Snapped: Women Who Murder - Reta Mays

Episode Date: April 5, 2026

At a VA hospital in West Virginia, a string of events results in the deaths of several patients.Season 33 Episode 20Originally aired: Jun 2, 2024Watch full episodes of Snapped for FREE on the Oxygen app: https://oxygentv.app.link/WatchSnappedPodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A war veteran struck by a mysterious life-threatening illness. His sugar had dropped in a matter of minutes that sent him in the cardiac arrest. He was non-diabetic, and there was absolutely no reason for his blood sugar to be low. As investigators dig into the mystery, a disturbing pattern comes to light. There were events with a number of patients of unexplained hypoglycine. The rumor most spread around the hospital. It could have been anybody. It was pretty clear something terrible had gone wrong at this hospital.

All of the deaths in this case occurred in a single unit of the hospital. To unearth the horrifying truth, investigators must expose a killer crane on a community's most vulnerable members. These events couldn't be occurring, naturally or by accident. or by accident. This was being done by someone. Insulin had been administered subcutaneously or injected into the patients.

Did you have anything to do with the deaths or incidents with these patients? Absolutely known. That's no angel of mercy to me. That's a monster. Clarksburg, West Virginia is a small town with a proud history.

It's home to the Lewis A. Johnson Medical Center which is one of the 172 veterans hospitals distributed across the United States. The Louis A. Johnson Medical Center is a relatively small facility, has approximately 100 beds, and it serves the population of north-central West Virginia and surrounding states. This is a VA hospital that was built after World War II that sits high on a bluff, and you look down over this gorgeous countryside of West Virginia.

Virginia. The center serves a vital role in the lives of nearly 70,000 veterans. In June 2018, 92-year-old Russell Posey Sr. becomes the latest to be admitted. But his experience won't be routine. My sister called me one morning and said that my father was not acting right. He was sick, so she took him to a VA because that's where his doctors were. They didn't diagnose him with anything for the first date. He was in ICU at low blood pressure with low kidney response.

They said his organs were trying to shut down. Eventually they determined that he had pneumonia. And they treated him for it. He got better in a couple days. That's when they moved him to Section 3A to get just general care, help him get stronger, and then they were going to send him home. Ward 3A is the hospital's medical surgical unit, where many patients recuperate before release.

That was Father's Day that they transferred him in to that ward. We all had a like a little Father's Day party for him. I stayed with him that night until probably midnight. With plans to see his father the following morning, Vincent Posey leaves him to rest. But before returning, he receives unsettling news. The next morning, I got a call from my sister. The hospital I called.

They said Dad had been unresponsive in the middle of the night and that he had an episode. She asked the doctors what had happened and nobody could give her an answer at that time. While Vincent is en route, doctors have determined Russell Posey Sr.'s blood sugar levels plummeted during the night, resulting in a life-threatening hypoglycemic attack.

A hypoglycemic event is a drop in one's blood sugar level. Essentially below 70 is what could be considered a hypoglycemic event. His sugar had dropped from, I think, approximately 1.17, 118 down to 14 in a matter of minutes. And that's sending him into cardiac arrest. You can't spend much time with a blood sugar in the tens or 20s. It is very unusual, and it's incredibly rare. You're going to start considering organ system failures. Doctors are working feverishly to save Russell's life.

But his family is certain nothing in his history explains the crisis. My father never had any diabetes or sugar issues ever. A little bit of high blood. blood pressure he's being treated for, but never are any issues with sugar. The nurses and the doctors were both like, we don't understand what happened. Russell Posey Sr. was born in Lewis County, West Virginia in 1925. He was raised on a farm, and at the age of 18, like many men of his generation, he answered the call to fight in World War II.

My father joined the Navy in 1943. He went to a group called the Raiders, which, if I understand it correctly, was the predecessor to the Seals. Russell was sent to Florida for rigorous training. Upon completion, his unit was selected to perform a dangerous mission. He was supposed to swim ashore, evade the enemy, draw maps, and check the tides and things like that.

