Kris Wartelle

Kris Wartelle was Attorney General Charles Foti’s public information director during the investigation of deaths at Memorial Medical Center. Her role placed her between prosecutors, the media, and an angry public: she argued against the most severe proposed charges and tried to control how the arrests would appear, but could not keep the case’s public narrative within the bounds she intended. Her efforts culminated in a televised interview that she had expected to favor Foti and instead regarded as a betrayal of the assurances she had received.

Public Role and the Charging Debate

During a Sunday-night call about the planned arrests, a prosecutor suggested upgrading the charges from second-degree to first-degree murder. Wartelle nearly shouted her objection. To her, prosecuting health professionals for first-degree murder was an extreme step, especially when investigating them for second-degree murder had already provoked angry public letters. A conviction for second-degree murder in Louisiana could bring life imprisonment at hard labor without parole; the principal additional consequence of first-degree charges would be making the death penalty available.

Another attorney on the call proposed reducing the charges to manslaughter, which carried a maximum forty-year prison term in the circumstances discussed. The advocates for second-degree murder prevailed. The evidence does not establish that Wartelle endorsed manslaughter; it does show her opposition to the proposed escalation and her awareness that the investigation was already inflaming public opinion. Her intervention treated the choice of charge not only as a prosecutorial decision but also as a decision with immediate consequences for public confidence and the state’s presentation of the case.

Managing the Arrests

Wartelle believed that sending agents to arrest Pou, Cheri Landry, and Lori Budo would be damaging from a public-relations standpoint. She advised Foti on how to avoid drawing media attention, hoping the arrests would not become a perp walk broadcast on Baton Rouge’s evening television news. She also asked him to slow down and rehearse the questions reporters might ask at a press conference. Foti did not take her up on that preparation.

Her concern was shared by Special Agent Virginia Rider and prosecutor Butch Schafer, though the evidence describes their objections separately. Wartelle focused on the foreseeable television spectacle and the public response; Schafer objected to surprise arrests and believed the women’s lawyers expected to arrange their clients’ surrender. The arrest decision remained Foti’s, and the arrests proceeded. Wartelle’s attempts to shape the presentation could advise the attorney general, but they could not determine his choices.

The Baton Rouge Press Conference

At the July 18, 2006, press conference in Baton Rouge, Wartelle sat beside Foti as he began explaining the hospital and its patients to reporters. When he called LifeCare by the wrong name, she quietly corrected him. He repeated the mistaken name once more before she supplied the correct one again, louder; he then used it and continued without acknowledging the error. The brief exchange exposed the practical immediacy of her public-information role: she was beside the podium, attempting to keep a high-profile explanation accurate while Foti spoke before a room full of reporters.

Foti announced that Pou and nurses Landry and Budo had been arrested the previous evening on four counts of principal to second-degree murder. He described the allegation as involving lethal injections and explained that the term principal referred to assisting or participating in an act. Wartelle’s correction of the hospital’s name took place within a press conference whose subject and language were already consequential. The episode also contrasted her careful intervention over a factual detail with Foti’s less controlled public delivery.

A Television Interview Turns

Wartelle helped arrange an interview for Foti with 60 Minutes. She expected a hard-hitting investigation that would nevertheless represent his side fairly. Her confidence drew in part on reporter Ed Bradley’s earlier work with her office on a story about Gretna police preventing a largely Black crowd from crossing a bridge to safety after Hurricane Katrina. She was surprised when she learned that Morley Safer, rather than Bradley, would report the Memorial story after what she understood to have been an internal dispute. Safer’s young producer assured her that the segment would still portray Foti as a hero.

When Safer arrived, the producer warned Wartelle that he was in a bad mood. The interview itself made the likely direction clearer: under the lights, Safer’s questions turned out to be critical of Foti. Foti was angry with Wartelle. Afterward, she argued with Safer for about an hour and sent a sharply worded email to a senior CBS official, saying she felt misled about the reporter’s intentions. The incident reversed the confidence with which she had arranged the interview: her access to the production had not given her control over its editorial approach.

Defending the Investigation in Public

After the broadcast, a Virginia doctor sent an insulting email to the attorney general’s website during the program, attacking Foti for prosecuting the health professionals. Wartelle complained to the doctor’s medical-school dean, describing the message as rude and unprofessional, and replied directly to him. She argued that investigators had interviewed hundreds of eyewitnesses, while emphasizing that the office could not discuss its evidence and that viewers were criticizing the case without knowing what it contained.

Her response captured the bind of her position. She defended the investigation and its evidentiary basis while acknowledging that the office’s limits on public disclosure left it unable to answer viewers with the information they demanded. Meanwhile, Pou’s appearance on the same program became a sensation, and medical professionals around the country expressed outrage at the prosecution. Wartelle’s work moved between trying to prevent damaging images, correcting a public explanation in real time, and defending an investigation whose evidence the office would not discuss. The record shows her attempting to manage that collision, not resolving it.