D (3:10)

Well, Kristin was born into a middle class family in November 1967 in Fall River, Massachusetts. Fairly upscale kind of community and she was an only child for the first seven years of her life. Her father was in the Coast Guard, and he was actually deployed at the time of her birth. He didn't see her, I think, till six weeks later. Once the father came back in the picture, then it was this ordinary family, and she was the center of attention. And she experienced this for seven years before she got a younger sister. So although we don't have really any information about how this affected her, it seems that she really liked being the center of attention. She did not like sharing that. That attention, because if we can look at the way she was later as a teenager, a college student and adult, she wouldn't have been too pleased about having to share things with a younger sister, especially when seven years younger, who really wouldn't have, you know, much in common with her. One of the things that she did as a child was spend a lot of time with her grandmother. The grandparents had a nice beachside cottage, and she would go there with her grandmother and, you know, make cookies and, you know, do projects and whatnot. She loved the ocean. So that was really her. Her early childhood, before everything changed for her, was idyllic. I mean, she really had nothing to complain about.

A (4:55)

But as Kristen approaches her teens, everything changes for her and her younger sister, Tara. Their father, Richard Strickland, explains.

E (5:06)

We moved in September of 1980 from the Fall river area to Groton, Massachusetts. They weren't thrilled about moving and leaving their friends, so we promised we'd take them to Disney World.

A (5:19)

So when Kristen and Tara were pretty young still, they had to move to a new neighborhood. Do you think that had any effect on Kristin? That's notable, yeah.

D (5:32)

When she was 12 years old, her father took a position in another area of Massachusetts. It was north of Boston. And that meant the family had to move away from Fall river and away from the nice cottage. She's going to lose access to the grandparents that she was very close to. So uprooting her at the age of 12, you know, really affected her. I think she resented it. She felt like they were just doing something without. Without really any regard to how this was going to, you know, impact her life. And it wasn't long after that, I think she's around 15, where she began to rebel against her parents.

A (6:17)

We know in Kristen's adult life, she would target veterans, so it's striking to discover that her family would have such deep connections to the US Military. Kristen's father, Richard Strickland, explains.

E (6:31)

It was just kind of a family tradition. My father, my two grandfathers, all four of my uncles served. All of them volunteered. They served in the first World War, second World War, the Korean War. There's nothing to do. We have a family history, a long government service. In my wife's family, virtually everyone dating back to the Civil War has served in the military. Virtually all of my family has. I, in fact, had to get a waiver so I could serve.

A (7:05)

Respect for the military and the drive to serve is clearly a huge part of Kristen's family history. There's something else about Kristen, too. She's smart. Not just a bit clever, but highly accomplished in many areas of her academic life.

E (7:23)

She was a very accomplished clarinet player. She was in every music organization they had. Marching band, orchestra, jazz quartet. And then she wound up there was a semi professional jazz quartet in the town of Groton. They lost a member, and there was three adult males. They held auditions, and they picked her to be the fourth.

A (7:50)

In her high school yearbook, Kristen looks like any other teenager from the 1980s. Her hair is shoulder length and brown with bangs. She wears a pendant and a dark blouse and smiles at the camera with large brown eyes. The only notable thing about her is how unassuming she appears. She really doesn't stand out at all.

D (8:11)

She, as a student, she joined the math club. She was very musical. She played the clarinet. She was in a number of social clubs that involved music. She excelled at her studies. She graduated from high school a year and a half early. So, you know, she was very, very smart, kind of teenager. And I think the uprooting at the age of 12 really made her angry. And it's an anger that probably stayed with her because she had the kind of personality that had that rigidity. She. She wanted to control things, and that was completely out of her control. So she had to start her life over again at the age of 12. For girls, that's not easy to talk.

A (9:01)

For most people at age 12, I would rather, you know, run away than move away. Her grandmother was an exception, it seems, And I'm wondering if that was something transactional or do you think that was a genuine relationship for Kristen.