But he had boarded the ship, and he was on his way to Japan when they dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By them dropping those bombs, he didn't have to swim ashore and try to map the coast in Japan. He didn't expect to come back home from that. He ended up going to Okinawa, and he was cleaning up the war debris and helping restore, you know, infrastructure. After the war, Russell returned to the states with a new lease on life. He attended West Virginia University, where he became president of his fraternity and met the love of his life, Nelva. My mom lived in Morgantown. She was born in Italy and came over when she was six years old. And I think that she met him accidentally through another date that she was on.

And then he started dating her. Russell and Nelva were married on December 30th, Nelva. December 30th, 1950. They spent the next 55 years together, raising four children and building a lasting legacy in their small town. He bought a drive-in restaurant called the Dairy Delight. That was in 69, 70. And then shortly after that, we opened another business called Posey's Lawn and Garden.

And we ran those businesses for about 30 years. The whole family kind of helped out with that. After he quit the businesses when he retired, he moved back to Lewis County onto one of the farms he had owned over there. After more than half a century of marital bliss, Russell lost the love of his life when Nelva passed away in 2005. Russell struggled to move on and found himself looking for new purpose in his golden years.

When she passed and he was, in that house by himself. He didn't like it. So he went to church quite a bit. We kept active with the grandkids coming over as much as we could. Now, 13 years later, Russell's life hangs in the balance as his family waits for him to regain consciousness in the wake of a deadly hypoglycemic attack. He had three IVs of dextrose, I think, being pumped into him, and they kept checking him like every couple minutes. Dextrose is a simple sugar that's used as a rescue treatment for low blood sugar. There's certainly his potential for survival,

but it all depends on the reserve and how quickly that low blood sugar is responded to. He would fade in and out of consciousness that went on through that day. The treatment works, but not without complications. Later that night, he got to the point, where he could talk again and open his eyes and move his arms and stuff like that. He was never the same after that, though. He didn't recognize people. He was talking to people that weren't there.

He had gotten stronger enough to where he could be moved to this nursing home, but he was 92. He was never going to get strong enough to where he could live on his own again. But the Posey family is desperate to understand how could this have happened. Mr. Posey was non-diabetic and he had eaten cheesecake the night before and there was absolutely no reason for his blood sugar to be low. It is a very unusual event for a non-diabetic. Something else is going on. We have to figure out what could cause severe catastrophic low blood sugar events and who could have done this.

Coming up, an investigation uncovers a disturbing pattern. All of these men were in their 80s and 90s. All of them had suffered a very similar hypoglycemic event. And there seems to be only one terrifying explanation. The rumor mill spread, and the term angel of death began to present itself. After Russell Posey's unexplained health crisis, administrators conduct a review of the veteran's case and the hospital's procedures. what they find is alarming.

They realized that they had multiple patients that were experiencing the same thing. There were events with a number of patients of unexplained hypoglycemia. So these patients were experiencing dramatic drops in their blood sugar that couldn't be explained by their underlying condition. Administrators review records showing there have been six

hypoglycemic incidents that year. The first occurred in late January 2018. The patient was 89-year-old Robert Kozal. Robert Kozl was a Korean War veteran who was admitted overnight for non-life-threatening medical issues going on with him. He was not diabetic, but ended up suffering an extreme hypoglycemic event. And he received multiple vowsyme. 50-50 dextrose.

He was actually really starting to do much, much better. And his family, one of the last memories they have, is singing with him in the hospital bed. And then he dies shortly thereafter. Two months later, the same thing happened to another Korean War veteran, 84-year-old Archie Edgeall. Archie Edgeell was admitted to the hospital in late March 2018. 18 for medical conditions related to dementia and was being held.

Ultimately, I think, expected to be discharged from the ward when he suffered an extreme hypoglycemic event. The two cases seemed unrelated at the time, but a third incident made the pattern harder to ignore. On March 22nd, 2018, 81-year-old George Shaw Sr. checked into the hospital expecting the quality care he'd grown accustomed to after decades in the armed forces. My father joined the service when he was 18. He joined the Air Force, and he stayed in the Air Force for 28 years before he retired and moved back here. And then after that, he worked for the VA for six years in the mailroom. My father was an honest man, a caring man.

