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.
This cluster of deaths
alarms medical investigators.
It's not only a whodunit,
it's a whatdunit.
The bodies of
the dead men are exhumed.
Can they speak from the grave
to reveal what k*lled 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.
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.
One place Robert Kozul
learned those values
was during his m*llitary service
as a paratrooper
with the U.S. Army's
at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 d*ed.
And, at first, doctors
weren't sure what k*lled 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 d*ed
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.
The main cause
is usually medications
used to treat diabetes,
such as insulin.
Severe hypoglycemia
in non-diabetic patients
is extremely rare.
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.
By the summer of 2018,
a total of eight veterans d*ed
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 m*rder.
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.
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 d*ed.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
And if Felix McDermott
was m*rder*d,
his family had no doubt
he'd want justice.
And if that meant
exhuming his body,
they were sure he'd approve.
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."
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 d*ed.
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.
By the time of
Felix McDermott's autopsy,
he had been buried
for six months.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
This left these
medical detectives with no doubt
that Felix McDermott
had been m*rder*d,
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 k*ller
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 m*rder w*apon.
Ground zero for the
investigation into the deaths
of eight m*llitary veterans
was the hospital
where they all d*ed...
the Louis A. Johnson
Medical Center
in Clarksburg, West Virginia.
They immediately suspect
they have a serial k*ller
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.
Post-exhumation
autopsies left no doubt
the m*rder w*apon 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.
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 g*n.
We weren't gonna have
a m*rder w*apon,
or any physical evidence,
for that matter.
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.
Among the things
all the victims had in common
was that they were treated
in the same ward
Ward 3A.
And by backtracking
when the symptoms
began to appear
with all the victims,
investigators concluded
the sh*t of insulin
that sent them
into hypoglycemic shock
happened on the overnight shift.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Reta's husband was in
federal prison
for child p*rn...
possession of child p*rn.
But she was standing by
her husband
while he was in federal prison.
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 k*ll."
And several of these episodes
involve providing insulin
to patients,
and causing their death.
Reta also complained
to co-workers sometimes
about patients who later d*ed.
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.
I think she said
something along the lines of,
"I'm gonna k*ll 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.
In fact, on a couple
of occasions, Reta participated
in life-saving measures
to save the patients.
If she was a serial k*ller,
there was no solid evidence
to prove it.
Investigators on the
cases of eight veterans who d*ed
under mysterious circumstances
at a West Virginia VA hospital
had become convinced
a nurse, Reta Mays,
was a serial k*ller.
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.
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 p*rn 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 d*ed.
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.
In later interviews,
investigators made it clear...
they told Reta they knew
she k*lled those veterans.
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.
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.
Ultimately, we'll never
know why Reta Mays k*lled
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.
Investigators had
put together a chilling case.
For reasons Reta
has never explained,
she went on a course
of pre-meditated m*rder.
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 k*ller.
She would insinuate
herself into the life-saving procedures.
Other times,
she would sit and cry
while she held
these patients' hands.
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.
In the summer of 2020,
Reta Mays pled "guilty"
to seven counts of m*rder,
and one count of as*ault
with intent to commit m*rder.
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."
Because of the ages
of her victims,
and her unusual choice
of m*rder w*apon,
Reta Mays almost
got away with m*rder.
The problem was she that
she couldn't stop k*lling,
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.
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.