Donald Harvey

What the record shows

Donald Harvey was a hospital orderly and nurse's aide who pleaded guilty in 1987 and 1988 to 37 murders in Ohio and Kentucky, most of them patients at hospitals where he worked between 1970 and 1987. Press coverage of his guilty pleas labeled him the "Angel of Death." The 37 count is the figure courts accepted; Harvey himself later claimed far more, with figures reported as high as 87, and the Associated Press reported that he claimed 18 additional deaths at the Cincinnati Veterans Administration Medical Center for which he was never charged. He received multiple life sentences and died in March 2017 after being beaten in his cell at Toledo Correctional Institution.

According to the Kentucky Historic Institutions account of the Marymount case, Harvey was hired as an orderly at Marymount Hospital in London, Kentucky, in May 1970, at 18, and left shortly after his last known killing there in January 1971; he later pleaded guilty to killing nine patients there by methods that included empty oxygen supplies and smothering. In March 1971 he was arrested in London for breaking into a neighbor's apartment and pleaded guilty to petty theft. He later worked at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Cincinnati and then as a nurse's aide at Drake Memorial Hospital; the AP reported that 21 of the victims he pleaded guilty to killing were Drake patients.

The case broke open in March 1987. As WCPO-TV and the AP reported, a doctor performing an autopsy on 44-year-old Drake patient John Powell smelled cyanide, and police traced the poisoning to Harvey. WCPO anchor Pat Minarcin, following anonymous tips from Drake nurses, spent months matching Harvey's shifts against unexplained deaths on his ward, and the charges grew to two dozen. Harvey told detectives he preferred cyanide because it was hard to detect; the AP reported he also used arsenic, usually mixed into patients' food, and let some patients' oxygen run out.

On August 18, 1987, Harvey pleaded guilty in Hamilton County, Ohio, to 24 counts of aggravated murder, together with attempted aggravated murder and felonious assault counts, under a plea agreement that removed the death penalty in exchange for a full confession. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction record for inmate A199449 lists 25 aggravated murder counts, four attempted aggravated murder counts and one felonious assault count on the 1987 Hamilton County dockets, with consecutive 20-years-to-life terms; he entered the Ohio prison system on October 26, 1987. On November 2, 1987, he pleaded guilty in Laurel County Circuit Court, Kentucky, to eight counts of murder and one of manslaughter for the Marymount patients, and Judge Lewis Hopper sentenced him to eight life terms plus 20 years, concurrent with Ohio. A further Hamilton County docket effective February 19, 1988, added three aggravated murder and three attempted aggravated murder counts; according to the Wikipedia article these non-hospital victims included a lover's father and two neighbors. The ODRC record gives a net sentence of 80 years to life and a first parole eligibility date of March 16, 2043.

Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Arthur Ney Jr. rejected Harvey's claim that he was a mercy killer, telling the AP: "He killed because he liked to kill." WCPO reported that at least 18 civil suits were filed by victims' families and that Harvey, held at Toledo Correctional Institution from 2008, began selling items to collectors online in 2011.

On the afternoon of March 28, 2017, guards found Harvey severely beaten in his cell in a protective custody unit at Toledo Correctional Institution. He died on March 30, 2017, at Mercy Health St. Vincent Medical Center in Toledo, aged 64, as NPR and the AP reported. In May 2019 a Lucas County grand jury indicted fellow inmate James D. Elliott on charges including aggravated murder; according to the Wikipedia article, citing the Toledo Blade, Elliott pleaded guilty and was sentenced in September 2019 to 25 years to life, later made concurrent with his existing sentence.

Harvey was born on April 15, 1952, in Hamilton, Ohio, and grew up in Booneville, Kentucky, according to the Wikipedia article and the ODRC record. He began working in hospitals at 18 with no formal medical training.