Donald Harvey

Vorlage:Other persons Vorlage:Infobox serial killer Donald Harvey (born in Booneville, Kentucky, April 15, 1952) is an American serial killer who claims to have murdered 87 people. The official estimates of the number of people he murdered range anywhere from at least 37 to 57 deaths. Donald Harvey received some type of sadistic pleasure from killing his patients, although he claims he started out killing to “ease the pain” of patients. As he progressed in his murders, he began to enjoy it more and more and became a self-professed "Angel of Death". Harvey is currently serving three consecutive life sentences at the Allen Correctional Institution in Lima, Ohio. His inmate number is A-199449.

History

Dating as far back as the age of eighteen, Harvey had worked in and around the medical profession, beginning his career as an orderly at the Marymount Hospital in London, Kentucky. He later confessed that during the ten month period he worked at this hospital, he killed at least a dozen patients. Harvey is insistent that he killed purely out of a sense of empathy for the sufferings of those who were terminally ill. He has also admitted that many of the killings he committed were due to anger at the victim. Harvey is notable for having kept his crimes from coming to light for over 17 years. The true extent of his crimes may never be known since so many were undetected for so long. Harvey is also notable for having used numerous methods to kill, such as arsenic; cyanide; insulin; suffocation; 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); insertion of a coat hanger into a catheter, causing an abdominal puncture and subsequent peritonitis. Cyanide and arsenic were his favorite methods, with Harvey administering them via food, injection, or IV. The majority of Harvey's crimes took place at the Marymount Hospital in London, Kentucky, the Cincinnati V.A. Medical Hospital, and Cincinnati's Drake Memorial Hospital. While working at Drake, Harvey acquired the nickname 'The Angel of Death', "because he always seemed to be nearby when a patient died".

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 neighbors—sickening one by putting hepatitis serum in her drink and killing the other by putting arsenic in her pie. He also killed Hoeweler's father with arsenic when the elder Hoeweler was in the hospital with a stroke.

Harvey's first parole hearing is scheduled for April 2043.

External links

• Donald Harvey at The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction
• Donald Harvey at CrimeLibrary.com