Donald Harvey

On March 28, 2017, authorities reported that Harvey had been found in his cell severely beaten. He died on March 30, 2017. On May 3, 2019, fellow inmate James Elliott was charged with aggravated murder and other charges related to the death of Donald Harvey.

When Harvey's court-appointed lawyer, Bill Whalen, was briefed in advance about Minarcin's findings, he immediately asked Harvey if he'd killed anyone else. Harvey replied that by his "estimate," he'd killed as many as 70 people. Whalen knew that if prosecutors could link Harvey to more than one murder, Harvey could get the death penalty. In a bid to save his client's life, he offered prosecutors a deal–if the death penalty were taken off the table, Harvey would accept a sentence of life imprisonment and confess to all of his murders. The prosecutors agreed. In a marathon session with prosecutors, Harvey admitted to killing 24 people.

Harvey kept his crimes from being discovered for 17 years. The beginning of the end came in March 1987. An autopsy on John Powell, who had died abruptly after spending several months on life support due to a motorcycle accident, revealed large amounts of cyanide in his system. Harvey became a person of interest when investigators learned he'd been forced to resign from the Cincinnati VA hospital after he was caught stealing body parts for occult rituals. At the time, most hospitals did not vet orderlies as closely as doctors or nurses. When they brought Harvey in for questioning, he confessed to Powell's murder, claiming he'd euthanized Powell with cyanide.

In August 1987, Harvey pled 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 the death penalty if more murders came to light. With this in mind, that November Harvey pled guilty in Laurel County, Kentucky, circuit court to killing nine patients at Marymount in the 1970s. He was sentenced to life plus 20 years, to run concurrently with the Ohio sentence. Ultimately, Harvey pled guilty to 37 murders. However, he confessed to killing as many as 50 people.

Harvey was incarcerated in Toledo Correctional Institution, where he had been admitted on October 26, 1987. His first parole hearing was scheduled for April 2013.

Donald Harvey (April 15, 1952 – March 30, 2017) was a prolific American serial killer and orderly who claimed to have murdered 87 people, though official estimates are between 37 and 57 victims. He was able to accomplish this during his time as an orderly. Harvey said he started out killing to "ease the pain" of patients by smothering them with their pillows. He mostly killed cardiac patients.

Donald Harvey, a self-proclaimed “Old Plymouth Boy,” was born in Butler County, Ohio, near Cincinnati, in 1952. He dropped out of school in ninth grade, and began working in hospitals at the age of 18. His first medical job was as an orderly at the Marymount Hospital in London, Kentucky. He later confessed that during the ten-month period he worked at the hospital, he killed at least a dozen patients. His second victim was killed in the room with Danny George, a twelve year old child. Harvey was insistent that he killed purely out of a sense of empathy for the sufferings of those who were terminally ill. He also admitted that many of the killings he committed were due to anger at the victim.