D (9:16)

We don't really have enough information to say, but I think it was a genuine relationship, and it was one that was taken away from her, which would have resented. I think she kind of saw her grandmother as more a mother to her than her mother. In fact, she would lie about her mother to friends and say her mother was a abusive alcoholic and that she would call her parents very cold. And I think she found the warmth that she craved really in her Grandmother more than anybody else.

A (9:51)

The lying about her mother is interesting to me. We all lie in our daily lives from telling people we're fine when we're not and using traffic as an excuse for lateness. But what we don't all do is make up stories of addiction in order to gain attention. This kind of lying is a hallmark of many different psychopathologies. Like a lot of future offenders, we also find a telling characteristic in Kristin's youth. William Welch was the Massachusetts federal Prosecutor. In the 1990s and 2000s, she had some unusual patterns that started to emerge. Do you have any concept of our idea of when those patterns started to be recorded?

B (10:34)

Yeah. We did hear from individuals that knew her growing up that at least as part of her youth, she used to kind of do things to animals that you wouldn't want your child to do. So I wouldn't go so far as to label them as torture, but there were some sort of experiments or acts that she would commit on them that, you know, struck people as pretty unnerving.

A (11:00)

It's always so interesting, right? Because we were trained that that's. And some of it's normative. Some kids grow out of that. I've seen it a million times.

B (11:08)

Right.

A (11:08)

And as you look at it in someone's past who have gone on to commit atrocities, then you're like, aha. But sometimes kids grow out of it. But it's always so interesting to hear about it when it's somebody who, you know, did end up becoming a criminal.

B (11:23)

Right.

A (11:25)

Harming animals is definitely a red flag. But when I look at the risk factors for potential future criminals, a whole range of things in their childhood can be incredibly important. Typically, when studying violent offenders, I look at biology, health, genetic factors, who and what was in their orbit, what they're interested in, and how they present themselves to other people. It's here that we find a couple of interesting anecdotes. Dr. Katherine Ramsland.

D (11:54)

She also apparently liked watching General Hospital and aligned with the villainess, the female who was a bad nurse, nasty nurse. So these are the kinds of things you look at in childhood. What are they identifying with? And why would they want people to think this about them? Why is this the impression they want to create? And she's obviously getting away with lies, but people notice that she's lying.

A (12:25)

She also draws an affinity to another villainess in popular culture. Bruce Sackman was a special agent in the U.S. department of Veterans affairs in the 1990s and early 2000s. Can you tell me about Lizzie Borden?

F (12:38)

Kristen came from Fall River, Massachusetts, As a matter of fact, I just drove by there the other day and I was thinking of her. Fall River, Massachusetts has a famous serial killer. Well, not a serial killer, a murderer. Alleged murderer. Pardon? Alleged murderer. Lizzie Borden. Lizzie Borden allegedly hacked into her father's head and her mother. Head. Mother's head. In fact, there's a famous poem. It says Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 wax. And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41. She started telling people that she was related to Lizzie Borden. It's like saying, you know, I'm related to Charles manson.

A (13:36)

It's the 1980s. Most kids are idolizing Michael Jackson in the Brat Pack. To draw an affinity to Lizzie Borden and lie about a family link is really quite striking. Added to the lies that her mother was an abusive alcoholic, I'm beginning to wonder what purpose do her lies serve. Does she lie to shock? Does she believe her mistruths? Or are they just a way to make herself seem more interesting to others? She certainly displays extreme attention seeking behavior in other areas of her life. When one high school boyfriend tries to break up with her, Kristin threatens suicide. Writing a note to him, she claims that she will kill herself by eating glass. I want to get Dr. Catherine Ramslin's take on this. One of her threats was eating glass, which is so visual and such a, like really insufficient way to kill yourself. I mean, I suppose if you ate enough of it, but what do you think of that?

D (14:37)

Well, as far as I know, she didn't eat glass. So again, a threat. She probably read it somewhere and it stayed with her. Like maybe she read it in one of her medical texts or heard about it somewhere and it stayed with her as a really drastic kind of thing to say to someone to get them into action. She would have known. I think anybody would know how awful that would be. So she's just trying to get a rise out of the person she said it to.

