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Donald Harvey (April 15, 1952 – March 30, 2017) was an American serial killer who claimed to have murdered 87 people, though he has 37 confirmed victims. He was able to do this during his time as a hospital orderly. His spree took place between 1970 and 1987.
Harvey claimed to have begun killing to "ease the pain" of patientsmostly cardiac patientsby smothering them with their pillows.Holmes, Ronald, & Holmes, Stephen. (2009). Serial Murder 3rd ed. Sage Publications, Inc. However, he gradually grew to enjoy killing and became a self-described "angel of death". At the time of his death, Harvey was serving 28 life sentences at the Toledo Correctional Institution in Toledo, Ohio, having pleaded guilty to murder charges to avoid execution.
From the ages of five to eighteen, Harvey was Sexual assault by both an uncle and a neighbor, but he told no one except his sister, and only after the abuse ended. Harvey dropped out of school in the ninth grade, but he earned a correspondence school GED in 1968. After an arrest for burglary in March 1971, Harvey enlisted in the United States Air Force, but was discharged after nine months due to two Suicide; after these nervous breakdowns, he came to terms with his homosexuality.
The full extent of Harvey's crimes may never be known since so many were undetected for so long. He did not use any particular modus operandi and used many methods to kill his victims, such as: arsenic, cyanide, insulin, Asphyxia, miscellaneous poisons, morphine, turning off ventilators, administration of fluid tainted with hepatitis B and/or HIV (which resulted in a hepatitis infection, but no HIV infection, and illness rather than death), and insertion of a coat hanger into a catheter, causing an abdominal puncture and subsequent peritonitis. Cyanide and arsenic were his most-used methods, with Harvey administering them via food or injections. The majority of Harvey's crimes took place at Marymount Hospital, the Cincinnati V.A. Medical Hospital, and Cincinnati's Drake Memorial Hospital. At various times, he worked as an orderly or an autopsy assistant.
Harvey did not limit his victims to helpless hospital patients. When he suspected his lover and roommate Carl Hoeweler of infidelity, he poisoned Hoeweler's food with arsenic so he would be too ill to leave their apartment. He poisoned two of his neighborssickening one, Diane Alexander, by putting hepatitis serum in her drink, and killing the other, Helen Metzger, by putting arsenic in her pie. He also killed Hoeweler's father Henry with arsenic.
Pat Minarcin, then an anchor at Cincinnati station WCPO-TV, found it unlikely that someone who had spent almost two decades caring for patients could suddenly kill one without having killed before. During his report on the night of Harvey's arrest, Minarcin asked on-air if there had been any other deaths. It was soon revealed that several nurses at Drake had raised concerns with administrators upon noticing a spike in deaths while Harvey was employed there, but they had been ordered to keep quiet. Not wanting to chance that he would be acquittal, the nurses contacted Minarcin and told him that there was evidence Harvey killed at least ten more people. Over the next several months, Minarcin investigated the suspicious deaths and amassed enough evidence to air a half-hour special report detailing evidence that linked Harvey to at least 24 murders in a four-year period. Harvey had been able to stay under the radar in part because he worked in an area of Drake where patients were not expected to survive.
When Harvey's public defender, Bill Whalen, was briefed in advance about Minarcin's findings, he immediately asked Harvey if he had killed anyone else. Harvey replied that by his "estimate", he had killed as many as 70 people. Whalen knew that if prosecutors could link Harvey to more than one murder, Ohio law allowed them to seek a death sentence. In a bid to save his client's life, Whalen offered prosecutors a the death penalty were taken off the table, Harvey would accept a de facto sentence of life without parole and confess to all of his murders. The prosecutors agreed. In a marathon session with prosecutors, Harvey admitted to killing 24 people.
In August 1987, Harvey pleaded guilty to 24 counts of first-degree murder. In accordance with the plea agreement, he was sentenced to three concurrent terms of life in prison. The plea agreement allowed prosecutors to seek a death sentence if more murders came to light. With this in mind, that November, Harvey pleaded guilty in Laurel County Circuit Court to eight counts of murder and one count of manslaughter for killing nine patients at Marymount Hospital in the 1970s. He was sentenced to life plus 20 years, to run concurrently with the Ohio sentence. Ultimately, Harvey pleaded guilty to 37 murders. However, he confessed to killing as many as 50 people.
Harvey was admitted to the Ohio prison system on October 26, 1987.
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