A federal judge has sentenced a former nursing assistant to multiple consecutive life terms for the murder of seven elderly veterans whom she injected with insulin at a medical center in West Virginia several years ago.
Reta Mays, 46, received seven life sentences plus 20 years Tuesday after pleading guilty last July to seven counts of second-degree murder and one count of assault with intent to commit murder.
The victims, who were hospitalized at the Louis A. Johnson Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Clarksburg in 2017 and 2018, ranged in age from 81 to 96 and died from hypoglycemia after Mays administered the fatal doses.
Mays worked the night shift at the facility, where she was an employee since 2015, but was never authorized to give patients medication.
She apologized to more than 30 family members of the deceased who attended the sentencing.
“There’s no words I can say that would offer any comfort. I can only say I’m sorry for the pain I caused the families and my family,” she said through tears. “I don’t ask for forgiveness because I don’t think I can forgive anyone for doing what I did.”
U.S. District Judge Thomas Kleeh also ordered Mays to pay $172,624.96 in restitution to the families, the hospital, and to Medicare and other insurance companies.
When initially questioned in the case, Mays denied her involvement, but a subsequent investigation revealed she had searched the internet for information about female serial killers and that she had watched the Netflix series “Nurses Who Kill.”
“You knew what you were doing,” Kleeh said to Mays during sentencing.
Jay McCamic, who served as Mays’ attorney, said his client suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and sexual trauma from her tour of duty in Iraq in 2003 and 2004.
But family members who spoke in the courtroom rejected mental illness as an excuse for her crimes.
“You took some of the greatest men of their time — our loved ones, our veterans — and you preyed on them when they were at their weakest,” said Melanie Proctor, the daughter of 82-year-old Army veteran Felix McDermott. “For that, you are a coward. If you have any morals at all, you will give the other families the peace of mind of knowing the truth of what happened to their loved ones. May God forgive you, as I never will.”
Randolph J. Bernard, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia, issued a statement which read: “No amount of prison time will erase the pain and loss that the families of these eight brave and honorable men have experienced ... Mays will now spend every minute of the rest of her life where she belongs, in prison.”
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