On November 2, 1989, Gwendolyn Graham, a nurse’s aide at Alpine Nursing Home in Michigan, was sentenced to prison for a term of life, with no possibility of parole.

Gwendolyn Graham became employed at Alpine Manor in 1986. She was supervised by Catherine Wood, another nurse’s aide. Soon after the two women began working together, and fresh off of Wood’s divorce from her husband, the two women became romantically involved. Graham then proceeded to concoct a plan in which she and her supervisor/lover would kill several individuals in the nursing home whose names would spell out the word “murder.” After the first killing proved to be difficult due to the victim’s strength, Graham and Wood decided to forego the attempt to spell out the word “murder” and just kill the women who were in the most fragile conditions.

Five women were killed at the hands of this twisted duo. Catherine Wood later admitted that Graham would suffocate the women while she stood guard at the door to ensure that no one was in the vicinity of the brutality that was taking place. Approximately one year later, Graham challenged Wood to murder someone in order to prove her true love. Wood refused, and Graham walked away from the relationship, and from her employment at Alpine Nursing Home, and returned to her home state of Texas. Afraid of what she might do while in Texas, Catherine Wood confessed to the murders to her estranged husband.

In 1988, both Gwendolyn Graham and Catherine Wood were arrested for the murder of five women. But Catherine Wood got the last laugh. She agreed to testify against her former lover, and the State reduced her sentence from a term of life to a term of 20 to 40 years.

Gwendolyn Graham, the nurse’s aide from Alpine Nursing Home, was convicted of five counts of first degree murder. On November 2, 1989, she was sentence to a prison term of life, with no possibility of parole. She resided in the Robert Scott Correctional Facility until 2009, when she was moved to the Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Ypsilanti, Michigan.