WALKER, Mich. (WWJ/AP) - Attorney General Dana Nessel is urging a judge to block the release of a nurse's aide who has spent 30 years in prison for killing residents at a nursing home near Grand Rapids.
The family of one of the victims sued after Catherine Wood was granted parole last year. A court hearing in Kent County is planned for Monday. Wood remains in custody.
Between 1986 and 1987, five elderly patients were suffocated at Alpine Manor Nursing Home in Walker. The victims often could not speak and required around-the-clock assistance, needing help eating and getting dressed. In total, Wood confessed to helping kill at least five patients, but said that she and co-defendant Gwendolyn Graham planned to kill many more.
The attorney general's office says the 57-year-old Wood might be a "model prisoner," but she's also a "danger to society."
The parole board has considered and denied Wood parole eight times – most recently in 2016. Each time, the board's denial was due to the severity of Wood's crimes and the threat she posed to public safety. In her ninth request, Wood was granted parole. The victims' families have now filed an appeal.
Nessel said Wood has never demonstrated true remorse for the victims she "ruthlessly murdered while in her care."
"She continues to be a threat to the public and it is incumbent upon me as the state's chief law enforcement officer to do everything possible to protect our state's residents from those who endanger them," Nessel said in a statement.
Wood was expected to be freed from federal prison in Florida last October until a judge blocked her release while the appeal process is finalized. She pleaded guilty in 1989 to second-degree murder and murder conspiracy and was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison. Under sentencing terms, she will be released from prison no later than June 2021.
Graham was sentenced to life in prison for her role in the murders.
The victims include Mae Mason, 79; Edith Cole, 89; Marguerite Chambers, 60; Myrtle Luce, 95; and Belle Burkhard, 74.
