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CLARKSBURG, W.Va. – A former nursing assistant who confessed to using insulin to murder seven elderly patients at a VA hospital will spend the rest of her life in prison.
During a hearing Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Thomas Kleeh called Reta Mays, 46, a monster of the worst kind. You are the monster no one sees coming. He delivered a life sentence for each murder victim, plus 20 years for an eighth victim she tried to kill.
Mays sobbed as Kleeh sentenced her. When a U.S. marshal approached her after the hearing, she sat down and buried her head in her hands, crying. She got up, and she was handcuffed and led out of the courtroom.
Mays cried and apologized in addressing the court briefly before learning her sentence.
“I know that there’s no words that I can say that would alter the families’ pain and comfort,” she said. “I don’t ask for forgiveness because I don’t think I could forgive anyone for doing what I did.”
Hospital officials reported the deaths to the VA inspector general and fired Mays after evidence pointed to her.
An interview with Mays after her guilty plea was included in a lengthy report released after Tuesday s sentencing by the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Inspector General detailing deficiencies at the hospital.
Monster : Seven life sentences for ex-hospital worker in deaths
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AP / Updated: May 11, 2021, 22:44 IST
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Reta Mays has a history of mental health issues, and offered no explanation for why she killed the men. AP Photo
CHARLESTON: A former nursing assistant who killed seven elderly veterans with fatal injections of insulin at a West Virginia hospital was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday by a federal judge who called her the monster that no one sees coming. Reta Mays has a history of mental health issues, and offered no explanation Tuesday for why she killed the men. But US District Judge Thomas Kleeh told her you knew what you were doing before sentencing her to seven consecutive life terms, a punishment that means she ll likely die in prison.
Mays cried and apologized in addressing the court briefly before learning her sentence.
“I know that there’s no words that I can say that would alter the families’ pain and comfort,” she said. “I don’t ask for forgiveness because I don’t think I could forgive anyone for doing what I did.”
Hospital officials reported the deaths to the VA inspector general and fired Mays after evidence pointed to her.
An interview with Mays after her guilty plea was included in a lengthy report released after Tuesday s sentencing by the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Inspector General detailing deficiencies at the hospital.
STAFF, WIRE REPORTS
FILE - This photo released July 14, 2020, by the West Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority shows Reta Mays. Mays, a former nursing assistant at the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg, W.V., is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday, May 11, 2021, for her guilty plea to intentionally killing seven patients with fatal doses of insulin. (West Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority via AP)
The fired nursing assistant who admitted to killing seven elderly veterans with lethal doses of insulin was sentenced to seven consecutive life terms Tuesday.
Mays, 46, of Reynoldsville, pleaded guilty last year to seven counts of second-degree murder. She admitted at a July plea hearing to injecting the veterans with unprescribed insulin while she worked overnight shifts at the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg between 2017 and 2018. Hospital officials reported the deaths to the VA inspector general and fired M