Former nursing assistant at VA hospital in West Virginia to plead guilty in deaths of seven veterans

CLARKSBURG, W. Va. - A former Veterans Affairs nursing assistant is expected to admit in federal court Tuesday afternoon that she injected elderly, sick veterans with lethal doses of insulin while she was assigned to tend to them on the local VA hospital’s overnight shift.

Reta Mays, a 45-year-old Army veteran who was hired by the Louis A. Johnson Medical Center in 2015 with no certification or license to care for patients, pleaded guilty to seven counts of second degree murder and one count of assault with intent to commit murder. The veterans died from July 2017 through June 2018.

The patients had been admitted to the hospital with various ailments of old age - heart conditions, strokes, cancer. A few had mild diabetes. But they were not about to die, court documents show.

In the middle of the night, with staffing thin on the medical surgical ward known as 3A, Mays injected the patients with insulin she was not authorized to administer, leading to their deaths from severe hypoglycemia or low blood sugar, investigators said. Her motive remains unclear.

Prosecutors plan to ask for consecutive sentences of life in prison

"I don't think we'll really ever know how many people she killed," said Tony O'Dell, an attorney who is representing five families of victims, "but this woman is going away for life, and I think the families are pleased."

Mays appeared before U.S. District Judge Thomas Kleeh on Tuesday to enter her plea as her voice wavered.

Prosecutors had focused on Mays from the start, according to people familiar with the case, but had to built a circumstantial case since the hospital ward does not have cameras in patients' rooms, and cameras in the common areas, including the supply room where insulin was kept, were not working, investigators said.

Mays was assigned to monitor the veterans who died in what are known as one-on-one bedside vigils for patients who need extra attention. She was fired from the hospital last year, seven months after being removed from patient care, after it was discovered she had lied about her qualifications on her resume.

Investigators identified similarities in the deaths: Elderly patients in private rooms were injected in their abdomen and limbs with insulin the hospital had not ordered - some with multiple shots, according to people familiar with the case. The insulin, which was quickly absorbed, was given late at night when the hospital staffers had left. Within hours, the patients' blood-sugar levels plummeted.

Despite these common denominators, the medical workers and those with oversight of hospital procedures failed to identify a pattern for months.

After the bodies were exhumed, three deaths were ruled homicide by insulin injection. The armed forces deputy medical examiner changed the death certificates of the others from "natural causes" to "undetermined," according to autopsy reports and people familiar with the case.

The suspicious deaths gripped this Appalachian community four hours west of Washington. The case was not only a tragedy but an embarrassment for leaders of the sprawling and long-troubled VA system, which President Donald Trump promised to reform. The investigation by William Powell, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia, and VA Inspector General Michael Missal took two years. Its reverberations reached the highest levels of the Justice Department.

As the investigation lingered, Attorney General William Barr at least twice called Powell to ask about the status.

Powell also faced pressure from Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who have said that hospital leaders in Clarksburg took too long to put the pieces together in the deaths, which initially were found to be of natural causes.

"While overdue, today justice is finally being served," Manchin said in a statement Tuesday. "I will not stop until we determine how this could have happened, and ensure it never happens again. . . . My heart goes out to the families and loved ones who tragically lost a Veteran and have had to endure this injustice."

Other criminal cases have engulfed the agency in the past year, intensifying questions about whether the country’s largest health-care system is doing enough to protect veterans in its care. About 140 miles south of Clarksburg, a former osteopath at the VA hospital in Beckley, W. Va., was charged with multiple counts of sexual assaulting male patients. A former VA pathologist in Fayetteville, Ark., pleaded guilty in June to manslaughter after officials say he misdiagnosed thousands of patients while using drugs or alcohol.

It was not until Manchin's public pressure that the U.S. attorney began taking aggressive steps to bring a case, according to a U.S. official familiar with the investigation. Wilkie on multiple occasions blamed the drawn-out investigation on Missal, the inspector general who was appointed by President Barack Obama.

The families blamed hospital leaders for not detecting a pattern in the deaths sooner.

Melanie Proctor, whose father's body was one of seven disinterred last year and taken to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for a forensic autopsy, told The Washington Post last fall that she was angry VA "still has not stepped forward to say what they have fixed to make sure this doesn't happen again."

Felix McDermott's blood sugar had plunged to dangerous levels hours before the retired Army sergeant died in April 2018 of hypoglycemia. "I'm tired of nothing happening with this case," his daughter said last year.

At least 11 veterans died under similar circumstances on the ward known as 3A from the second half of 2017 through July 2018, authorities said.

The Clarksburg VA Medical Center said Tuesday that it discovered the misconduct and reported it to the inspector general more than two years ago, and that it fired Mays.

“Our hearts go out to those affected by these tragic deaths,” it said in a statement. “We’re glad the Department of Justice stepped in to push this investigation across the finish line and hopeful our court system will deliver the justice Clarksburg-area Veterans and families deserve.”