In his later years, Shaw struggled with short-term memory loss, often forgetting to eat and drink. That particular day, he was dizzy, late-headed. We decided to take him to the VA to be seen. The doctors wanted to just keep him in the hospital over the weekend. He was going to go home. No big deal. Like those before him, Shaw's blood sugar suddenly plummeted,

without an explanation as to why. Every organ in his body was starting to shut down. And he kept trying to tell us something the whole time. He kept pointing, pointing that finger, pointing that finger, and trying to talk. We knew he was trying to tell us something, but we didn't know what for sure. It took him two weeks. Two weeks to pass away. He suffered organ after organ after organ shut down.

shut down. The doctors didn't give us an explanation because they were confused. They didn't understand why his shigle dropped that low. We thought somebody had gave him the wrong medicine on accident. We thought it was just a big mistake. However, the incident still went unreported. There were members of the hospital staff who privately and among themselves wondered what was going on and became very, very alarmed. But VA hospitals generally have a culture that really makes it very hard for people to come forward. Two more deaths occurred in April 2018,

two months before Russell's hypoglycemic event. A 96-year-old veteran listed under the initials WAAH and 82-year-old. Felix McDermott. My dad was talkative, he was friendly. Man never forgot a joke. He went right into the service after high school, and then he was a paratrooper.

He was 25 years old, and he was with the 101st at one point in the 82nd Airborne, and he got out after a year in Vietnam. And then he rejoined when my brother joined. So, and finished out his first. and finished out his ears and reserves. He was military to the Corps. He always told us after my mom passed.

If anything happens to me, I want you to put me as VA nursing home. Similar to the other patients, McDermott's condition was not life-threatening when he was admitted. He had gotten food down in his lungs when he was eating dinner, and he had developed pneumonia from it. He went in on a Friday by Sunday.

He was doing a lot better. The antibiotic was doing its job. I told him, hey, Dad, I'm going to go back to work. You should be going home tomorrow. We got called in Sunday night, and they tell us that dad's sugar had failed. They bought him that, and it come down to my dad's DNR. So choice was made to let him pass.

My dad never had problems with the sugar until that night. That was the first time ever. Two months later, 88-year-old Raymond Golden would become the sixth man to die from a hypoglycemic event. By the time June had come around, the investigators were confronted with six deaths of elderly male veterans. They all ranged in age from 72 to 96. They all had health problems. They were in a hospital for one reason or another. They were all on the upswing and expecting to be discharged.

Russell Posey Sr. is the only one of these men who survived. And now that hospital administrators are aware of the problem, they finally take action. When they could not find a medical explanation, they referred the matter for criminal investigation by the Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General. We investigate allegations of fraud, waste, and abuse pertaining to VA programs and facilities. This investigation was first brought to our attention, on the evening of June 27th, 2018. One of the first things that we tried to do

was go to the medical experts to figure out what could have been the root cause of this. And what the medical experts were indicating was that only insulin could lower these sugars that severely. So it was determined that these hypoglycemic events couldn't be occurring naturally or by accident. This was being done by someone.

The facts describe. describe a horrifying scenario. Someone inside the hospital, most likely a caregiver, has been using insulin as a lethal weapon. The term angel of death began to present itself early in the investigation, and the rumor most spread around the hospital once everyone heard that there was an ensuing investigation.

The fact that it was a series of inpatients over a short span, the thought process, of course, crosses your mind, that do we have a serial killer on our hands. After initial findings suggest a caregiver could be killing patients at a Veterans Hospital in West Virginia, additional resources are immediately committed to the investigation. The Veterans Affairs Officer Inspector General

joined with the FBI and the US Attorney's Office to begin a criminal investigation. The VA Medical Center in Clarksburg, the facility at any point in time has approximately approximately 1,200 employees. There were any number of employees who could have had access to any of these patients at any point in time. It could have been anybody.

