Narrator: Up next...
They're all veterans.
They're all elderly.
And they all die in strangely similar circumstances.
We knew Dad was...
not well.
We just thought it was his time.
Narrator: This cluster of deaths alarms medical investigators.
It's not only a whodunit, it's a whatdunit.
Narrator: The bodies of the dead men are exhumed.
Can they speak from the grave to reveal what killed them?
To this day, I still cannot put into words
what these families endured.
We had to prove what happened, and who did it.
There was nothing we weren't gonna do to ensure justice.
♪
Narrator: Robert Kozul spent most of his life in Fairmont, West Virginia,
a rural town about 25 miles
from the border with Pennsylvania.
He built a house there, and raised two boys with Shirley,
his wife of 43 years.
He tried to do everything that was the right way
the first time.
And he tried to teach those values to my brother,
Bob, and I.
And I think he did a good job of it.
Narrator: One place Robert Kozul learned those values
was during his military service as a paratrooper
with the U.S. Army's 11th airborne division
at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
Becky: He was proud to be a veteran.
He was proud of the service he did for his country.
He loved his country more than anything.
Narrator: In January of 2018, Bob Kozul had a health scare,
and was eventually sent to
a nearby Veterans Affairs hospital--
the Louis A. Johnson Medical Center
in Clarksburg, West Virginia.
Archibald: It's a very busy hospital.
I know folks come from Northern West Virginia,
from all over, to go there.
Because a lot of the folks that live around here are veterans,
particularly the older folks.
Forrest: He had been going for all of his visits
and his doctoring on a regular basis up there.
So, we had no problem taking him to the VA.
Narrator: Initial testing indicated Bob suffered a minor stroke.
It wasn't life-threatening, but doctors had him stay
at the hospital overnight for observation.
So, we all went home, and we felt that
he was going to be safe, and well taken care of.
The next day, Bob's family went to check on him,
and found him disoriented, and unable to speak.
Something was wrong.
His sugar was low, and they just didn't know why.
But they were just giving him some sugar,
and trying to get it to come back up,
and he should be okay once they got it up.
But that didn't happen.
Bob Kozul died.
And, at first, doctors weren't sure what killed him.
He was 89 years old.
There was a lot of questions, at that point,
and we didn't have any answers.
Two other elderly veterans died shortly after Bob Kozul.
Like him, they suffered hypoglycemic shock--
a severe drop in blood sugar.
These hypoglycemic deaths really started to stick out
in the spring of 2018, when, number one,
there was a cluster of them.
Davis: The main cause is usually medications
used to treat diabetes, such as insulin.
Severe hypoglycemia in non-diabetic patients
is extremely rare.
Narrator: In all these cases, doctors attempted to revive the patients
with a dose of dextrose--
essentially highly concentrated sugar.
But it didn't work.
Could these repeated failures be a coincidence?
It didn't seem likely.
These hypoglycemic events were totally abnormal,
out of the blue, and should not have occurred.
Narrator: By the summer of 2018, a total of eight veterans died
of causes related to hypoglycemic shock,
all at the same West Virginia veterans' hospital,
which had investigators worried that these deaths
were anything but natural, and might possibly be murder.
Archibald: It wasn't accidental. It was not based on medication.
Something was happening here,
and it was happening frequently enough
that it appeared to be deliberate.
♪
Narrator: In the summer of 2018,
doctors at the Louis A. Johnson Veterans' Hospital
in West Virginia were facing a cluster of unexplained deaths.
For eight people to die of conditions connected to
hypoglycemic shock, at the same hospital,
inside of a year, was unprecedented,
and needed to be explained before more people died.
Archibald: Could it be someone who is using the wrong needles?
Could it be someone who's using the wrong type of insulin?
Or could a medication be bad?
Narrator: The dead were Air Force veteran George Shaw,
Army and Air Force veteran Raymond Golden,
Navy veterans Russell Posey and Robert Edge, Sr.,
and Army veterans Archie Edgell,
William Holloway, Robert Kozul, and Felix McDermott.
Despite the commonality of symptoms,
the official causes of death varied.
Archibald: The families did not request an autopsy.
These were elderly patients.
They all had additional medical issues.
That's why they were in the hospital.
Narrator: Doctors, still trying to find out how
or even if, these deaths were connected,
and suspecting they were murders, wanted autopsies.
The problem was, all the victims had been buried--
for months.
Felix McDermott's family was among the first to be contacted.
Niehenke: My sister called me, and...
I don't think I said it, but I was thinking it--
"Who did he piss off?"
I mean, sometimes, my dad does that.
But...
you know, it was a shock.
Narrator: And if Felix McDermott was murdered,
his family had no doubt he'd want justice.