A (15:08)

Yeah, and it's so emotional, it's so manipulative, it's so histrionic that it makes, you know, it kind of fits with this, this idea of this, you know, she's, she's very manipulative. Fast forward to 1984. Kristen's intelligence sees her graduate high school a year early. Perhaps it's because of her interest in General Hospital. But she has her ambitions set on becoming a nurse and heads to Bridgewater State College to pursue a career in nursing. During her college years, even more troubling stories with boyfriends start to emerge. Bruce Sackman.

F (15:44)

You know, I had interviewed her father.

A (15:47)

Would love to hear about that.

F (15:49)

It was a very bizarre conversation that I had with him, really. And I think she just had a real lack of attention from her father and craved attention from her boyfriends. And if they didn't give her 100% attention, or if they started to break up, she would start destroying their cars. 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.

A (16:27)

The understanding of human neuroscience and psychology has come a long way since Sigmund Freud pioneered the field in the early 20th century with claims that, and I quote, I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection. We now have a far more nuanced understanding of childhood development. However, Kristin's relationship with her father and subsequent relationships with boyfriends cannot be brushed aside. Dr. Catherine Ramsland.

D (16:56)

As she gets into college, she begins to manipulate her boyfriends by threatening suicide and, you know, other, other kinds of aversive behaviors. She's very punitive by the time she's getting into college, and she's. She's really trying to present a sense of her being in control and that other people don't have the right to do anything to her. And I do think that that is probably her feeling of being uprooted first when she was 7, and then when she was 12, of her world suddenly losing control, and this is her way of getting it back. But when she's in a relationship and the guy wants to break up, well, she's got to do something. And she resorts to manipulative types of.

A (17:46)

Practices, including threats of suicide, which to me, smacked of a bit of borderline personality disorder.

D (17:54)

Yes.

A (17:56)

William Welch has more detail. Do you know anything about her relationship, specifically with her boyfriends?

B (18:04)

There's one relationship that comes to mind. We did hear that in her initial fall semester while a freshman at Bridgewater State, she had a boyfriend. And the information from, you know, various witnesses was that, you know, the relationship became fairly intense from her perspective, meaning, you know, her activity towards him which led him to end the relationship. And for her, this was. I wouldn't call it devastating. I think I would call it as something that really engendered some anger in her, and she began to stalk him and engage in other forms of harassment, which, as we understand it, culminated in her loosening the lug nuts on one of the tires of his car.

A (18:59)

Wow, that's like an attempt of murder, right?

F (19:02)

Right.

A (19:02)

Your intention is for somebody to be injured. She's got a lot of psychopathology that overlaps. You can't put her in any one kind of profile box very easily. She seems like a narcissist. She seems, of course, a little psychopathic because she has no remorse and guilt. But she also looks a bit like borderline personality disorder, which is characterized by dramatic reactions to a perceived abandonment and tumultuous interpersonal relationships with co workers, friends, lovers. And the hallmark, the flagship symptom of this disorder is suicide attempts or threats, self harm. They don't truly intend to end their lives, but they want the attention associated with the attempt. That relationship you were talking about with that boy in college, he reported her behavior, which is fantastic. And that the fact that the university then did take action is great. Did he report anything other than the removing of the lug nuts? Did he report anything else like vandalism or abuse or anything of that nature?

B (20:11)

Yeah, my memory was primarily the lug nuts, but it was also the precedent conduct, which was the harassment, the stalking, that kind of thing.

A (20:21)

Can you tell me anything else that you learned about her experiences in college?

B (20:24)

I mean, the one thing that does also resonate a little bit with me is we talk to a lot of people. But the one thing that always struck me was a constant theme of what we heard back from people is that she had no best friend. Like, she did not have a person that she was close to that she would confide in. No one could really call themselves her best friend. And that was something that I think that struck me as well.

