Esther Rae Tuller, age 40, of Moses Lake, Washington, has pleaded guilty to tampering with morphine medication while working as a registered nurse. According to court documents and information disclosed during Tuller’s change of plea hearing, between August 2019 and April 2020, Tuller was a Washington-licensed registered nurse employed at the Confluence Health Clinic in Moses Lake. Her position as a nurse provided her with access to medications, including opioid narcotics such as morphine, an opioid derivative commonly prescribed by hospitals and healthcare facilities to relieve pain. While working at Confluence Health, Tuller used syringes to remove morphine from at least 17 vials, and then ingested that morphine as part of her own opioid addiction. She then replaced the morphine with a saline solution that was essentially salt dissolved in water, and attempted to glue the caps back onto the vials to make them appear intact. Before Tuller was apprehended by law enforcement, at least one Confluence Health patient who was prescribed morphine had to be rushed to the emergency room; that patient continued to be in excruciating pain after receiving only saline from what was supposed to be morphine vials.