And if that meant exhuming his body,
they were sure he'd approve.
Niehenke: My dad would've wanted it.
He would want to do everything he can possibly do
to catch this person.
He's gonna tell them,
"Do what you have to do to get this person."
Narrator: So, in a rare move, Felix McDermott's body
was dug up, and sent to doctors
from the Armed Forces medical examiner system
at the Air Force base in Dover, Delaware.
McDermott had not fallen in the line of duty,
but doctors still felt a keen responsibility
to find out how he died.
Uribe: What happens behind these walls is incredibly sacred.
When the bodies of these veterans were brought here,
they were treated in accordance with our protocols,
which is utmost respect at all times.
Narrator: By the time of Felix McDermott's autopsy,
he had been buried for six months.
Uribe: This was going to be incredibly challenging
because there was extensive decomposition.
We were not able to get blood samples for toxicologic analysis
because there was not-- no suitable samples were available.
Narrator: Despite the considerable challenges
of performing an autopsy on an exhumed body,
doctors had some good information to work with.
They knew that McDermott and other veterans
had been treated with dextrose
after going into hypoglycemic shock.
And they knew that this dextrose didn't do what it was designed
to do-- jump-start the victims' blood sugar.
This led to a theory
that someone had injected the victims with so much insulin
that their blood sugar levels could not possibly recover.
Uribe: We were looking for evidence of insulin administration.
Another question that we had for the investigators is,
how do you think the insulin was administered?
Narrator: In Felix McDermott's lower abdomen,
doctors found a bruise
caused by what was probably a needle puncture.
This area was tested
for the possibility of insulin injection.
Uribe: We took a section of that area, looked it under the microscope,
and we saw features
that were suspicious for an injection site.
We stained it for insulin, and found out that it was positive.
That told me that he was injected with insulin
at that location.
Since Mr. McDermott was a non-diabetic
who was never prescribed insulin in the hospital,
that is a major red flag.
Narrator: This left these medical detectives with no doubt
that Felix McDermott had been murdered,
which left a lot of open questions
about the strange deaths of his fellow veterans,
seven of whom were also exhumed and autopsied.
Could a serial killer be stalking the halls
of a West Virginia veterans' hospital?
If so, whoever it was
had done a great job of covering the trail.
There was no surveillance camera footage
on the ward in the VA Medical Center.
There were no eyewitnesses.
There were no fingerprints. There was no DNA.
There was no murder weapon.
♪
Narrator: Ground zero for the investigation into the deaths
of eight military veterans was the hospital
where they all died--
the Louis A. Johnson Medical Center
in Clarksburg, West Virginia.
Archibald: They immediately suspect they have a serial killer
who is going after patients in the local hospital,
which is a terribly scary prospect.
But who is it?
There's over 1,200 employees at the hospital.
Narrator: Post-exhumation autopsies left no doubt
the murder weapon was insulin.
How could this happen?
The answer was shocking.
An in-house investigation revealed that insulin
was easy for almost anyone in this hospital--
a staff member, a patient, or even a visitor--
to get their hands on.
We discovered that insulin at the facility was not secure.
It was out in the open.
It was not tracked.
Narrator: From there, the problems for investigators got even worse.
More than a year had passed since the first victim's death.
Whoever did this might literally have
gotten away with multiple murders.
It became clear very early on that it was very unlikely
we were going to have any smoking gun.
We weren't gonna have a murder weapon,
or any physical evidence, for that matter.
Douglas: Once you have the medical evidence,
which is that someone gave these patients insulin,
of course, now, you have to prove
who gave these patients insulin.
Narrator: Among the things all the victims had in common
was that they were treated in the same ward
at the veterans' hospital: Ward 3A.
And by backtracking when the symptoms
began to appear with all the victims,
investigators concluded the shot of insulin
that sent them into hypoglycemic shock
happened on the overnight shift.
Archibald: There were only four employees in the whole hospital
who had been on shift each of the days
that these men had experienced this hypoglycemic event.
One of those employees was on the ward
where these events took place, and that was Reta Mays.
44-year-old Reta Mays was a veteran herself.
She'd served in the National Guard,
and had been working as a nursing assistant
at the VA hospital since 2015.
She was actually the 2016 recipient
for the Nursing Award of Excellence at the facility.
And she didn't have a criminal history.
Narrator: But a background check revealed
some potentially disturbing information about Reta Mays.
The investigators found that she had left her previous employment
as a jail guard under suspicion of using excessive force
against an inmate.
So, that gave a little bit of a red flag
that she could be someone who could be violent.
Narrator: Further checking revealed a home life in disarray.
Reta's eldest son was in jail on drug charges,
and her husband was also behind bars.
