Kristen Strickland Case Study

Kristen Heather Strickland was born November 13th, 1967 in Fall River Massachusetts. She was the eldest child of her parents, Richard and Claudia Strickland. “Kristen was the oldest growing up in what seemed to be a well-adjusted home. Kristen lived her early years to preteen years without any problems, including during school and at home with family” (Jakclyn Rankin, 2013). She did well in school all the way through high school and graduated early at the age of only sixteen years old. After high school, she attended Greenville College and graduated with a nursing degree, and later received her nursing license in 1988. She married Glenn Gilbert that same year, and started her first job as a nurse at the Veterans Medical Center

This will be further addressed in section two of this paper. Following a formal investigation, she was arrested on charges with four murders, one count of manslaughter, two attempted murders, and was under suspicion of possibly 37 additional murders. The name of “Angel of Death” seems fitting. “The prosecution argued that secondary gain was the motive for Kristen’s behavior. It was alleged that she injected patients with drugs to induce a cardiac arrest to impress her colleagues with her skill in responding to the crisis and to attract the attention of another employee with whom she was having an affair” (Pyrek 2006, p.60). At the conclusion of the long trial, she was convicted of four murders and given two life sentences, but eluded the death penalty. Interestingly even though Massachusetts didn’t have a death penalty it didn’t stop the federal government from prosecuting her under their death penalty. “In the past century, only two women have been executed by the federal government. There is no state death penalty in Massachusetts, but Gilbert was eligible for it under federal laws because her crimes took place on federal property, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northampton” (Gorlick, A. 2001). The ironic part is if she would have been awarded the death penalty she would have died by lethal injection same way she killed her

“Boyfriends would later tell investigators that Kristen was a manipulator - someone who was ‘twisted but not stupid, ' capable of scary histrionics, tampering with their cars, and fits of attack in which her fingernails clawed through the skin. One former boyfriend said Gilbert once left him a fake suicide note in which she claimed to have eaten glass” (Thomas Farragher, 2000). Several people that knew her said that she was a habitual liar. She did seem to claim to identify with Lizzy Borden, who was acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother in 1893. Another indicator that she was twisted was her fondness of an evil nurse that played a popular soap opera. Court recorders did show that she that made violent threats against others in her teenage