A (20:51)

That's fascinating, especially for a young college age female. I mean, I would argue at that age, that's the only relationship that really matters to girls is their boyfriend and their best friend. Huh. Yeah. And that's not inconsistent, Right. With some of the behaviors that we are looking at that we're seeing in her. And it's kind of revealing herself to be, you know, not the type of person who can handle interpersonal relationships. So that makes some sense. Wow. Despite her relatively normal upbringing, it's hard to ignore the disturbing traits Kristin is exhibiting. We're seeing evidence of violent behavior and language and the persistent manipulation of others. Thank you for putting that away. Excuse the noise. It's dinner time. And I wanted to just make a quick note about something I've been thinking about in terms of the profile for Kristin Gilbert. One thing that I've been very frustrated about is that we can't see to locate anybody from her childhood, high school years, even who considered themselves a close friend of hers. And what I've come to realize is that that paucity of information is actually information in and of itself. So the fact that she didn't have anybody super close to her is consistent with several personality disorders. And my urge to put her into a box and put a bow on it and make this perfect profile, that's just not going to happen because a lot of these features run across different psychopathologies, and that's totally normal. We can't carve nature at its choice and expect everybody falls perfectly under one category. This is what a psychopath looks like. This is what a schizophrenic looks like.

D (22:46)

No.

A (22:46)

People become who they are for various reasons. And yes, we can categorize them based on features, but it isn't that unusual to have comorbidity, which means having two different kind of diagnoses or personality disorders or even, you know, other more serious medical conditions happening at once. And that is something I have come to realize with Kristen, is that she is a bit of an enigma. She looks like a lot of different problems, and that is part of the complication. When you're dealing with a female serial killer, they're not as simple. They're nuanced. Female killers in general tend to be more nuanced, but this one is particularly interesting and unique. And I have to realize that just not knowing everything is knowing a lot more than I thought. In college, Kristen is a small fish in a big pond. The academic excellence of her school years is not replicated. She passes her first year, but is no longer a star pupil. What's more, in 1987, her previous suicide attempt draws the attention of her college. Her college is made aware of the threat, and she is urged to undergo mental health treatment, but instead opts for a fresh start. She transfers first to Mount Wachusett Community College and then soon on to Greenfield Community College. To me, this shows a fiercely independent side to Kristin's character. She is defying professional guidance in order to strike her own path. Perhaps she feels she knows best or that treatment is unnecessary. I'm keen to know what Dr. Katherine Ramsland thinks. Was it significant to you that Kristin refused the therapy that she was recommended after that teenage suicide attempt?

D (24:36)

Yeah, I don't know that she refused it so much as avoided it. I think there's two different things there. I think she just found a way to not do it and then put it out of her mind. That would be the most characteristic thing for me for a borderline to do. You're wrong. I don't need this. I will get. I'll put it behind me and I'll go on to another school, reinvent myself once again. Yep. Yes.

A (25:11)

At 19, while still in college, Kristin takes a home care job with the Visiting Nurses association, also known as the vna. She's tasked with caring for a disabled boy in his family home.

B (25:23)

Yeah, before she became a registered nurse, meaning while she was taking nursing classes at a community college called Greenfield Community College, I believe she worked as a visiting nurse. She was called in one day or night to take care of this boy. He was severely disabled, couldn't bathe himself, essentially didn't have full use of either his legs or his arms. And my memory is that he was also mute. But one of the nighttime activities to get him ready for bed was essentially an evening bath. And in the house, the bathtub faucet valve had temperature control locks, so you could never turn the temperature of the water up past a certain point, which would mean it was relatively impossible to scald or burn the child in the bath. And anyway, when the mother, I believe, came back and the child was in bed, he was quite agitated. And when she began to inspect a little bit more, she saw that the bottom half of his legs and his rear end had been scalded, meaning they were bright red. And you could see the clear line of demarcation where the water would have reached his legs. And she obviously was furious, which is probably even a understatement, but she called VNA and told them what had happened. Never wanted her to come back to the house.