Agents tried to narrow down the pool of suspects by analyzing patterns in the suspicious deaths. All of the deaths in this case occurred in a single unit of the hospital called Ward 3A. 3A wasn't a like an intensive care unit or anything like that for people expecting to die. It was general medicine. where people were recovering and expecting to be discharged.

Employees do have to scan their cards in order to access different access points. So they immediately start checking time sheets, particularly for folks who worked on or had access to Ward 3A. Only one person fits all of the requirements. Upon further review of the Ward 3A time card records, we learned that Rita Mays was the only 3A employee that was working when all of the hypoglycemic events occurred. Rita Mays was a nursing assistant.

Her duties entailed responding to patient call bells, assisting with their daily needs of living, changing linens, and also conducting finger six, checking the diabetic patient's blood sugar levels. Records indicate Rita wasn't only working in the ward during all of the incidents. She was also in the room with many of the victims. The hospital kept sitter logs,

which is just a list of when someone required one-on-one attention from a nursing assistant or sometimes a nurse. In five of our cases, she was sitting one-on-one with the victim immediately prior to them experiencing the hypoglycemic events. Investigators also find evidence that really, that Rita seemed very interested in the blood sugar levels of her patients. So the hospital had glucometers, which is just an instrument that will measure blood glucose levels.

Nursing staff, as well as nursing assistants, use the glucometers. They're required to log in. We quickly determined that Rita Mays took a disproportionate amount of the severely low blood sugar readings as opposed to other staff. As investigators keep digging, the glucometer readings reveal something else. You're looking at the audit trails, our investigative team was able to identify an additional patient who suffered similar low blood sugar readings.

Robert Edge was admitted with the UTI in July of 2017. Nothing to do with blood sugar. My grandfather joined the Navy right out of high school to make sure that he was able to provide for himself, but also for my grandmother to be able to provide for a family in the future. When he was admitted in the hospital, my dad had texted me and was like, we're just going to get this situation under control,

and then it'll just come back home. He was diabetic, but he was not receiving insulin from the hospital. It was not on his charts at all for requiring that. And his blood sugars at one point prior to his death were measured at 17, which is extremely low. Robert Edge Sr. died within 24 hours of his hypoglycemic event, making him the seventh veteran to pass away under suspicious circumstances. When my grandpa passed away, there was no additional explanation given to us as to why just that a flood sugar issue caused him to pass away. We didn't have my grandpa anymore.

I think that it's kind of a wound that's never really healed on our side. Agents confirm Rita Mays was the nurse's assistant on duty. And so really quickly into the investigation, within the first week, the investigators already had a person of interest, Rita Mays. Agents look into Rita's background in an effort to see if there's anything that might tie her to the victims. Rita Mays at the time was in her late 40s. She was from Clarksburg and her family had moved around them in Atlantic. She did try to get a college degree in accounting but didn't make it all the way through.

She ended up marrying, having two sons. Her home life was not the best. not the best. One of our sons had apparently been in jail. We learned that her husband, Gordon Mays, was actually currently serving a six-year sentence stemming from a conviction for child pornography. Rita's personal life is troubling, but it's her employment history that catches investigators' attention. One of the first things that stuck out was Rita Mays herself as a veteran. Rita Mays served in the Army National Guard from 2001 to 2004 and even deployed as a chemical munitions repairmen in support of the war in Iraq.

She was ultimately honorably discharged in 2006 and she herself received her care from the VA Hospital in Clarksburg. Prior to joining VA Medical Center in Clarksburg, she was actually a corrections officer at a local jail in West Virginia. We learned that she left that position during an internal affairs investigation into allegations of excessive use of force. She had been accused in several complaints of being excessively harsh and holding prisoners while another guard was alleged to have kicked a prisoner. That obviously set off a red flag.

When investigators talk to Rita's hospital colleagues, they find it hard to believe she could commit murder. We learned that Rita Mays had a very stellar reputation. At the medical center, she had even received a nursing assistant of the year award. But some colleagues do recall suspicious behavior. They thought it was unusual that Rita was often found in the room with the victims, holding their hands, asking questions as to why and how this could have happened while they were suffering from the hypoglycemic events.

