Former nursing aide who admitted to killing 7 veterans with fatal doses of insulin sentenced to life in prison
CBSN
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 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 U.S. 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, 46, pleaded guilty last year in federal court to seven counts of second-degree murder for intentionally injecting the men with unprescribed insulin at the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg.Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.
The knock at the door came at nighttime on Mother's Day 2008 in Oregon, where Jessica Ellis' parents lived. It was around 9:20 p.m. and his wife, Linda, was already in bed; her father Steve Ellis told CBS News, that he thought someone let their animals out — but two soldiers in Class A uniforms were standing at the door.