A (27:08)

Wow. I'm sitting here in shock right now, and I, I. But what overwhelms me when imagining what you just described is I can't think of a more vulnerable person for her to begin her experimenting with harm.

B (27:28)

Right.

A (27:29)

With what does it feel like to have this power over this kid? What does it feel like to watch somebody suffer? And wow, what an easy target. And who knows what else she did to him. Wow, that is really disturbing. But it's really telling. Yeah, it's really telling about, you know, what's going on with somebody if they're taking somebody, a patient, a child in the most vulnerable condition and taking advantage of that in the worst ways. Forensic psychologist Dr. Katherine Ramsland sees this case as being pivotal.

D (28:05)

Well, I think her first victim was the disabled boy. When Kristin was with him, he suffered burns over skull, like she scalded him. There was red marks over 60% of his body. This faucet had to be rejiggered. For her to be able to use the water that hot and that is chilling.

A (28:30)

No accident.

D (28:31)

Not only is it not an accident, it was an experiment. What can she do to this boy who can't yell out help? And that, to me, was the most chilling aspect of here's where it began. She's experimenting on people.

A (28:49)

Wow, you're right. It's one thing, I mean, she can't even get away with that being an accident. She's testing it out.

D (28:54)

Yeah, it was when the family said the faucet was fixed for a certain temperature and you actually physically had to change it for that kind of water to come out of it. I thought, oh, man, she was experimenting.

A (29:12)

This is the first case that we know of of Kristen being linked to significant physical trauma of another. And her choice of victim is incredibly revealing. The boy is someone she can have total control over, someone who cannot cry out in pain, and someone who is unlikely to report mistreatment. The use of bath water as well provides scope of deniability should any complaint arise. What I find really difficult to get my head around is the fact that a complaint is made detailing the deeply concerning treatment of a vulnerable boy in Kristen's care. And yet she was able to continue her studies to qualify as a nurse. I must clarify that the school might not have known about the complaint. I speak to Beatrice Yorker, who is a nurse herself and also a professor of criminal justice at California State University.

C (30:01)

I worked as an expert for the Board of Registered Nursing for California and the type of cases they would send me to review whether a nurse's license should be revoked were incidents like that home care of a disabled child where the nurse left them alone in the bathtub and the mother filed a report. So sometimes we just see that there are aggressive acts in nursing and it's not to be tolerated. Yes, nursing can be high risk in the emergency room and in psychiatry. However, we have entire protocols that teach us how to maintain our own safety rather than hurt patients.

A (30:51)

In Kristin's case, she was allowed to continue to work.

C (30:54)

From my experience, that's because of civil rights, and that's because of a fundamental right to rehabilitate yourself, to make a mistake, to prove that it was a one time thing. So I do see pretty egregious acts where nurses are, you know, with some remediation, allowed to continue to practice. I'm not sure in Kristin's case how that happened, other than I sort of see it as a failure of people to enforce their own codes of conduct rather than be threatened by Kristen's lawyer or, or Kristen for suing them. And sometimes being sued is just not worth the price of stopping bad practice.

A (31:51)

I mean, I knew that at a non hospital setting level, something like this could happen. But to think people can overlook this stuff for the sake of a hospital, not the sake of the patients, is disturbing. If that had come across your desk, what would you have done?

C (32:07)

Well, I would have looked into the circumstances. When I worked in a large pediatric hospital on the child psych service, about 30% of the kids under 5 on the burn unit were there with intentional burns. Kids who'd had a potty accident. And the parents, in anger, just put them in a bathtub of scalding water to take, teach them a lesson. And so in those cases, it doesn't automatically remove the child from the home. It says, this is a parent who may be depressed, who maybe doesn't have resources, who has poor impulse control. We take removing a child from parents very seriously and we give parents every opportunity to rehabilitate. So we look at the circumstances. If this had been explained, explainable as a genuine accident, we would have said you need remediation before you can be back in touch with patients. You need to meet this, this and this benchmarks. You need to show empathy, you need to make amends, whatever. And if, if she was able to do that, then she would be able to practice. But you can't just say this habit. We know accidents happen, so we have to have space for accidents. However, my understanding of this particular burn incident was that the circumstances showed she did it deliberately. And if you have circumstances that show it was a deliberate burn, then no, that is behavior that has caused mortal lethal injury. That, and although the kid survived, it was by luck. So no, once that happens and it was deliberate, there's no way to look at it as an accident. Then you stop practice.

