Treating a mass murder as a mystery novel

A Canadian nurse has been charged with murdering eight seniors in care homes over a seven-year period. The victims’ families are in shock, of course. So is the community of Woodstock, ON, where seven of the murders took place. But the details are sketchy. We know the name of the alleged murderer -- 49-year-old Elizabeth Tracy Mae Wettlaufer. We know the deaths occurred between August 2007 and August 2014. We know the names and ages of the victims. We know that seven of them received a fatal dose of a drug. The drug may have been insulin. As a nurse Wettlaufer would have had access to supplies of insulin. Even so, the choice of drug is actually irrelevant -- any drug, no matter how valuable for health, can be administered as a fatal dose. But the facts available, up to the time I wrote this column, tell almost nothing about why Wettlaufer might have done what she’s accused of.

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Treating a mass murder as a mystery novel

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