A company that operates several nursing homes has denied dramatic allegations that it had placed Elizabeth Wettlaufer on a “do not hire” list before the nurse was revealed as a serial killer.A public inquiry had heard on Thursday that the company, Revera Long Term Care, had placed Wettlaufer on their “black list” under her maiden name — Elizabeth Parker.The name difference allowed Wettlaufer to end up working as a registered nurse at the company’s nursing homes, according to Heidi Wilmot-Smith, president of Lifeguard Homecare, an agency that provided Revera and other long-term-care facilities with registered nurses to fill staffing shortages. At one of the Revera nursing homes, in September 2015, Wettlaufer tried to kill resident Sandra Towler with an injected overdose of insulin. Wettlaufer worked for Lifeguard from January 2015, until she resigned in September 2016. She spent much of that time working at Revera homes. Wilmot-Smith testified that the “do not hire” issue came to light after police began investigating Wettlaufer’s crimes in October 2016. Wilmot-Smith said a senior vice-president of Revera told her that the company had suddenly learned that Wettlaufer was on the list under her maiden name.“That’s probably why they did not catch it, because Beth was practising under the surname Wettlaufer,” Wilmot-Smith said.Later in the day in cross-examination, a lawyer for Revera called Wilmot-Smith’s testimony “inaccurate,” adding that Wettlaufer was never on their “do not hire” list.Jennifer McAleer noted that a different Elizabeth Parker had worked for Revera in Jasper, Alta., from 1986 to 2002. And the Elizabeth Parker in Jasper was never on the “do not hire” list. In a testy exchange, Wilmot-Smith insisted her recollection of her phone conversation with the Revera vice-president was accurate. “I wouldn’t have been able to come up wit ...
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