A (34:03)

Okay, so if it had been proven that Kristin's actions with this child were deliberate, she would not have been allowed to return to nursing care if she.

C (34:13)

Was operating with such a kind of credential. See, what happens is a lot of nursing students don't have their license yet, but they'll say, I'm going to work for this agency doing home health care for disabled, you know, children. And of course they're hired because they're a nursing student, but you have nothing to lose. No credential, you're not registered anywhere. And so she wouldn't have been stopped.

A (34:37)

Kristen continues her studies at Greenfield College, which is also closer to her new boyfriend who lives nearby. His name is Glenn Gilbert and they meet on a sunny summer's day at Hampton beach in 1986 while Glenn is on vacation. At 22, he's a couple of years older than 19 year old Kristen and has a job at Liebman Optical Group where a promotion to manager is on the horizon. Dr. Katherine Ramsland. Now, Glenn's not exciting. I mean, he's got a good job, he's, you know, very kind, he's easygoing, probably easy to pull the wool over his eyes. What's, what's in it for her? What would attract her to Glenn?

D (35:19)

Well, if indeed she has borderline tendencies, stability is a very attractive trait. Even though they get tired of it fast, it's initially very attractive because they don't have it. It's something missing in them and they see another person being very grounded and thoughtful. He's also somebody she could control. And this is, this is a woman who seems to want to keep complete control in her life and there is a mate that she can do that with. But I think I would say initially it's the stability that was attractive to her.

A (35:57)

That's a great point. And then subsequently the control that she can maintain and a certain lifestyle she can maintain without having to deal with his complaints. Glenn is certainly a calming force for Kristin. The relationship, long distance at first, goes from strength to strength. They become engaged and in 1988, 21 year old Kristin qualifies as a nurse. That same year they marry, forgoing a fancy big wedding to simply elope. Kristin Strickland is now Kristin Gilbert. It is this name that would go down in criminal history. It is a whirlwind. It's love. But try as she might, Kristen cannot keep a lid on her volatile personality. William Welch.

B (36:40)

I don't quite recall what the precipitating event was other than she got extremely, extremely angry, grabbed a butcher knife and literally began to chase him around the house. How he diffused it, I don't really recall. But he, you know, told us this event and clearly was shaken as he was sort of reliving it with us. But it was, you know, beyond kind of a little bit of marital discord. I mean, it was truly more of an attempt on his life.

A (37:16)

By the time Kristen accepts her first nursing job, I've already seen evidence of malingering, habitual lying, manipulation, violence and this need for attention. Kristen Gilbert is a ticking time bomb and the worst is yet to come. She's committed her first violent offense against a vulnerable boy in a home care setting. Newly qualified as a nurse, the veterans Affairs Medical center in Northampton, Massachusetts, a place of sanctuary and care for war veterans, is about to become Kristen Gilbert's own personal killing field. Coming up on this season of Mind of a the Killer Nurse.

F (38:00)

Most people think that you go to a hospital after you're a victim of a crime, not to first become a victim of a crime.

C (38:08)

I just remember sitting and crying and like kind of loudly crying.

B (38:15)

My thought was, well, one, you know, this sounds pretty crazy, like this can't really be going on.

A (38:24)

I knew better, at least as far.

C (38:26)

As my brother is concerned. He said to the nurse manager, if this guy dies, can I go home?

E (38:33)

Even if he did, a percentage of the deaths that happened while she was working still like number one as far as female serial killers goes.

A (38:43)

Mind of a the Killer Nurse is produced by Aeromedia, a Fremantle Company for ID. I'm your host, Dr. Michelle Ward. You can follow our show and 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.