Archibald: Reta's husband was in federal prison
for child pornography-- possession of child pornography.
But she was standing by her husband
while he was in federal prison.
Narrator: Detectives had more than enough evidence
for a search warrant,
and examined Reta's digital footprint--
her Web activity, text messages, and viewing habits.
What we did find was that she had watched episodes
of "Nurses Who Kill."
And several of these episodes involve providing insulin
to patients, and causing their death.
Narrator: Reta also complained to co-workers sometimes
about patients who later died.
The investigative team recovered messages that Reta Mays
would send to co-workers, in which she would complain
about some of the victims in the case,
or indicate that she was frustrated with them.
Archibald: I think she said something along the lines of,
"I'm gonna kill this patient.
I had this other patient resting,
and now, he's got him all riled up, and they won't settle down."
So, ultimately, you know, something that a lot of people
say in frustration.
They don't necessarily mean it.
Narrator: In fact, on a couple of occasions, Reta participated
in life-saving measures to save the patients.
If she was a serial killer,
there was no solid evidence to prove it.
♪
Narrator: Investigators on the cases of eight veterans who died
under mysterious circumstances
at a West Virginia VA hospital
had become convinced a nurse, Reta Mays,
was a serial killer.
Douglas: The medical evidence was very compelling.
But there were challenges in proving
that Reta Mays was the person who committed these crimes.
And that was because we didn't have surveillance
in the hospital.
So, really, what we were left with was a circumstantial case.
Narrator: But another piece of circumstantial evidence
bolstered the case against Reta Mays.
There were numerous phone calls with her husband,
who was in prison on child pornography charges.
As part of standard prison procedure,
these calls were recorded.
That night, when she did go back to work,
and was assigned to sit with that patient,
you saw a subsequent drop in the victim's blood sugar value.
And ultimately, that patient died.
Narrator: Because of the absence of direct evidence,
what came next was something of a cat-and-mouse game
between Reta and detectives.
The one prevailing theme from Reta Mays' first interview
was a comment she made repeatedly
to the investigative team that things were being missed.
However, when she was asked to expand on this, she didn't.
Narrator: In later interviews, investigators made it clear--
they told Reta they knew she killed those veterans.
Davis: She was confronted with all the evidence.
She was asked what the prosecutors would think
after looking at the evidence.
She herself said, "It looks like I did this."
She could just never bring herself to confess.
Vereb: There was one point during that interview
where Reta sat back in the chair,
and she looked up at the ceiling.
And I think she really saw everything
that the investigative team had put together,
and that we had, at that point, connected the dots,
and we knew her to be the one that had done this.
Douglas: Ultimately, we'll never know why Reta Mays killed
these defenseless people, these honorable men.
But the investigation seems to tell us
it had to do with some hero complex,
that she wants to be the one that found
that these patients had low blood sugar,
and that could participate in trying to save their lives.
Narrator: Investigators had put together a chilling case.
For reasons Reta has never explained,
she went on a course of pre-meditated murder.
Alone in the room with her victims,
she injected them with insulin
that was readily available in the hospital.
The resulting shock to the bodies
of these elderly veterans was deadly.
The medical staff trying to save them
had no idea the person working right by their side
was a serial killer.
Archibald: She would insinuate herself into the life-saving procedures.
Other times, she would sit and cry
while she held these patients' hands.
Becky: It was just difficult to imagine that somebody could do that,
that somebody could walk around, and say,
"Oh, let's...
let's inject this one tonight."
And "Oh, let's inject this one tomorrow night."
It's just unimaginable.
Some of them could've lived another 10, 15, 20 years.
And some could've just passed the next day on their own.
And I hope that everyone that sees this prays for all of us,
because it is a hard thing to go through.
Narrator: In the summer of 2020, Reta Mays pled "guilty"
to seven counts of murder,
and one count of assault with intent to commit murder.
She received the maximum sentence-- life behind bars.
In the federal system, there is no such thing as parole.
Reta Mays will spend the rest of her life in prison.
The judge called her "the monster that no one saw coming."
Narrator: Because of the ages of her victims,
and her unusual choice of murder weapon,
Reta Mays almost got away with murder.
The problem was she that she couldn't stop killing,
which ultimately enough evidence to expose her.
The hospital said what happened
doesn't represent the quality healthcare veterans deserve,
and vowed to make changes to ensure patient safety.
But thanks to science,
and investigators' determination to get to the truth,
the questions about these deaths,
and who was responsible,
have been laid to rest along with the victims.
Douglas: These people were honorable men who served our country.
They were fathers. They were brothers.
They were grandfathers.
They were even great-grandfathers.
And so, I refuse to focus on Reta Mays,
and what I think of her.
I focus on these victims that we brought justice to.