know when I would be on the desk. And then there would be several investigators and troopers around the city watching phone calls to observe if they could observe her making any phone calls. And, you know, pure gumshoe gut instinct from someone who had worked, you know, 30 years of homicides. Kevin Murphy, he had this gut feeling that she was going to use a pay telephone right by the apartment she had. So literally a quarter of a mile up the road, he knew of a pay phone that was affixed to a post in the parking lot of a soft serve ice cream store called Tasty Freeze. He set up there one night knowing that James Perrault was working the evening shift and shot. Sure enough, she came up in her car, got out, made the phone call, and concurrently, James Peralt reported that he just got another bomb threat. She then sped off. We secured the phone. Unfortunately, although we tried to lift prints from it, the surface did not allow us to do so. But we had an eyewitness observation of her using the phone at the exact same time the last call went in.

[C]

What an incredible investigator. I mean, that's. You know, you do get to understand how people work. But she's a slippery killer. Good for him. Good for Mr. Murphy. That's amazing. After they catch Kristen making the call, investigators try to work out what Kristen is doing to disguise her voice. Steve Plant visits multiple stores around Northampton and eventually winds up in a tornado. There he spots a Talkboy, a popular children's toy at the time from the movie Home Alone. After speaking with the cashier, who remembers a woman coming into the store not long ago inquiring about the toy, Steve Plant buys the Talk Boy and tries it. The results are spot on. With the voice James heard on the phone when the bomb threats were made. Detective Lieutenant Tom Soutier continues the story.

[B]

It was a few days later, but that night we searched her apartment. I ended up there with the search crew. I brought the search team there, and we're outside, and it's like 8 o' clock at night, and I knock on the door and didn't hear anything. I said, oh, God, her car's parked right there in front of us. So. So said, she's got to be here. She's just got to be hiding from us. What happened was I hear a window open up on the second floor, and we look up and she's saying, what do you want? So I said, ma', am, we have. We're in the process of getting a search warrant for your residence, and you have to come down here. I'd like to speak to You.

[C]

Wow, I had not heard this.

[B]

So she comes down and she opens up the door. And they called us and said, we have the warrant in hand. I said to her, look, we are going to search your house, and if you want, you can stay here or you can leave. It's up to you, but we are going to search your house. So she decided she wants to leave. But before she leaves, we bring in one of my narcotics guys with a video camera, and we video the whole interior of the apartment so that she can't say we planted something. She can't say we destroyed her furniture, her tv, whatever the case may be very smart. Steve showed up, we went in, all three of us went into the place, and we decided we were going to search. And other people were, like, keeping an eye on where she was because she went to her friend's apartment down the street, which is two apartments away. Kevin was started off in the kitchen. I think Steve went to her bedroom. But I found a notebook where it had stuff written in there about James Perot. Like he was calling him all kinds of profane names. All right, so she was very mad at him. Kevin found packages for AA batteries, which would have been used in this thing that she was using. And we were looking for a toy called a Talk Boy or a Talk Girl, because Steve had found one at one of the local malls that would change the voices.

[C]

What was Kristen's house like inside? I'm very curious. What was her home like inside?

[B]

It was almost like she didn't live there. I don't know. It wasn't very well decorated. There was, like, you know, shabby furniture. I don't know if she had anything in the refrigerator or not. I didn't look. But it looked like she did not spend a lot of time there, and her kids certainly didn't spend a lot of time there. So I don't know. It was sparse, to say the least.

[C]

You mentioned her actions when you arrived at the house, looking out from up above, not opening the door. What was your impression of her behavior when you were there about to enter?

[B]

Well, I figured she was trying to be evasive. I'm sure she was sure that we were outside her door with a search warrant. There's no doubt in my mind that she was, like, saying, oh, my God, what's happening? You know, and what are they going to find? Right. So she may have hidden the Talk Boy at that moment because that's the room she had her head stuck out.

[C]

The window from, and how quickly can I hide it?

[B]

But she didn't hide it very well. I went to the room that she had stuck her head out the window from, which was on the second floor, which was the child's bedroom. In that bedroom, I found in a box in the closet, I found the Talk Boy. And I went next door into the other room with it where Steve Plant was in her bedroom and he was looking at stuff. And I said, hey, look what I found. All right. So he looked at it and then he looked inside of her jacket and found the instructions for the Talk Boy and it was the coat she was wearing at the telephone booth.

[C]

Investigators have evidence, they have witnesses, and they've locked in on the perpetrator. They are granted a warrant for her arrest for the bomb threats. They're ready to make the arrest. But before this can happen, Kristen throws another wrench into the works. Once more. She claims to have taken a bunch of pills, despite all the distress she has caused. James takes her to Bay State Medical center where she undergoes psychiatric evaluation. But she's just playing for time. On October 8, 1996, when she's discharged from the hospital, Kristen is met at the hospital entrance by Special Agent Steve Plant and police from the Northampton Police Department. Kristen Gilbert is finally arrested. Next time on Mind of a the Killer Nurse.

[A]

We had pulled the appropriate card from the house of cards that she had built and it was beginning to tumble.

[C]

A lot of what I remember is what people have told me about my own behavior and my own behavior was very erratic and whatever, I would never intentionally hurt anyone. Well, it's just on so many levels. I mean, to kill those people, it.

[B]

Has an impact on multiple people. The death penalty was on the table.

[C]

Mind of a Monster the Killer Nurse is produced by Aeromedia, a Fremantle Company for ID. I'm your host, Dr. Michelle Ward. You can follow our show wherever you get your podcasts and we'd love it if you could take a second to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts.

[B]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

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