It furthered the investigative team's stance that we were on the right track and that Rita was our primary target. Rita is suspected in the deaths of seven patients. But less than a week into the investigation, another is added to the list with the death of Russell Posey Sr. My sister got a call. It was about 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock in the morning on July the 3rd that my father had passed in the night. In the medical report, it said natural causes. Unfortunately, there's not yet enough evidence to charge Rita. There's a big difference between us knowing that she did this in our gut and being able to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Even worse, the hospital doesn't have any legal reason to fire Rita. We needed to move her off the floor and not give her access to any of their patients. Coming up, investigators confront a potential serial killer. Did you have anything to do with these patients? I don't know what they think could have happened. But when a suspect refuses to talk, there is only one way to reveal the buried truth. The bodies needed to be assumed. Investigators suspect nurse's assistant Rita Mays

has killed eight patients by injecting them with insulin. But until they can prove she's a murderer, they need to make sure Rita doesn't harm anyone else. Our mentality was, now that it's on our watch, we cannot let this happen to any other veterans. We ultimately made a recommendation to the facility to remove her from patient care. She was reassigned to the mail road.

in a non-patient care capacity. The thinking became, we need to really get to the psychology of this person. What could she be motivated by? There were a lot of things going on in her personal life. There was a lot of turmoil, and she was losing control from a lot of different fronts. Because she had been deployed, PTSD can sometimes play a role,

and that was something that we considered. To ensure they are ready to consider, confront Rita with their findings, agents spend the next few weeks bolstering their case. Electronic evidence ended up being pretty important. So we also obtained some records by search warrant, and it showed us that Rita Mays had been watching a show called Nurses Who Kill. Now look, we're not saying because you watch a show Nurses Who Kill that you might be a nurse who kills, but in fact, when a couple of those episodes, insulin was the weapon of choice. Armed with more evidence, investigators set up a meeting with Rita.

We elected to go with a specialist from the FBI's behavioral analysis unit to conduct an interview with Rita. It was a voluntary interview and lasted approximately five, five and half hours. This interview was really meant to start introducing some of the evidence and see if she would discuss with us anything more. As you know, we're looking at things at the hospital issues. We're also looking into the patient deaths. And what I'm trying to accomplish today is figure out what we're missing. Okay. After the FBI agent builds rapport with Rita, the questions become more pointed.

Did you have anything to do with the deaths or incidents with these patients? Absolutely not. All you guys have been asking these questions about people with lawyers, blood sugar, I don't know what they think could have happened. I test the sugar, I tell the nurses what the sugar is. I know it's something to do with that, but I don't know what could have been done. As soon as victims are brought up and the pointed questions about anything that might have happened, she really starts to shut down and that's how she ends the interview.

I think of what you're accused me up. So there was no, I'm a lawyer. So there was no question that when she left that interview, that she knew she was our prime suspect. Investigators see only one way to proceed, and it won't be pleasant. Unfortunately, the investigative team had to make the difficult decision of approaching the family members of our identified victims

to seek their consent, to exhume their remains, and perform forensic autopsies. We're looking for every type of medical evidence to determine whether there's insulin present. It's been two months since the federal investigation began, but this is the first time any of the victim's families have been told what's going on.

It was towards the end of August. FBI come to my house. I was in total shock with it. When they explained it, they felt somebody had helped us in Long and had been given. in the insulin. What they said is, we're investigating your father's death,

and we would like to exhume his body. I said, my father would want to make sure that this never happened to anybody else. And if we can help, I'm in favor of them exuming the body. What hurt me was they were going to disrupt his rest. But then how much of a peaceful rest could he get without knowing the truth. So it was easy to say yes.

The families of the eight victims give consent. And in fall 2018, investigators exhumed those bodies for autopsies. There was potential not only to look for the administration of exogenous insulin in various bodily fluid, but tissue samples that were taken to determine if insulin had been injected into, to the patients. Despite months of decomposition, the medical examiner finds the evidence investigators are looking for.

