Because the alleged crimes took place on federal property, Gilbert, if convicted, could become the first defendant in Massachusetts to face the death penalty since the state abolished capital punishment. She is awaiting trial at a federal prison in Danbury, Conn., where she is serving a 15-month sentence for telephoning bomb threats to the hospital during the course of the murder investigation. State and federal investigators contend that Gilbert, who had worked at the VA since 1989, killed her victims by injecting them with epinephrine , a cardiac drug that can stop a healthy heart. In one instance described in their report, Gilbert allegedly asked her supervisor if she could go home early if a certain patient on her ward died. An hour later the patient was dead, delivered to the morgue by Gilbert.
Prosecutors have yet to ascribe a motive for the killings.
Many of Gilbert's friends and family, including her parents and ex-husband, Glenn Gilbert, have declined to talk about her for this story. However, court documents and psychological reports from her bomb trial tell the story of a manipulative and fragile woman who used a toy to disguise her voice during a bomb threat and spiraled into a series of suicide attempts following an ill-fated extramarital affair. The portrait resonates with some of her Groton acquaintances, who remember her as a smart but troubled girl who reacted angrily to rejection and harassed former boyfriends over the phone. Born in Fall River, Gilbert is the oldest of two daughters of Richard and Claudia Strickland. According to friends, Gilbert liked to brag that she was related to Lizzie Borden, the Fall River native who was accused of hacking her father and stepmother to death with a hatchet.