The medical examiner discovered what he believed to be insulin injection sites. Ultimately determined that these were homicides caused by nefarious insulin injections. What really hit a smack in the face is seeing the autopsy report. and then big black old letters the words homicide. It just all became real dead.

Seven of the eight victims' causes of death are now classified as homicide. There remained one case that was not able to reach that opinion and left it as undetermined, and that was Mr. Posey. Because he lived so long, approximately two weeks or more, Two weeks or more after his hypoglycemic event, the medical examiner was unable to definitively say that the insulin injection caused his death. On the autopsy, they changed it to suspicious death and undetermined causes, which allowed them to go after her for attempted murder. As the victims are buried for a second time, investigators confront Rita with their findings.

The investigative team made the decision to reveal to her why at this juncture we knew it was her and only her who had committed these acts. What would you say if you were the prosecutor? With everything, it looked like I did it. Even under more pressure, Rita still refuses to confess. Ultimately, after being presented with all the evidence, evidence, we did, ended the interview, got up and left. She had had enough, and that was it. We were at a stage where we believed we had enough evidence.

And so at that point, I issued her a target letter that was served on her by the FBI. That target letter simply says, you're a target of an investigation. So she was appointed three attorneys. That's because it's a death penalty eligible case, and she has that right. And so we start a dialogue. And we are laying out all the evidence against Rita Mays. After a two-year investigation, authorities are certain 45-year-old nursing assistant Rita Mays

is responsible for the murders of seven patients at a veterans hospital in West Virginia. But the case never makes it to trial. She voluntarily surrendered. She was never arrested. She seems to be moving forward in good faith based on conversations with their attorney, toward a plea agreement. Herd attorneys got what we call a reverse proffer,

which is pretty much a layout of the case that would be presented against their client. And at that point, they started working out a plea deal. Talking to the families, we learned very quickly that they're on board with a plea agreement that would put Rita Mays in prison for life. The reason for us accepting the plea deal was so this would not. get drawn out any longer than it had to be. Part of the plea agreements were that Rita would admit to second degree murder. So we had seven counts of second degree murder and one count of attempted murder in Mr.

Posey's case. The court sentenced Rita Mays to the maximum allowed by law, which here was seven terms of life imprisonment and 20 years for that. assault with intake to commit murder. Rita Mays will spend the rest of her life behind bars. During sentencing, the judge calls Rita the monster no one sees coming. The only question remaining is why?

What was the motive for Rita Mays to kill elderly, helpless veterans who had been admitted to a hospital at their most vulnerable stage of life? The plea agreement, very importantly, required that Rita Mays give a debrief in this case, where we'd have the chance finally to get answers from her for what her motivations were. She gave two contradictory reasons. One is she did try to claim to some extent that some of these were mercy kings, that they were suffering and needed to die.

But the evidence didn't support that. These veterans were not on death's door at all when they were admitted to the Clarksburg VA. What insulin does is shut your body down one organ at a time. My father lived for two weeks. Two weeks he suffered. That's no angel of mercy to me. That's a monster. The other contradictory reason was that her home life

was out of control. She said that in 2017, when she started having these thoughts, her husband was in prison, her son was having issues. This somehow was meant to give her a sense of control, but she told us this did not relieve her stress. And she, in fact, hoped that she would get caught someday. While the things she told us were interesting, we'll never know why Rita Mays committed these heinous acts.

Why did Rita snap? I have no idea. I have no idea why she went to the dark side and started playing God. Rita Mays might be etched in the annals of American serial killers. But the names of the men whose lives she stole, Robert Edge, Sr., Robert Kozel, Archie Edgeell, George Shaw Senior, W.A.H., Felix McDermott, Raymond Golden, and Russell Posey, Sr. will be memorialized for a better reason.

They should be remembered as men who honorably served our country, who were loved and loved their families, and deserved a lot better. I think their legacy will be helping improve how people were treated in the VA. Improving in a system that they all, I think, believed in. They were respectable men. They had loving families. Their families will make sure that they are never forgotten. Never forgotten.